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 CHAPTER III
Mary Amber was bearing in the great platter of golden-brown turkey
when he first saw her, and had not heard him come down. She was
entirely off her guard, with a sweet, serious intentness upon her
work and a stray wisp of gold hair set afloat across the kitchen-
flushed cheek. She looked so sweet and serviceable and true, with
her lips parted in the pleasure of the final completion of her task,
that the soldier was taken by surprise and thrown entirely off his
guard. Was this the false-hearted creature he had come to fight?
Then Mary Amber felt his eyes upon her as he stood staring from
the open hall door, and, lifting her own clear ones, froze into the
opponent at once. A very polite opponent, it is true, with all the
grace of a young queen, but nevertheless an opponent, cold as a
young icicle.
Miss Marilla with bright eyes and preternaturally pink cheeks spoke
into the vast pause that suddenly surrounded them all, and her voice
sounded strangely unnatural to herself.
“Dick, this is Mary Amber; I suppose you don’t remember her.”
And the young soldier, not yet quite recovered from that first sweet
vision of Mary Amber, went forward with his belligerence to woman
somewhat held in abeyance.
“You—have changed a good deal since then, haven’t you?” he
managed to ask with his native quickness to say the right thing in an
emergency.
“A good many years have passed,” she said, coolly putting out a
reluctant hand to please Miss Marilla. “You don’t look at all as you
did. I never should have known you.”
The girl was looking keenly at him, studying his face closely. If a
soldier just home from an ocean trip could get any redder, his face
would have grown so under her scrutiny. Also, now he was face to
face with her, he felt his objection to Girl in general receding before
the fact of his own position. How had that ridiculous old woman
expected him to carry off a situation like this without giving it away?
How was he supposed to converse with a girl he had never seen
before, about things he had never done,—with a girl with whom he
was supposed to have played in his youth? Why had he been such a
fool as to get into this corner just for the sake of one more dinner?
Why, to-morrow he would need another dinner, and all the to-
morrows through which he might have to live. What was one dinner
more or less? He felt in his hip pocket for the comforting assurance
of his cap, and gave a furtive glance toward the hall door. It wouldn’t
be far to bolt back to the road, and what would be the difference?
He would never see either of the two again.
Then the sweet, anxious eyes of his hostess met his with an
appealing smile and he felt himself powerless to move.
The girl’s eyes had swept over his ill-fitting uniform and he seemed
to feel every crease and stain.
“I thought they told us you were an officer, but I don’t see your
bars.” She laughed mockingly, and searched his face again
accusingly.
“This is another fellow’s uniform,” he answered lamely. “Mine got
shrunk so I could hardly get into it, and another fellow who was
going home changed with me.”
He lifted his eyes frankly, for it was the truth that he told, and he
looked into her eyes, but saw that she did not believe him. Her
dislike and distrust of the little boy Dick had come to the front. He
saw that she believed that Dick had been boasting to his aunt of
honors that were not his. A wave of anger swept over his face; yet
somehow he could not summon his defiance. Somehow he wanted
her to believe him.
They sat down at the beautiful table, and the turkey got in its work
on his poor human sensibilities. The delicate perfume of the hot
meat as it fell in large, flaky slices from Miss Marilla’s sharp knife, the
whiff of the summer savory and sage and sweet marjoram in the
stuffing, the smoothness of the mashed potatoes, the brownness of
the candied sweet potatoes, all cried out to him and held him
prisoner. The odor of the food brought a giddiness to his head, and
the faintness of hunger attacked him. A pallor grew under the tan of
his face, and there were dark shadows under his nice eyes that quite
touched Miss Marilla, and almost softened the hard look of distrust
that had been growing around Mary Amber’s gentle lips.
“This certainly is great!” he murmured. “I don’t deserve to get in on
anything like this, but I’m no end grateful.”
Mary Amber’s questioning eyes recalled him in confusion to his rôle
of nephew in the house, and he was glad of the chance to bend his
head while Miss Marilla softly asked a blessing on the meal. He had
been wont to think he could get away with any situation; but he
began to feel now as if his recent troubles had unnerved him, and
he might make a mess of this one. Somehow that girl seemed as if
she could see into a fellow’s heart. Why couldn’t he show her how
he despised the whole race of false-hearted womankind?
They heaped his plate with good things, poured him amber coffee
rich with cream, gave him cranberry sauce and pickles and olives,
and passed little delicate biscuits, and butter with the fragrance of
roses. With all this before him he suddenly felt as if he could not
swallow a mouthful. He lifted his eyes to the opposite wall, and a
neatly framed sentence in quaint old English lettering met his eye,
“Who crowneth thee with loving-kindness and tender mercies, so
that thy youth is renewed like the eagle’s.”
An intense desire to put his head down on the table and cry came
over him. The warmth of the room, the fragrance of the food, had
made him conscious of an ache in every part of his body. His head
was throbbing too, and he wondered what was the matter with him.
