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 absolutions.
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. He 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 comforter, 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 in 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-out 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 roseleaf 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 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 notepaper 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 someday 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 mirror, 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, held his nerve under fire, and gone on foot ten miles to the hospital after he was wounded. What was a little flu 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 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 form and read it carefully.
ARTHUR J. WATKINS, ESQ.,
LASALLE STREET, CHICAGO, ILL.
PLEASE NEGOTIATE A LOAN OF FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS FOR ME, USING OLD HOUSE AS COLLATERAL. WIRE MONEY IMMEDIATELY LITTLE SILVERTON. ENTIRELY OUT OF FUNDS. HAVE BEEN SICK.
LYMAN GAGE
The girl read it through again and then eyed him cautiously.
“What’s your address?” she asked, giving a slow, speculative chew of her gum.
“I’ll wait here,” said the big blue soldier, sinking into a rush-bottomed chair by the desk.
“It might be some wait,” said the girl dryly, giving him another curious once-over.
“I’ll wait!” he repeated fiercely, and dropped his aching head into his hands.
The little instrument clicked away vigorously. In his fevered brain, he fancied it writing on a typewriter at the other end of the line and felt a curious impatience for his lawyer to read it and reply. How he wished it would hurry!
The morning droned on, and the telegraph instrument chattered breezily, with the monotony of a sunny child that knows no larger world and is happy. Sometimes, it seemed to Gage as if every click pierced his head and he was going crazy. The shivers were keeping in time, running up and down his back and chilling his very heart. The room was cold, cold, cold! How did that fool of a girl stand it in a pink, transparent blouse, showing her fat arms huskily? He shivered. Oh, for one of Miss Marilla’s nice, thick blankets and a hot-water bag. Oh for the soft, warm bed, the quiet room, and Miss Marilla keeping guard! But he was a man—and a soldier. And every now and then would come Mary Amber’s keen accusing voice, “Is that man here yet? And you are waiting on him!” It was that, that kept him up when he might have given way. He must show her he was a man, after all. “That man!” What had she meant? Did she, then, suspect him of being a fraud and not the real nephew? Well—shiver, shiver—what did he care? Let Mary Amber go to thunder! Or, if she didn’t want to go, he would go to thunder himself. He felt himself there already.
Two hours went by. Now and then, someone came in with a message and went out again. The girl behind the desk got out a pink sweater she was knitting and chewed gum in time to her needles. Sometimes she eyed her companion curiously, but he did not stir nor look up. If there hadn’t been prohibition, she might have thought him drunk. She began to think about his message and weave a crude little romance around him. She wondered whether he had been wounded. If he had given he
r half a chance, she would have asked him questions, but he sat there with his head in his hands like a stone image and never seemed to know she was in the room. After a while, it got on her nerves; and she took up her telephone and carried on a gallery conversation with a fellow laborer somewhere up the line, giggling a good deal and telling about a movie she went to the night before. She used rare slang, with a furtive glance at the soldier for developments, but he did not stir. Finally, she remarked loudly that it was getting noontime and “so longed” her friend, clicking the receiver into place.
“I gotta go to lunch now,” she remarked in an impersonal tone. “I have an hour off. This office is closed at noontime.”
He did not seem to hear her, so she repeated it, and Gage looked up with bloodshot, heavy eyes.
“What becomes of the message if it comes while you’re away?” he asked feverishly.
“Oh, it’ll be repeated,” she replied easily. “You c’n cumb back bime-by ’bout two o’clock er later, ‘n’ mebbe it’ll be here. I gotta lock up now.”
Lyman Gage dragged himself to his feet and looked dazedly about him; then he staggered out on the street.
The sun hit him in the eyes again in a way that made him sick, and the wind caught at his sleeves and ran down his collar gleefully. The girl shut the door with a click and turned the key, eyeing him doubtfully. He seemed to her very stupid for a soldier. If he had given her half a chance, she would have been friendly to him. She watched him drag down the street with an amused contempt, then turned to her belated lunch.
