Treasured Brides Collection (3 page)

There was a little stone church down the street, with a spire and bells. The sun touched the bells with burnished crimson till they looked like Christmas cards. A youthful, rural football team went noisily across the road, discoursing about how they would come out that night if their mothers would let them; and the station bus came down the street, full of passengers, and waited for a lady at the meat market. He could see the legs of a chicken sticking out of the basket as the driver helped her in.

He began to wonder why he hadn’t stayed in the city and spent his forty-six cents for something to eat. It would have bought a great many crackers, say, or even bananas. He passed the bakery, and a whiff of fresh-baked bread greeted his nostrils. He cast a wistful eye at the window. Of course, he might go in and ask for a job in payment for his supper. There were his soldier’s clothes. But no, that was equivalent to begging. He could not quite do that. Here in town they would have all the help they wanted. Perhaps, farther out in the country—perhaps—he didn’t know what, only he couldn’t bring himself to ask for food, even with the offer to work. He didn’t care enough for that. What was hunger, anyway? A thing to be satisfied and come again. What would happen if he didn’t satisfy it? Die, of course, but what did it matter? What was there to live for, anyway?

He passed a house, all windows, where children were gathered about a piano, with one clumsily playing an accompaniment. There was an open fire, and the long windows came down to the piazza floor. They were singing at the top of their lungs, the old, timeworn song made familiar to them by community songfests, still good to them because they all knew it so well.

And it gripped his heart like a knife. He had sung that song with
her
, when it was new and tender, just before he had sailed away, and the trail had seemed so long! And now he had reached the end of it, and she had not been there to meet him. It was incredible. She, so fair! And false! After all those months of waiting. That was the hardest part of it—that she could have done it, and then explained so lightly that he had been away so long she was sure he would understand, and they both must have got over their childish attachment, and so on, through the long, nauseating sentences of her repeal. He shuddered as he said them over to his tired heart, and then shuddered again with the keen air, for his uniform was thin and he had no overcoat.

What was that she had said about the money? He needn’t worry about it. A sort of bone to toss to the lone dog after he was kicked out. Ah well! It was paid. He was glad of that. He was even grimly glad for his own destitution. It gave a kind of sense of satisfaction to have gone hungry and homeless to pay it all in one grand lump, and to have paid it at once, and through his lawyer, without any word to her or her father either. They should not be even distant witnesses of his humiliation. He would never cross their path again, if he had his way. They should be as completely wiped out of his existence, and he out of theirs, as if the same universe did not hold them.

He passed down the broad, pleasant street in the crisp air, and every home on either hand gave him a thrust of memory that stabbed him to the heart. It was such a home as one of these that he had hoped to have someday, although it would have been in the city, perhaps, for she always liked the city. He had hoped, in the depths of his heart, to persuade her to the country, though. Now he saw as in a revelation how futile such hopes had been. She would never have come to love sweet, quiet ways such as he loved. She couldn’t ever have really loved him, or she would have waited, would not have changed.

Over and over again he turned the bitter story, trying to get it settled in his heart so that the sharp edges would not hurt so, trying to accustom himself to the thought that she, whom he had cherished through the blackness of the years that were past, was not what he had thought her. He stopped in the road, beside a tall hedge that hid the Hazard house from view, and snatched out her picture that he had carried in his breast pocket till now, snatched it out, gazed upon it with a look that was not good to see on a young face, and tore it across! He took a step forward, and with every step he tore a tiny fragment from the picture and flung it into the road, bit by bit, till the lovely face was mutilated in the dust, where the feet of passersby would grind upon it and where those great blue eyes that had gazed back at him from the picture so long would be destroyed forever. It was the last thread that bound him to her, that picture. And when the last scrap of picture had fluttered away from him, he put his head down and strode forward like one who has cast away from him his last hope.

The voice of Miss Marilla roused him like a homely, pleasant sound about the house of a morning when one has had an unhappy dream. He lifted his head, and, soldierlike, dropped into the old habit of hiding his emotions.

Her kindly face somehow comforted him, and the thought of dinner was a welcome one. The ugly tragedy of his life seemed to melt away for the moment, as if it could not stand the light of the setting sun and her wholesome presence. There was an appeal in her eyes that reached him, and somehow he didn’t feel like turning down her naïve, childlike proposition. Besides, he was used to being cared for because he was a soldier, and why not once more, now when everything else had gone so rotten? It was an adventure, anyway, and what was there left for him but adventure? he asked himself with a little, bitter sneer.

But when she mentioned a
girl
, that was a different thing! Girls were all treacherous. It was a new conviction with him, but it had gone deep, so deep that it had extended not only to a certain girl or class of girls, but to all girls, everywhere. He had become a woman hater. He wanted nothing more to do with any of them. And yet, at that moment, his tired, disappointed, hurt man’s soul was really crying out for the woman of the universe to comfort him, to explain to him this awful circumstance that had come to all his bright dreams. A mother. That was what he thought he wanted, and Miss Marilla looked as if she might make a nice mother. So he turned like a tired little hungry boy and followed her, at least until she said “girl.” Then he almost turned and fled.

Yet, while Miss Marilla coaxed and explained about Mary Amber, he stood facing again the lovely vision of the girl he had left behind at the beginning of the long, long trail, and whose picture he had just trampled underfoot on this end of the trail, which it now seemed to him would wind on forever alone for him. As he paused on Miss Marilla’s immaculate front steps, he was preparing himself to face the enemy of his life, in the form of
woman
. The one thing, really, that made him go into that house and meekly submit to Miss Marilla’s guest was that his soul had risen to battle. He would fight Girl in the concrete! She should be his enemy from henceforth. And this strange, unknown girl who hated men and thought them conceited and selfish, this cold, inhuman creature was likely falsehearted, too, like the one he had loved and who had not loved him. He would show her what he thought of such girls, of all girls; what all men who knew anything about it thought of all girls! And, thus reasoning, he followed Miss Marilla into the pleasant oilcloth-covered hall and up the front stairs to the spare room, where she smilingly showed him the towels and brushes prepared for his comfort, and left him, calling cheerily back that dinner would be on the table as soon as he was ready to come down.

All the time he was bathing his tired, dirty face and cold, rough hands in the warm, sweet-scented soapsuds, and wiping them on the fragrant towel, even while he stood in front of the mirror, all polished to reflect the visage of Lieutenant Richard H. Chadwick, and brushed his close-cropped curls till there was not a hint of wave left in them, he was hardening himself to meet Girl in the concrete and get back a return for what she had done to his life.

Then, with a last final polish of the brush and a flick of the whisk-broom over his discouraged-looking uniform, he set his lips grimly and went downstairs, taking the precaution to fold his cap and put it into his pocket, for he might want to escape at any minute and it was best to be prepared.

M
ary Amber was carrying 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 completing 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’s 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, 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 that 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 whom he was supposed to have played with 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, tomorrow he would need another dinner, and all the tomorrows 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 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: W
HO 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.