After all the harshness of the world, and the bitterness, to meet a
kindness like this seemed to unnerve him. But gradually the food got
in its work, and the hot coffee stimulated him. He rose to the
occasion greatly. He described France, spoke of the beautiful
cathedrals he had seen, the works of art, the little children, the work
of reconstruction that was going on, spoke of Germany too, when he
saw they expected him to have been there, although this was a
shoal on which he almost wrecked his rôle before he realized. He
told of the voyage over and the people he had met, and he kept
most distinctly away from anything personal, at least as far away as
Mary Amber would let him. She with her keen, questioning eyes was
always bringing up some question that was almost impossible for
him to answer directly without treading on dangerous ground, and it
required skill indeed to turn her from it. Mary listened and marvelled,
trying continually to trace in his face the lines of the fat-faced,
arrogant child who used to torment her.
Mary rose to take the plates, and the young soldier insisted on
helping. Miss Marilla, pleased to see them getting on so nicely, sat
smiling in her place, reaching out to brush away a stray crumb on
the table-cloth. Mary, lingering in the kitchen for a moment, to be
sure the fire was not being neglected, lifted the stove-lid, and with
the draught a little flame leaped up around a crumpled, smoldering
yellow paper with the familiar “Western Union Telegraph” heading.
Three words stood out distinctly for a second, “Impossible to
accept,” and then were enveloped by the flame. Mary stood and
stared with the stove-lid in her hand, and then, as the flame curled
the paper over, she saw “Lieutenant Richard—” revealed and
immediately licked up by the flame.
It lay, a little crisp, black fabric with its message utterly illegible, but
still Mary stood and stared and wondered. She had seen the boy on
the bicycle ride up and go away. She had also seen the approaching
soldier almost immediately, and the thought of the telegram had
been at once erased. Now it came back forcefully. Dick, then, had
sent a telegram, and it looked as if he had declined the invitation.
Who, then, was this stranger at the table? Some comrade working
Miss Marilla for a dinner, or Dick himself, having changed his mind or
playing a practical joke? In any case Mary felt she ought to
disapprove of him utterly. It was her duty to show him up to Miss
Marilla; and yet how could she do it when she did not know anything
herself?
“Hurry, Mary, and bring the pie,” called Miss Marilla. “We’re waiting.”
Mary put the stove-lid down, and went slowly, thoughtfully back to
the dining-room bearing a pie. She studied the face of the young
soldier intently as she passed him his pie, but he seemed so young
and pleasant and happy she hadn’t the heart to say anything just
yet. She would bide her time. Perhaps somehow it was all
explainable. So she set to asking him questions.
“By the way, Dick, what ever became of Barker?” she requested,
fixing her clear eyes on his face.
“Barker?” said Lyman Gage, puzzled and polite, then, remembering
his rôle, “Oh, yes, Barker!” He laughed. “Great old Barker, wasn’t
he?” He turned in troubled appeal to Miss Marilla.
“Barker certainly was the cutest little guinea-pig I ever saw,” beamed
Miss Marilla, “although at the time I really wasn’t as fond of it as you
were. You would have it around in the kitchen so much.”
There was covert apology in Miss Marilla’s voice for the youthful
character of the young man he was supposed to be.
“I should judge I must have been a good deal of a nuisance in those
days,” hazarded the soldier, feeling that he was treading on
dangerous ground.
“Oh, no!” sighed Miss Marilla, trying to be truthful and at the same
time polite. “Children will be children, you know.”
“All children are not alike.” It was as near to snapping as sweet Mary
Amber ever came. She had memories which time had not dimmed.
“Was it as bad as that?” laughed the young man. “I’m sorry!”
Mary had to laugh. His frankness certainly was disarming. But there
was that telegram! And Mary grew serious again. She did not intend
to have her gentle old friend deceived.
Mary insisted on clearing off the table and washing the dishes, and
the soldier insisted on helping her; so Miss Marilla, much disturbed
that domestic duties should interfere with the evening, put
everything away, and made the task as brief as possible, looking
anxiously at Mary Amber every trip back from the refrigerator and
pantry to see how she was getting on with the strange soldier, and
how the strange soldier was getting on with her. At first she was a
little troubled lest he shouldn’t be the kind of man she would want to
introduce to Mary Amber; but after she had heard him talk and
express such thoroughly wholesome views on politics and national
subjects she almost forgot he was not the real Dick, and her doting
heart could not help wanting Mary Amber to like him. He was, in
fact, the personification of the Dick she had dreamed out for her
own, as different in fact from the real Dick as could have been
imagined, and a great deal better. His frank eyes, his pleasant
manner, his cultured voice, all pleased her; and she couldn’t help
feeling that he was Dick come back as she would have liked him to
be all the time.
“I’d like to have a little music, just a little before Mary has to go
home,” Miss Marilla said wistfully as Mary Amber hung up the dish-
towel with an air that said plainly without words that she felt her
duty toward the stranger was over and she was going to depart at
once.
“Sure!” said the stranger. “You sing, don’t you, Miss Mary?”
There was nothing for it, and Mary resigned herself to another half
hour. They went into the parlor; and Mary sat down at the old
square piano, and touched its asthmatic keys that sounded the least
bit tin-panny even under such skilled fingers as hers.
“What shall I play?” questioned Mary. “‘The long, long trail’?” There
was a bit of sarcasm in her tone. Mary was a real musician, and
hated rag-time.