Lyman Gage walked on down the road a little way, and then began to feel as if he couldn’t stand the cold a second longer, though he knew he must. His heart was behaving strangely, seeming to be absent from his body for whole seconds at a time and then returning with leaps and bounds that almost suffocated him. He paused and looked around for a place to sit down, and finding none, dropped down on the frozen ground at the roadside. It occurred to him that he ought to go back now, while he was able, for he was fast getting where, from sheer weakness, he couldn’t walk.
He rested a moment and then stumbled up and back toward Little Silverton. Automobiles passed him, and he remembered thinking if he weren’t so sick and strange in his head, he would try to stand in the road and stop one and get them to carry him somewhere. He had often done that in France or even in this country during the war. But just now it seemed that he couldn’t do that, either. He had set out to prove to Mary Amber that he was a man and a soldier, and holding up automobiles wouldn’t be compatible with that idea. Then he realized that all this was crazy thinking, that Mary Amber had gone to thunder, and so had he, and it didn’t matter, anyway. All that mattered was for him to get that money and go back and pay Miss Marilla for taking care of him. And then for him to take the next train back to the city and get to a hospital. If he could only hold out long enough for that. But things were fast getting away from him. His head was hot and in a whirl, and his feet were so cold he thought they must be dead.
Without realizing it, he walked by the telegraph office and on down the road toward Purling Brook again.
The telegraph girl watched him from the window of the tiny bakery where she ate her lunch.
“There goes that poor boob now!” she said, with her mouthful of pie a la mode. “He gets my goat! I hope he doesn’t come back. He’ll never get no answer to that telegram he sent. People ain’t goin’ ‘round pickin’ up five hundred dollarses to send to broke soldiers these days. They got ‘um all in Liberty Bonds. Say, Jess, gimme one more o’ them chocolate éclairs, won’t you? I gotta get back.”
About that time, Lyman Gage had found a log by the wayside and sunk down permanently upon it. He had no more breath to carry him on, and no more ambition. If Mary Amber had gone to thunder, why should he care whether he got an answer to his telegram or not? She was only another girl, anyway. Girl. His enemy! And he sank into a blue stupor, with his elbows on his cold, cold knees and his face hidden in his hands. He had forgotten the shivers now. They had taken possession of him and made him one with them. It might be, after all, that he was too hot, and not too cold. And there was a strange, burning pain in his chest when he tried to breathe, so he wouldn’t breathe. What was the use?
Chapter 6
Miss Marilla tiptoed softly up the hall and listened at the door of the spare bedroom. It was time her soldier-boy woke up and had some dinner. She had a beautiful little treat for him today, chicken broth with rice, and some little bits of tender breast meat on toast, with a quivering spoonful of currant jelly.
It was very still in the spare room, so still that a falling coal from the grate of the Franklin heater made a hollow sound when it fell into the pan below. If the boy was asleep, she could usually tell by his regular breathing. But, though she listened with a keen ear, she could not hear it today. Perhaps he was awake, sitting up. She pushed the door open and looked in. Why! The bed was empty. She glanced around the room, and it was empty too.
She passed her hand across her eyes as if they had deceived her and went over to look at the bed. Surely he must be there somewhere. And then she saw the note.
Dear wonderful little mother …
Her eyes were too blurred with quick tears and apprehension to read any further. Mother! He had called her that. She could never feel quite alone in the world again. But where was he? She took the corner of her white apron and wiped the tears away vigorously to finish the note. Then, without pausing to think, and even in the midst of her great grasp of apprehension, she turned swiftly and went downstairs, out the front door, across the frozen lawn, and through the hedge to Mary Amber’s house.
“Mary! Mary Amber!” she called as she panted up the steps, the note grasped tightly in her trembling hand. She hoped, oh, she hoped Mary Amber’s mother would not come to the door and ask questions. Mary’s mother was so sensible, and Miss Marilla always felt as if Mrs. Amber disapproved of her, just a little, whenever she was doing anything for anybody. Not that Mary Amber’s mother was not kind herself to people, but she was always so very sensible in her kindness and did things in the regular way and wasn’t impulsive like Miss Marilla.
