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 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 role 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 inclined 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 falsehearted 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 YOU WITH LOVINGKINDNESS 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 hardness 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 role 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 marveled, trying continually to trace in his face the lines of that 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 tablecloth. 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 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, carrying 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, whatever became of Barker?” she requested, fixing her clear eyes on his face.
“Barker?” said Lyman Gage, puzzled and polite, then, remembering his role, “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?” The young man laughed. “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 dishtowel 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 no alternative, 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 tinny,
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 classical musician and hated ragtime.
“No! Never!” said the soldier quickly. “I mean—not that, please.” 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 everyone 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 out a wondrous baritone, 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 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-bye, and then away to—where?
Chapter 4
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 enjoyed it. I will 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 L
yman 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 tonight. 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 tonight 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 all 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.”