“No! Never!” said the soldier quickly. “I mean—not that, please;” and
a look of such bitter pain swept over his face that Mary glanced up
surprised, and forgot to be disagreeable for several minutes while
she pondered his expression.
“Excuse me,” he said. “But I loathe it. Give us something else; sing
something real. I’m sure you can.” There was a hidden compliment
in his tone, and Mary was surprised. The soldier had almost
forgotten that he did not belong there. He was acting as he might
have acted in his own social sphere.
Mary struck a few chords tenderly on the piano, and then broke into
the delicious melody of “The Spirit Flower;” and Lyman Gage forgot
that he was playing a part in a strange home with a strange girl,
forgot that he hadn’t a cent in the world, and his girl was gone, and
sat watching her face as she sang. For Mary had a voice like a
thrush in the summer evening, that liquid appeal that always
reminds one of a silver spoon dropped into a glass of water; and
Mary had a face like the spirit flower itself. As she sang she could
not help living, breathing, being the words she spoke.
There was nothing, absolutely nothing, about Mary to remind him of
the girl he had lost; and there was something in her sweet, serious
demeanor as she sang to call to his better nature; a wholesome,
serious sweetness that was in itself a kind of antiseptic against
bitterness and sweeping denunciation. Lyman Gage as he listened
was lifted out of himself and set in a new world where men and
women thought of something besides money and position and social
prestige. He seemed to be standing off apart from himself and
seeing himself from a new angle, an angle in which he was not the
only one that mattered in this world, and in which he got a hint that
his plans might be only hindrances to a larger life for himself and
every one else. Not that he exactly thought these things in so many
words. It was more as if while Mary sang a wind blew freshly from a
place where such thoughts were crowding, and made him seem
smaller in his own conceit than he had thought he was.
“And now sing ‘Laddie,’” pleaded Miss Marilla.
A wave of annoyance swept over Mary Amber’s face. It was plain
she did not wish to sing that song. Nevertheless, she sang it,
forgetting herself and throwing all the pathos and tenderness into
her voice that belonged to the beautiful words. Then she turned
from the piano decidedly, and rose. “I must go home at once,” was
written in every line of her attitude. Miss Marilla rose nervously, and
looked from one of her guests to the other.
“Dick, I wonder if you haven’t learned to sing.”
Her eyes were so pathetic that they stirred the young man to her
service. Besides, there was something so contemptuous in the
attitude of that human spirit flower standing on the wing as it were
in that done-with-him-forever attitude that spurred him into a faint
desire to show her what he could do.
“Why, sure!” he answered lazily, and with a stride transferred himself
to the piano-stool and struck a deep, strong chord or two. Suddenly
there poured forth a wondrous barytone such as was seldom heard
in Purling Brook, and indeed is not common anywhere. He had a
feeling that he was paying for his wonderful dinner, and must do his
best. The first song that had come to his mind was a big, blustery
French patriotic song; and the very spirit of the march was in its
cadence. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Mary Amber still
poised, but waiting in her astonishment. He felt that he had already
scored a point. When he came to the grand climax, she cried out
with pleasure and clapped her hands. Miss Marilla had sunk into the
mahogany rocker, but was sitting on the edge, alert to prolong this
gala evening; and two bright spots of colorful delight shone on her
faded cheeks.
He did not wait for them to ask him for another; he dashed into a
minor key, and began to sing a wild, sweet, sobbing song of love
and loss till Mary, entranced, softly slipped into a chair, and sat
breathless with clasped hands and shining eyes. It was such an
artistic, perfect thing, that song, that she forgot everything else
while it was going on.
When the last sob died away, and the little parlor was silent with
deep feeling, he whirled about on the piano-stool, and rose briskly.
“Now I’ve done my part, am I to be allowed to see the lady home?”
He looked at Miss Marilla instead of Mary for permission, and she
smiled, half frightened.
“It isn’t necessary at all,” spoke Mary crisply, rising and going for a
wrap. “It’s only a step.”
“Oh, I think so, surely!” answered Miss Marilla as if a great point of
etiquette had been decided. She gave him a look of perfect trust.
“It’s only across the garden and through the hedge, you know,” she
said in a low tone; “but I think she would appreciate it.”
“Certainly,” he said, and turned with perfect courtesy as Mary looked
in at the door and called, “Good night.”
He did not make a fuss about attending her. He simply was there
close beside her as she sped through the dark without a word to
him.
“It’s been very pleasant to meet you,” he said as she turned with a
motion of dismissal at her own steps, “again,” he added lamely. “I—
I’ve enjoyed the evening more than you can understand. I enjoyed
your singing.”
“Oh! My singing!” flung back Mary. “Why, I was like a sparrow beside
a nightingale. It wasn’t quite fair of you to let me sing first without
knowing you had a voice. It’s strange. You know you never used to
sing.”
It seemed to him her glance went deep as she looked at him
through the shadows of the garden. He thought about it as he crept
back through the hedge, shivering now, for the night was keen and
his uniform was thin. Well, what did it matter what she thought? He
would soon be far away from her and never likely to see her again.