But Mary Amber herself came to the door, with pleasant forgetfulness of her old friend’s recent coolness, and tried to draw her into the hall. This Miss Marilla firmly declined, however. She threw her apron over her head and shoulders as a concession to Mary’s fears for her health, and broke out, “Oh, don’t talk about me, Mary. Talk about him. He’s gone! I thought he was asleep, and I went up to see if he was ready for his dinner, and he’s gone! And he’s sick, Mary. He’s not able to stand up. Why, he’s had a fever. It was a hundred and three for two days and only got down to below normal this morning for the first time. He isn’t fit to be out, either, and that little thin uniform with no overcoat!”
The tears were streaming down Miss Marilla’s sweet Dresden china face, and Mary Amber’s heart was touched in spite of herself.
She came and put her arm around Miss Marilla’s shoulder and drew her down the steps and over to her own home, closing the door carefully first, so her mother needn’t be troubled about it. Mary Amber always had tact when she wanted to use it.
“Where was he going, dear?” she asked sympathetically, with a view to making out a good case for the soldier without Miss Marilla’s bothering further about him.
“I—do–don’t know,” sobbed Miss Marilla. “He just thought he ought not to stay and bother me. Here! See his note.”
“Well, I’m glad he had some sense,” said Mary Amber with satisfaction. “He was perfectly right about not staying to bother you.” She took the little crumpled note and smoothed it out.
“Oh my dear, you don’t understand”—sobbed Miss Marilla. “He’s been such a good, dear boy, and so ashamed he had troubled me. And really, Mary, he’ll not be able to stand it. Why, you ought to see how little clothes he had. So thin, and cotton underwear. I washed them and mended them, but he ought to have had an overcoat.”
“Oh well, he’ll go to the city and get something warm, and go to a hospital if he falls sick,” said Mary Amber comfortably. “I wouldn’t worry about him. He’s a soldier. He’s stood lots worse things than a little cold. He’ll look out for himself.”
“Don’t!” said Miss Marilla fiercely. “Don’t say that, Mary. You don’t understand. He is sick, and he’s all the soldier-boy I’ve got. And I’ve got to go after him. He can’t be gone very far, and he really isn’t able to walk. He’s weak. I just can’t stand it to have him go this way.”
Mary Amber looked at her with a curious light in her eyes.
“And yet, Auntie Rill, you know it was fine of him to do it,” she said, with a dancing dimple in the corner of her mouth. “Well, I see what you want. And, much as I hate to, I’ll take my car and scour the country for him. What time did you say he left?”
“Oh Mary Amber.” Miss Marilla smiled through her tears. “You’re a good girl. I knew you’d help me. I’m sure you can find him if you try. He can’t have been gone over an hour, not much, for I’ve only fixed the chicken and put my bread in the pans since I left him.”
“I suppose he went back to the village, but there hasn’t been any train since ten, and you say he was still there at ten. He’s likely waiting at the station for the twelve o’clock. I’ll speed up and get there before it comes. I have fifteen minutes. I”—glancing at her wristwatch—“I guess I can make it.”
“I’m not so sure he went that way,” said Miss Marilla, looking up the road past Mary Amber’s house. “He was on his way up that way when—” And then Miss Marilla suddenly shut her mouth and did not finish the sentence. Mary Amber gave her another curious, discerning look and nodded brightly.
“You go in and get warm, Auntie Rill. Leave that soldier to me. I’ll bring him home.” Then she sped back through the hedge to the little garage, and in a few minutes was speeding down the road toward the station. Miss Marilla watched her in troubled silence, and then, putting on her cape that always hung handy by the hall door, walked a little distance up the road, straining her old eyes but seeing nothing. Finally, in despair, she turned back, and presently, just as she reached her own steps again, she saw Mary’s car come flying back with only Mary in it. But Mary did not stop nor even look toward the house. She sped on up the road this time, and the purring of the engine was sweet music to Miss Marilla’s ears. Dear Mary Amber, how she loved her.