“What has this young man been doing?” he growled, rising from a position on his knees where he had been listening to the soldier’s breathing with an ever-increasing frown. Miss Marilla looked at Mary, quite frightened, and Mary stepped into the breach.
“He had a heavy cold when he came here, and Miss Chadwick nursed him, and he was doing nicely. But he ran away this morning. He had some business to attend to and slipped away before anybody could stop him. He got very much chilled, I think.”
“I should say he did,” exclaimed the doctor. “Young fool! I suppose he thought he could stand anything because he went through the war. Well, he’ll get his now. He’s in for pneumonia. I’m sorry, Miss Chadwick, but I’m afraid you’ve got a bad case on your hands. Would you like to have me phone for an ambulance and get him to the hospital? I think it can be done at once with a minimum of risk.”
“Oh, no, no!” said Miss Marilla, clasping one pale hand and then the other nervously. “I couldn’t think of that—at least, not unless you think it’s necessary—not unless you think it’s a risk to stay here. You see he’s my—that is, he’s almost—like—my own nephew.” She lifted appealing eyes.
“Oh, I beg your pardon,” he said, with a look of relief. “In that case he’s to be congratulated. But, madam, you’ll have your hands full before you are through. He’s made a very bad start—a very bad start indeed. When these big, husky fellows get sick, they do it thoroughly, you know. Now, if you’ll just step over here, Miss Mary, I’ll explain to you both about this medicine. Give this every half hour till I get back. I’ll run up here again in about two hours. I’ve got to drive over to Plush Mills now, to an accident case, but I’ll be back as quick as I can. I want to watch this fellow pretty closely for the first few hours.”
When the doctor was gone, Mary Amber and Miss Marilla stood one on each side of the bed and looked at each other, making silent covenant together over the sick soldier.
“Now,” said Mary Amber softly, “I’m going down into the kitchen to look after things. You just sit here and watch him. I’ll run over first to put the car away and tell mother I’ll stay with you tonight.”
“Oh, Mary Amber, you mustn’t do that,” said Miss Marilla anxiously. “I never meant to get you into all this scrape. Your mother won’t like it at all. I’ll get along all right. And anyway, if I find I can’t, I’ll get Molly Poke to come and help me.”
“Mother will be perfectly satisfied to have me help you in any way I can,” said Mary Amber with a light in her eyes. “And as for Molly Poke, if I can’t look after you better than she can, I’ll go and hide my head. You can get Molly Poke when I fail, but not till then. Now, Auntie Rill, go sit down in the rocking chair and rest. Didn’t I tell you I’d help get that turkey dinner? Well, the dinner isn’t over yet, that’s all, and I owe the guest an apology for misjudging him. He’s all right, and we’ve got to pull him through, Auntie Rill. So here goes.”
Mary Amber gave Miss Marilla a loving squeeze and sped down the stairs. Miss Marilla sat down to listen to the heavy breathing of the sick soldier and watch the long, dark lashes on the sunken, tanned cheeks.
Chapter 7
For three weeks the two women nursed Lyman Gage, with now and then the help of Molly Poke in the kitchen. There were days when they came and went silently, looking at each other with stricken glances and at the sick man with pity. And Mary Amber went and looked at the letter lying on the bureau and wondered whether she ought to telegraph that man who had sent the soldier the money that day. Another letter arrived, and then a telegram, all from Chicago. Then Mary Amber and Miss Marilla talked it over and decided to make some reply.
By that time the doctor had said that Lyman Gage would pull through, and he had opened his eyes once or twice and smiled weakly upon them. Mary Amber went to the telegraph office and sent a message to the person in Chicago whose name was written at the left-hand corner of the envelopes, the same that had been signed to the first telegram.
LYMAN GAGE VERY ILL AT MY HOME, PNEUMONIA, NOT ABLE TO READ LETTERS OR TELEGRAM. SLIGHT IMPROVEMENT TODAY.
(SIGNED)
MARILLA CHADWICK
Within three hours, an answer arrived.