Yet he was glad he had scored a point, one point against Girl in the
concrete.
Now he must go in and bid his hostess good-by, and then away to—
where?
 CHAPTER IV
As Lyman Gage went up the steps to Miss Marilla’s front porch a sick
thrill of cold and weariness passed over his big frame. Every joint
and muscle seemed to cry out in protest, and his very vitals seemed
sore and racked. The bit of bright evening was over, and he was
facing his own gray life again with a future that was void and empty.
But the door was not shut. Miss Marilla was hovering anxiously
inside with the air of just having retreated from the porch. She gave
a little relieved gasp as he entered.
“Oh, I was afraid you wouldn’t come back,” she said eagerly. “And I
did so want to thank you and tell you how we—how I—yes, I mean
we, for I know she loved that singing—how very much we have
enjoyed it. I shall always thank God that He sent you along just
then.”
“Well, I certainly have cause to thank you for that wonderful dinner,”
he said earnestly, as he might have spoken to a dear relation, “and
for all this”—he waved his big hand toward the bright room—“this
pleasantness. It was like coming home, and I haven’t any home to
come to now.”
“Oh! Haven’t you?” said Miss Marilla caressingly. “Oh, haven’t you?”
she said again wistfully. “I wonder why I can’t keep you a little while,
then. You seem just like my own nephew—as I had hoped he would
be—I haven’t seen him in a long time. Where were you going when I
stopped you?”
The young man lifted heavy eyes that were bloodshot and sore to
the turning, and tried to smile. To save his life he couldn’t lie blithely
when it seemed so good to be in that warm room.
“Why—I was—I don’t know—I guess I just wasn’t going anywhere.
To tell you the truth, I was all in, and down on my luck, and as blue
as indigo when you met me. I was just tramping anywhere to get
away from it.”
“You poor boy!” said Miss Marilla, putting out her fine little blue-
veined hands and caressing the old khaki sleeve. “Well, then you’re
just going to stay with me and get rested. There’s no reason in the
world why you shouldn’t.”
“No, indeed!” said Lyman Gage, drawing himself up bravely, “I
couldn’t think of it. It wouldn’t be right. But I certainly thank you
with all my heart for what you have done for me to-night. I really
must go at once.”
“But where?” she asked pathetically, as if he belonged to her, sliding
her hands detainingly down to his big rough ones.
“Oh, anywhere, it doesn’t matter!” he said, holding her delicate little
old hand in his with a look of sacred respect as if a nice old angel
had offered to hold hands with him. “I’m a soldier, you know; and a
few storms more or less won’t matter. I’m used to it. Good night.”
He clasped her hands a moment, and was about to turn away; but
she held his fingers eagerly.
“You shall not go that way!” she declared. “Out into the cold without
any overcoat, and no home to go to! Your hands are hot, too. I
believe you have a fever. You’re going to stay here to-night and have
a good sleep and a warm breakfast; and then, if you must go, all
right. My spare bed is all made up, and there’s a fire in the Franklin
heater. The room’s as warm as toast, and Mary put a big bouquet of
chrysanthemums up there. If you don’t sleep there, it will all be
wasted. You must stay.”
“No, it wouldn’t be right.” He shook his head again, and smiled
wistfully. “What would people say?”
“Say! Why, they’ve got it in the paper that you’re to be here—at
least, that Dick’s to be here. They’ll think you’re my nephew and
think nothing else about it. Besides, I guess I have a right to have
company if I like.”
“If there was any way I could pay you,” said the young man. “But I
haven’t a cent to my name, and no telling how long before I will
have anything. I really couldn’t accept any such hospitality.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” said Miss Marilla cheerily. “You can pay me if
you like, sometime when you get plenty; or perhaps you’ll take me
in when I’m having a hard time. Anyhow, you’re going to stay. I
won’t take no for an answer. I’ve been disappointed and
disappointed about Dick’s coming, and me having no one to show
for all the years of the war, just making sweaters for the world, it
seemed like, with no one belonging to me; and now I’ve got a
soldier, and I’m going to keep him at least for one night. Nobody’s to
know but you’re my own nephew, and I haven’t got to go around
the town, have I, telling that Dick didn’t care enough for his old
country aunt to come out and take dinner with her? It’s nothing to
them, is it, if they think he came and stayed overnight too? Or even
a few days. Nobody’ll be any the wiser, and I’ll take a lot more
comfort.”
“I’d like to accommodate you,” faltered the soldier; “but you know I
really ought—” Suddenly the big fellow was seized with a fit of
sneezing, and the sick sore thrills danced all down his back, and
slapped him in the face, and pricked him in the throat, and banged
against his head. He dropped weakly down in a chair, and got out
the discouragedest-looking handkerchief that ever a soldier carried.
It looked as if it might have washed the decks on the way over, or
wiped off shoes, as doubtless it had; and it left a dull streak of olive-
drab dust on his cheek and chin when he had finished polishing off
the last sneeze and lifted his suffering eyes to his hostess.
