Treasured Brides Collection (6 page)

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 pampered 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 fed him and read him to sleep—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 titled 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.

M
ary 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 upstairs, and she almost dropped it in her dismay.

“I’ve had the grandest time!” breezed Mary. “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 was 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 of 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, which 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; 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. 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 coffeepot 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 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.

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.

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 her 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.