MUCH DISTRESSED AT NEWS OF GAGE’S ILLNESS. CANNOT COME ON ACCOUNT OF FRACTURED BONE, AUTOMOBILE ACCIDENT. PLEASE KEEP ME INFORMED, AND LET ME KNOW IF THERE IS ANYTHING I CAN DO.
(SIGNED)
ARTHUR J. WATKINS
Mary wrote a neat little note that night before she went on duty in the sickroom, stating the invalid had smiled twice that day and asked what day of the week it was. The doctor felt that he was on the high road to recovery now and there was nothing to do but be patient. They would show him his mail as soon as the doctor was willing, which would probably be in a few days now.
The day they gave Lyman Gage his mail to read, the sun was shining on a new fall of snow and the air was crisp and clear. There were geraniums blossoming in the spare-room windows between the sheer white curtains, and the Franklin heater was glowing away and filling the place with the warmth of summer.
The patient had been fed what he called “a real breakfast,” milk toast and a soft-boiled egg, and the sun was streaming over the foot of the bed cheerfully, as if to welcome him back to life. He seemed so much stronger now that the doctor had given permission for him to be bolstered up with an extra pillow while he read his mail.
He had not seemed anxious to read the mail, nor at all curious, even when they told him it was postmarked Chicago. Miss Marilla carried it to him as if she were bringing him a bouquet, but Mary eyed him with curious misgiving. Perhaps, after all, there would not be good news. He seemed so very apathetic. She watched him furtively as she tidied the room, putting away the soap and towels and pulling a dry leaf or two from the geraniums. He was so still, and it took him so long to make up his mind to tear open the envelopes after he had them in his thin, pale hand. It almost seemed as if he dreaded them like a blow and was trying to summon courage to meet them. Once, as she looked at him, his eye met hers with a deprecatory smile, and to cover her confusion she spoke impulsively.
“You don’t seem deeply concerned about the news,” she said brightly.
He smiled again, almost sadly.
“Well, no,” he said thoughtfully. “I can’t say I am. There really isn’t anything much left in which to be interested. You see, about the worst things that could happen have happened, and there’s no chance for anything else.”
“You can’t always tell,” said Mary Amber cheerfully as she finished dusting the bureau and took herself downstairs for his morning glass of milk and egg.
Slowly Lyman Gage tore the envelope of the topmost letter and took out the written sheet. In truth he had little curiosity. It was likely an account of how his lawyer friend had paid back the money to Mr. Harrower, or else the details of the loan on the old Chicago house. Houses and loans and such things seemed far from his world just now. He was impatient for Mary Amber to come back with that milk and egg. Not so much for the milk and egg as for the comfort it gave and the cheeriness of her presence. Presently Miss Marilla would come up and tell over some little incident of Mary’s childhood exactly as if he were Dick, the real nephew. And he liked it. Not that he liked Dick, the villain. He found himself hopelessly jealous of him sometimes. Yet he knew in a feeble, faraway sense that this was only a foolish foible of an invalid, and he would get over it and laugh at himself when he got well.
He smiled at the pleasantness of it all, this getting-well business, and then turned his indifferent attention to the letter.
Dear Gage, it read, what in the world did you hide yourself away in that remote corner of the world for? I’ve scoured the country to get trace of you without a single result till your telegram came. There’s good news to tell you. The unexpected has happened and you are a rich man, old fellow. Don’t let it turn your head, for there’s plenty of business to occupy you as soon as you are able to return.
To make a long story short
, the old tract of land in which you put all you had and a good deal more has come to the front in great shape at last. You will remember that the ore was found to be in such shape when they came to the mining of it that it would cost fabulous sums for the initial operations, and it fell through because your company couldn’t afford to get the proper machinery. Well, the government has taken over the whole tract and is working it. I am enclosing the details on another paper, and you will perceive, when you have looked it over, how very much you are needed at home just now to decide numerous questions that have taxed my ingenuity to the limit to know just what you would want done. There is a great deal of timber on those lands also, very valuable timber, it seems, and that is another source of wealth for you. Oh, this war has been a great thing for you, young man. And you certainly ought to give extra thanks that you came out alive to enjoy it all. Properly managed, your property ought to keep you on Easy Street for the rest of your life, and then some.