“You’re sick!” declared Miss Marilla with a kind of satisfaction, as if
now she had got something she could really take hold of. “I’ve
thought it all the evening. I first laid it to the wind in your face, for I
knew you weren’t the drinking kind; and then I thought maybe you’d
had to be up all night last night or something; lack of sleep makes
eyes look that way; but I believe you’ve got the grippe, and I’m
going to put you to bed and give you some homeopathic medicine.
Come, tell me the truth. Aren’t you chilly?”
With a half-sheepish smile the soldier admitted that he was, and a
big involuntary shudder ran over his tall frame with the admission.
“Well, it’s high time we got to work. There’s plenty of hot water; and
you go up to the bathroom, and take a hot bath. I’ll put a hot-water
bag in the bed, and get it good and warm; and I’ve got a long,
warm flannel nightgown I guess you can get on. It was made for
grandmother, and she was a big woman. Come, we’ll go right up-
stairs. I can come down and shut up the house while you’re taking
your bath.”
The soldier protested, but Miss Marilla swept all before her. She
locked the front door resolutely, and put the chain on. She turned
out the parlor light, and shoved the young man before her to the
stairs.
“But I oughtn’t to,” he protested again with one foot on the first
step. “I’m an utter stranger.”
“Well, what’s that?” said Miss Marilla crisply. “‘I was a stranger, and
ye took me in.’ When it comes to that, we’re all strangers. Come,
hurry up; you ought to be in bed. You’ll feel like a new man when I
get you tucked up.”
“You’re awfully good,” he murmured, stumbling up the stairs, with a
sick realization that he was giving way to the little imps of chills and
thrills that were dancing over him, that he was all in, and in a few
minutes more he would be a contemptible coward, letting a lone, old
woman fuss over him this way.
Miss Marilla turned up the light, and threw back the covers of the
spare bed, sending a whiff of lavender through the room. The
Franklin heater glowed cheerfully, and the place was warm as toast.
There was something sweet and homelike in the old-fashioned room
with its queer, ancient framed photographs of people long gone, and
its plain but fine old mahogany. The soldier raised his bloodshot
eyes, and looked about with a thankful wish that he felt well enough
to appreciate it all.
Miss Marilla had pulled open a drawer, and produced a long, fine
flannel garment of nondescript fashion; and from a closet she drew
forth a long pink bathrobe and a pair of felt slippers.
“There! I guess you can get those on.”
She bustled into the bathroom, turned on the hot water, and heaped
big white bath-towels and sweet-scented soap upon him. In a kind
of daze of thankfulness he stumbled into the bathroom, and began
his bath. He hadn’t had a bath like that in—was it two years?
Somehow the hot water held down the nasty little sick thrills, and
cut out the chills for the time. It was wonderful to feel clean and
warm, and smell the freshness of the towels and soap. He climbed
into the big nightgown which also smelled of lavender, and came
forth presently with the felt slippers on the front of his feet, and the
pink bathrobe trailing around his shoulders. There was a meek,
conquered expression on his face; and he crept gratefully into the
warm bed according to directions, and snuggled down with that sick,
sore thrill of thankfulness that everybody who has ever had grippe
knows.
Miss Marilla bustled up from down-stairs with a second hot-water
bag in one hand and a thermometer in the other.
“I’m going to take your temperature,” she said briskly, and stuck the
thermometer into his unresisting mouth. Somehow it was
wonderfully sweet to be fussed over this way, almost like having a
mother. He hadn’t had such care since he was a little fellow in the
hospital at prep school.
“I thought so!” said Miss Marilla, casting a practised eye at the
thermometer a moment later. “You’ve got quite a fever; and you’ve
got to lie right still, and do as I say, or you’ll have a time of it. I hate
to think what would have happened to you if I’d been weak enough
to let you go off into the cold without any overcoat to-night.”
“Oh, I’d have walked it off likely,” faintly spoke the old Adam in the
sleepy, sick soldier; but he knew as he spoke that he was lying, and
he knew Miss Marilla knew it also. He would have laughed if it hadn’t
been too much trouble. It was wonderful to be in a bed like this, and
be warm, and that ache in his back against the hot-water bag! It
almost made his head stop aching.
In almost no time at all he was asleep. He never realized when Miss
Marilla brought a glass, and fed him medicine. He opened his mouth
obediently when she told him, and went right on sleeping.
“Bless his heart!” she said. “He must have been all worn out;” and
she turned the light low, and gathering up his chairful of clothes,
slipped away to the bathroom, where presently they were all, except
the shoes, soaking in strong, hot soap-suds, and Miss Marilla had
gone down-stairs to stir up the fire and put on irons. But she took
the precaution to close all the blinds on the Amber side of the
house, and pull down the shades. Mary had no need ever to find out
what she was doing.
The night wore on, and Miss Marilla wrought with happy heart and
willing hands. She was doing something for somebody who really
needed it, and who for the time being had no one else to do for him.
He was hers exclusively to be served this night. It was years since
she had had anybody of her own to care for, and she luxuriated in
the service.
Every hour she slipped up to feel his forehead, listen to his
breathing, and give him his medicine, and then slipped down to the
kitchen again to her ironing. Garment by garment the soldier’s
meagre outfit came from the steaming suds, was conveyed to the
kitchen, where it hung on an improvised line over the range, and got
itself dry enough to be ironed and patched. It was a work of love,
and therefore it was done perfectly. When morning dawned the
soldier’s outfit, thoroughly renovated and pressed almost beyond
recognition, lay on a chair by the spare-room window, and Miss
Marilla in her dark-blue serge morning-dress lay tidily down on the
outside of her bed to take “forty winks.” But even then she could
hardly get to sleep, she was so excited thinking about her guest and
wondering whether he would feel better when he awoke or whether
she ought to send for a doctor.
A hoarse cough roused her an hour later, and she went with speed
to her patient, and found him tossing and battling in his sleep with
some imaginary foe.
“I don’t owe you a cent any longer!” he declared fiercely. “I’ve paid it
all, even to the interest while I was in France; and there’s no reason
why I shouldn’t tell you just what I think of you. You can go to
thunder with your kind offers. I’m off you for life!” And then the big
fellow turned with a groan of anguish, and buried his face in his
pillow.
Miss Marilla paused in horror, thinking she had intruded upon some
secret meditation; but, as she waited on tiptoe and breathless in the
hall, she heard the steady hoarse breathing keep on, and knew that
he was still asleep. He did not rouse, more than to open bloodshot,
unseeing eyes and close them again when she loudly stirred his
medicine in the glass and held the spoon to his lips. As before, he
obediently opened his mouth and swallowed, and went on sleeping.
She stood a moment anxiously watching him. She did not know just
what she ought to do. Perhaps he was going to have pneumonia!
Perhaps she ought to send for the doctor, and yet there were
complications about that. She would be obliged to explain a lot—or
else lie to the neighborhood! And he might not like it for her to call a
doctor while he was asleep. If she only had some one with whom to
advise! On ordinary questions she always consulted Mary Amber, but
by the very nature of the case Mary Amber was out of this. Besides,
in half an hour Mary Amber very discreetly put herself beyond a
question outside of any touch with Miss Marilla’s visitor by taking
herself off in her little runabout for a short visit to a college friend
over in the next county. It was plain that Mary Amber did not care to
subject herself to further contact with the young soldier. He might be
Dick or he might not be Dick. It was none of her business while she
was visiting Jeannette Clark; so she went away quite hurriedly. Miss
Marilla heard the purr of the engine as the little brown car started
down the hedged driveway, and watched the flight with a sense of
satisfaction. She had an intuition that Mary Amber was not in favor
of her soldier, and she had a guilty sense of hiding the truth from
her dear young friend that made her breathe more freely as she
watched Mary Amber’s flight. Moreover, it was with a certain self-
reproachful relief that she noted the little brown suitcase that lay at
Mary Amber’s feet as she slid past Miss Marilla’s house without
looking up. Mary Amber was going away for the day at least,
probably overnight; and by that time the question of the soldier
would be settled one way or the other without Mary Amber’s having
to worry about it.
Miss Marilla ordered a piece of beef, and brewed a cup of the most
delicious beef-tea, which she took up-stairs. She managed to get her
soldier awake enough to swallow it; but it was plain that he did not
in the least realize where he was, and seemed well content to close
his eyes and drowse away once more. Miss Marilla was deeply
troubled. Some pricks from the old, time-worn adage beginning, “O
what a tangled web we weave,” began to stab her conscience. If
only she had not allowed those paragraphs to go into the county
paper! No, that was not the real trouble at all. If only she had not
dragged in another soldier, and made Mary Amber believe he was
her nephew! Such an old fool! Just because she couldn’t bear the
mortification of having people know her nephew hadn’t cared
enough for her to come and see her when he was close at hand! But
she was well punished. Here she had a strange sick man on her
hands, and no end of responsibility! Oh, if only she hadn’t asked him
in!
Yet, as she stood watching the quick little throb in his neck above
the old flannel nightgown, and the long, curly sweep of the dark
lashes on his hot cheek as he slept, her heart cried out against that
wish. No, a thousand times no. If she had not asked him in, he
might have been in some hospital by this time, cared for by
strangers; and she would have been alone, with empty hands,
getting her own solitary dinner, or sewing on the aprons for the
orphanage, with nothing in the world to do that really mattered for
anybody. Somehow her heart went out to this stranger boy with a
great yearning, and he had come to mean her own—or what her
own ought to have been to her. She wouldn’t have him otherwhere
for anything. She wanted him right where he was for her to care for,
something at last that needed her, something she could love and
tend, even if it were only for a few days.
And she was sure she could care for him. She knew a lot about
sickness. People sent for her to help them out, and her wonderful
nursing had often saved a life where the doctor’s remedies had
failed. She felt sure this was only a severe case of grippe that had
taken fierce hold on the system. Thorough rest, careful nursing,
nourishing broth, and some of her homeopathic remedies would
work the charm. She would try it a little longer and see. If his
temperature wasn’t higher than the last time, it would be perfectly
safe to get along without a doctor.
She put the thermometer between his relaxed lips, and held them
firmly round it until she was sure it had been there long enough.
Then she carried it softly over to the front window, and studied it.
No, it had not risen; in fact, it might be a fifth of a degree lower.