I took pains to let Mr. Harrower know how the wind blew when I paid him the money you had borrowed from him. He certainly was one surprised man. Of course, I don’t speak officially, but from what he said I should judge that this might make a big difference with Miss Elinore. So you better hurry home, old man, and get busy. The sun is shining, and the war is over.
Yours fraternally, as well as officially,
Arthur J. Watkins
Over the first part of the letter, Lyman Gage dallied comfortably, as he might have done with his grapefruit or the chicken on toast they had promised him for lunch. He had lost his sense of world values for the time being, and just now a fortune was not more than a hot-water bag when one’s feet were cold. It merely gave him a sense that he needn’t be in a hurry getting well, that he could take things easy because he could pay for everything and give his friends a good time after he was on his feet again. In short, he was no longer a beggar on Miss Marilla’s bounty, with only a thousand dollars between him and debt or even the poorhouse.
But, when he came to that last paragraph, his face suddenly hardened, and into his eyes there came a glint of steel as of old, while his jaw set sternly and lines came around his mouth—hard, bitter lines.
So it was that that had been the matter with Elinore, was it? She had not grown tired of him so much, but had wanted more money than she thought he would be able to furnish for a long time? He stared off into the room not seeing its cozy details for the first time since he began to get well. He was looking at the vision of the past, trying to conjure up a face whose loveliness had held for him no imperfections. He was looking at it clearly now as it rose dimly in vision against the gray of Miss Marilla’s spare-room wall. And for the first time he saw the spoiled under lip with the selfish droop at its corners, the pout when she could not have her own way, the frown of the delicate brows, the petulant tapping of a dainty foot, the proud lifted shoulder, the haughty stare, the cold tones and crushing contempt that were hers sometimes. These had seldom been for him, and when he had seen them, he had called them beautiful, had gloried in them, fool that he was! Why had he been so blind, when there were girls in the world like—well—say like Mary Amber?
Misjudging Elinore? Well, perhaps, but somehow he did not believe he was. Something had cleared his vision. He began to remember things in Elinore Harrower that he had never called by their true names before. It appeared more than likely that Elinore had deliberately left him for a richer man, and that it was entirely possible, under the changed circumstances, that she might leave the richer man for him, if he could prove he was the richer of the two. Bah! What a thing to get well to! Why did there have to be things like that in the world? Well, it mattered very little to him what Elinore did. It might make a difference with her, but it would make no difference to him. There were things in that letter of hers that had cut too deep. He could never forget them, no, never, not even if she came crawling to his feet and begging him to come back to her. As for going back to Chicago, business be hanged! He was going to stay right here and get well. A smile melted out on his lips, and comfort settled down about him as he heard Mary Amber’s step on the stairs and the soothing clink of the spoon in the glass of egg and milk.
“Good news?” asked Mary Amber, as she shoved up the little serving table and prepared to administer the egg and milk.
“Oh, so-so,” he answered with a smile, sweeping the letters away from him and looking at the foaming glass with eager eyes.
“Why! You haven’t opened them all!” Mary Amber laughed.
“Oh! Haven’t I?” he said impatiently, sweeping them up and tearing them open wholesale with only a glance at each, then throwing them back on the coverlet again.
“Nothing but the same old thing. Hounding me back to Chicago.” He grinned. “I’m having much too good a time to get well too fast, you may be sure.”
Somehow the room seemed cozier after that, and his sleep the sweeter when he took his nap. He ate his chicken on toast slowly to prolong the happy time, and he listened and smiled with deep relish at the little stories Miss Marilla told of Mary Amber’s childhood, the gingerbread men with currant eyes, the naughty Dick who stole them. This world he was in now was such a happy, clean little world, so simple and so good. Oh, if he could have known a world like this earlier in his life. If only he could have been the hapless Dick in reality!
Molly Poke was established in the kitchen downstairs now, and Miss Marilla hovered over her anxiously, leaving the entertaining of the invalid much to Mary Amber, who wrote neat business letters for him, telling his lawyer friend to do just as he pleased with everything till he got back; and who read stories and bits of poems, and played chess with him as soon as the doctor allowed. Oh, they were having a happy time, the three of them. Miss Marilla hovered over the two as if they had been her very own children.