Well, she would venture it a little while longer.
For two days Miss Marilla cared for her strange soldier as only a born
nurse like herself could care, and on the third morning he rewarded
her by opening his eyes and looking about; then, meeting her own
anxious gaze, he gave her a weak smile.
“I’ve been sick!” he said as if stating an astonishing fact to himself.
“I must have given you a lot of trouble.”
“Not a bit of it, you dear child,” said Miss Marilla, and then stooped
and brushed his forehead with her lips in a motherly kiss. “I’m so
glad you’re better!”
She passed her hand like soft old fallen rose-leaves over his
forehead, and it was moist. She felt of his hands, and they were
moist too. She took his temperature, and it had gone down almost
to normal. Her eyes were shining with more than professional joy
and relief. He had become to her in these hours of nursing and
anxiety as her own child.
But at the kiss the boy’s eyelashes had swept down upon his cheek;
and, when she looked up from reading the thermometer, she saw a
tear glisten unwillingly beneath the lashes.
The next two days were a time of untold joy to Miss Marilla while
she petted and nursed her soldier boy back to some degree of his
normal strength. She treated him just as if he were a little child who
had dropped from the skies to her loving ministrations. She bathed
his face, and puffed up his pillows, and took his temperature, and
dosed him, and fed him, and read him to sleep—and Miss Marilla
could read well, too; she was always asked to read the chapter at
the Fortnightly Club whenever the regular reader whose turn it was
failed. And while he was asleep she cooked dainty, appetizing little
dishes for him. They had a wonderful time together, and he enjoyed
it as much as she did. The fact was he was too weak to object, for
the little red devils that get into the blood and kick up the fight
commonly entitled grippe had done a thorough work with him; and
he was, as he put it, “all in and then some.”
He seemed to have gone back to the days of his childhood since the
fever began to abate, and he lay in a sweet daze of comfort and
rest. His troubles and perplexities and loneliness had dropped away
from him, and he felt no desire to think of them. He was having the
time of his life.
Then suddenly, wholly unannounced and not altogether desired at
the present stage of the game, Mary Amber arrived on the scene.
 CHAPTER V
Mary was radiant as the sunny morning in a little red tam, and her
cheeks as red as her hat from the drive across country. She
appeared at the kitchen door quite in her accustomed way just as
Miss Marilla was lifting the dainty tray to carry her boy’s breakfast
up-stairs, and she almost dropped it in her dismay.
“I’ve had the grandest time!” breezed Mary gayly. “You don’t know
how beautiful the country is, all wonderful bronze and brown with a
purple haze, and a frost like silver lace this morning when I started.
You’ve simply got to put on your wraps and come with me for a little
while. I know a place where the shadows melt slowly, and the frost
will not be gone yet. Come quick! I want you to see it before it’s too
late. You’re not just eating your breakfast, Auntie Rill! And on a tray,
too! Are you sick?”
Miss Marilla glanced guiltily down at the tray, too transparent even to
evade the question.
“No, why—I—he—my neph——” then she stopped in hopeless
confusion, remembering her resolve not to tell a lie about the matter,
whatever came.
Mary Amber stood up and looked at her, her keen young eyes
searching and finding the truth.
“You don’t mean to tell me that man is here yet? And you waiting on
him!”
There were both sorrow and scorn in the fine young voice.
In the upper hall the sick soldier in a bathrobe was hanging over the
banisters in a panic, wishing some kind fairy would arrive and waft
him away on a breath. All his perfidy in getting sick on a strange
gentlewoman’s hands and lying lazily in bed, letting her wait on him,
was shown up in Mary Amber’s voice. It found its echo in his own
strong soul. He had known all along that he had no business there,
that he ought to have gone out on the road to die rather than betray
the sweet hospitality of Miss Marilla by allowing himself to be a
selfish, lazy slob—that was what he called himself as he hung over
the banisters.
“Mary! Why, he has been very sick!”
“Sick?” There was a covert sneer in Mary Amber’s incredulous young
voice; and then the conversation was suddenly blanketed by the
closing of the hall door, and the sick soldier padded disconsolately
back to bed, weak and dizzy, but determined. This was as good a
time as any. He ought to have gone before!
He trailed across the room in the big flannel nightgown that hung
out from him with the outlines of a fat old auntie and dragged down
from one bronzed shoulder rakishly. His hair was sticking up wildly,
and he felt of his chin fiercely, and realized that he was wearing a
growth of several days.
In a neat pile on a chair he found his few clean garments, and
struggled into them. His carefully ironed uniform hung in the closet;
and he braced himself, and struggled into the trousers. It seemed a
tremendous effort. He longed to drop back on the pillows, but
wouldn’t. He sat with his head in his hands, his elbows on his knees,
trying to get courage to totter to the bathroom and subdue his hair
and beard, when he heard Miss Marilla coming hastily up the stairs,
the little coffee-pot sending on a delicious odor, and the glass of milk
tinkling against the silver spoons as she came.
He had managed his leggings by this time, and looked up with an
attempt at a smile, trying to pass it off in a jocular way.
“I thought it was high time I was getting about,” he said, and broke
down coughing.
Miss Marilla paused in distress, and looked at his hollow eyes.
Everything seemed to be going wrong this morning. Oh, why hadn’t
Mary Amber stayed away just one day longer? But of course he had
not heard her.
“Oh, you’re not fit to be up yet!” she exclaimed. “Do lie down and
rest till you’ve had your breakfast.”
“I can’t be a baby having you wait on me any longer,” he said. “I’m
ashamed of myself. I ought not to have stayed here at all!” His tone
was savage, and he reached for his coat, and jammed it on with a
determined air in spite of his weakness and the sore shivers that
crept shakily up his back. “I’m perfectly all right, and you’ve been
wonderful; but it’s time I was moving on.”
He pushed past her hurriedly to the bathroom, feeling that he must
get out of her sight before his head began to swim. The water on his
face would steady him. He dashed it on, and shivered sickly, longing
to plunge back to bed, yet keeping on with his ablutions.
Miss Marilla put down her tray, and stood with tears in her eyes,
waiting for him to return, trying to think what she could say to
persuade him back to bed again.
Her anxious expression softened him when he came back, and he
agreed to eat his breakfast before he went anywhere, and sank
gratefully into the big chair in front of the Franklin heater, where she
had laid out his breakfast on a little table. She had lined the chair
with a big comfortable, which she drew unobtrusively about his
shoulders now, slipping a cushion under his feet, and quietly
coddling him into comfort again. He looked at her gratefully, and,
setting down his coffee-cup, reached out and patted her hair as she
rose from tucking up his feet.
“You’re just like a mother to me!” he choked, trying to keep back the
emotion from his voice. “It’s been great! I can’t tell you!”
“You’ve been just like a dear son,” she beamed, touching the dark
hair over his forehead shyly. “It’s like getting my own back again to
have you come for this little while, and to be able to do for you. You
see it wasn’t as if I really had anybody. Dick never cared for me. I
used to hope he would when he grew up. I used to think of him over
there in danger, and pray for him, and love him, and send him
sweaters; but now I know it was really you I thought of and prayed
for. Dick never cared.”
He looked at her tenderly, and pressed her hand gratefully.
“You’re wonderful!” he said. “I shall never forget it.”
That little precious time while he was eating his breakfast made it all
the harder for what he meant to do. He saw that he could never
hope to do it openly, either; for she would fling herself in his path to
prevent him from going out until he was well; so he let her tuck him
up carefully on the spread-up bed, and pull down the shades for him
to take a nap after the exertion of getting dressed; and he caught
her hand, and kissed it fervently as she was leaving him; and
cherished her murmured “Dear child!” and the pressure of her old-
rose-leaf fingers in parting. Then he closed his eyes, and let her slip
away to the kitchen where he knew she would be some time
preparing something delicious for his dinner.
When she was safely out of hearing, rattling away at the kitchen
stove, he threw back the covers vigorously, set his grim
determination against the swimming head, stalked over to the little
desk, and wrote a note on the fine note-paper he found there.
“Dear, wonderful little mother,” he wrote, “I can’t stay here any
longer. It isn’t right. But I’ll be back some day to thank you if
everything goes all right. Sincerely, Your Boy.”
He tiptoed over, and laid it on the pillow; then he took his old
trench-cap, which had been nicely pressed and was hanging on the
corner of the looking-glass, and stealthily slid out of the pleasant,
warm room, down the carpeted stairs, and out the front door into
the crisp, cold morning. The chill air met him with a challenge as he
closed the front door, and dared him not to cough; but with an effort
he held his breath, and crept down the front walk to the road,
holding in control as well the long, violent shivers that seized him in
their grasp. The sun met him, and blinded his sensitive eyes; and
the wind with a tang of winter jeered at his thin uniform, and
trickled up his sleeves and down his collar, penetrating every seam.
But he stuffed his hands into his pockets, and strode grimly ahead
on the way he had been going when Miss Marilla met him, passing
the tall hedge where Mary Amber lived, and trying to hold his head
high. He hoped Mary Amber saw him going away!
For perhaps half a mile past Mary Amber’s house his courage and his
pride held him, for he was a soldier, who had slept in a muck-pile
under the rain, and held his nerve under fire, and gone on foot ten
miles to the hospital after he was wounded. What was a little grippe
and a walk in the cold to the neighboring village? He wished he
knew how far it was, but he had to go, for it would never do to send
the telegram he must send from the town where Miss Marilla lived.
The second half-mile he lagged and shivered, with not energy
enough to keep up a circulation; the third half mile and the fourth
were painful, and the fifth was completed in a sick daze of
weakness; for the cold, though stimulating at first, had been getting
in its work through his uniform, and he felt chilled to the very soul of
him. His teeth were chattering, and he was blue around the lips
when he staggered into the telegraph-office of Little Silverton. His
fingers were almost too stiff to write, and his thoughts seemed to
have congealed also, though he had been repeating the message all
the way, word for word, with a vague feeling that he might forget it
forever if he did not keep it going.
“Will you send that collect?” he asked the operator when he had
finished writing.
The girl took the blank, and read it carefully.

“Arthur J. Watkins, Esq.,