And then, one lovely winter afternoon, when they were discussing how perhaps they might take the invalid out for a ride in the car someday next week, the fly dropped into the ointment.
It was as lovely a fly as ever walked on tiny French heels, and came in a limousine lined with gray duvetyn and electrically heated and graced with hothouse rosebuds in a slender glass behind the chauffeur’s right ear. She picked her way daintily up the snowy walk, surveyed the house and grounds critically as far as the Amber hedge, and rang the bell peremptorily.
Miss Marilla went to the front door, for Molly Poke was busy making cream puffs and couldn’t stop. When she saw the little fly standing haughtily on the porch, swathed in a gorgeous moleskin cloak with a voluminous collar of tailless ermine, and a little toque made of coral velvet embroidered in silver, she thought right away of a spider. A very beautiful spider, it’s true, but all the same, a spider.
And when the beautiful red lips opened and spoke, she thought so all the more.
“I have come to see Lyman Gage,” she announced freezingly, looking at Miss Marilla with the glance one gives to a servant. Miss Marilla cast a frightened glance of discernment over the beautiful little face. For it was beautiful, there was no mistaking that, very perfectly beautiful, though it might’ve been only superficially so. Miss Marilla was not used to seeing skin that looked like soft roseleaves in baby perfection on a person of that age. Great baby eyes of blue, set wide, with curling dark lashes; eyebrows that seemed drawn by a fairy brush; lips of such ruby-red pout; and nose chiseled in warm marble. Peaches and cream floated through her startled mind, and it never occurred to her that it was not natural. Oh, the vision was beautiful, there was no doubt about that.
Miss Marilla closed the door and stood with her back to the stairs and a look of defiance upon her face. She had a fleeting thought of Mary and whether she ought to be protected. She had a spasm of fierce jealousy and a frenzy as to what she should do.
“You can step into the parlor,” she said in a tone that she hoped was calm, although she knew it was not cordial. “I’ll go up and see if he’s able to see you. He’s been very sick. The doctor hasn’t let him see any”—she paused, and ey
ed the girl defiantly—“any strangers.”
“Oh, that’ll be all right.” The girl laughed with a disagreeable tinkle. “I’m not a stranger. I’m only his fiancée.” But she pronounced “fiancée” in a way that Miss Marilla didn’t recognize at all, and she looked at her hard. It wasn’t wife, anyway, and it hadn’t sounded like sister or cousin. Miss Marilla looked at the snip—that was what she began to call her in her mind—and decided that she didn’t want her to see Lyman Gage at all. But, of course, Lyman Gage must be the one to decide that.
“What did you say your name was?” she asked bluntly.
For answer the girl brought out a ridiculous little silk bag with a clattering clasp and chain and took from it a tiny gold card case, from which she handed Miss Marilla a card. Miss Marilla adjusted her spectacles and studied it a moment, with one foot on the lower stairs.
“Well,” she said reluctantly, “he hasn’t seen anyone yet, but I’ll go and find out if you can see him. You can sit in the parlor.” She waved her hand again toward the open door and started upstairs.
The blood was beating excitedly through her ears, and her heart pounded in pitiful thuds. If this “snip” belonged to her soldier boy, she was sure she could never mother him again. She wouldn’t feel at home. And her thoughts were so excited that she did not know that the fur-clad snip was following her close behind until she was actually within the spare bedroom and holding out the card to her boy with a trembling, little, withered roseleaf hand.
The boy looked up with his wide, pleasant smile like a benediction and reached out for the card interestedly. He caught the look of panic on Miss Marilla’s face and the inscrutable one on Mary Amber’s. Mary had heard the strange voice below and arisen from her reading aloud to glance out the window. She now beat a precipitate retreat into the little sewing room, just off the spare bedroom. Then Lyman Gage realized another presence in the room and looked beyond to the door where stood Elinore Harrower, her big eyes watching him jealously from her swathing of gorgeous furs, while he slowly took in the situation.