The big blue soldier, cold to the soul of him and full of pain that reminded him of the long horror of the war, was still sitting by the roadside with his head in his hands when Mary Amber’s car came flying down the road. She stopped before him with a little triumphant purr of the engine, so close to him that it roused him from his lethargy to look up.
“I should think you’d be ashamed of yourself, running away from Miss Marilla like this and making her worry herself sick!” Mary Amber’s voice was keen as icicles, and the words went through him like red-hot needles. He straightened up, and the light of battle came back to his eyes. This was Girl again, his enemy. His firm upper lip moved sensitively, and came down straight and strong against the lower one, showing the nice line of character that made his mouth beautiful.
“Thank you,” he said coldly. “I’m only ashamed that I stayed so long.” His tone further added that he did not know what business of hers it was.
“Well, she sent me for you. And you’ll please to get in quickly, for she’s very much worked up about you.”
Mary Amber’s tone stated that she herself was not in the least worked up about a great, hulking soldier that would let a woman wait on him for several days hand and foot and then run away when her back was turned.
“Kindly tell her that I am sorry I troubled her but that it is not possible for me to return at present,” he answered stiffly. “I came down to send a business telegram, and I am waiting for an answer.”
A sudden shiver seized him and rippled involuntarily over his big frame. Mary Amber was eyeing him contemptuously, but a light of pity stole into her eyes as she saw him shiver.
“You are cold!” said Mary Amber, as if she were charging him with an offense.
“Well, that’s not strange—is it—on a day like this? I haven’t made connections yet with an overcoat and gloves, that’s all.”
“Look here, if you are cold, you’ve simply got to get into this car and let me take you back to Miss Marilla. You’ll catch your death of cold sitting there like that.”
“Well, I may be cold, but I don’t have to let you take me anywhere. When I get ready to go, I’ll walk. As for catching my death of cold, that’s strictly my own affair. There’s nobody in the world would care if I did.”
The soldier had blue lights like steel in his eyes, and his mouth looked very soldierlike indeed. His whole manner showed there wasn’t the least use in the world trying to argue with him.
Mary Amber eyed him with increasing interest and thoughtfulness.
“You’re mistaken,” she said grudgingly. “There’s one. There’s Miss Marilla. She’d break her heart. She’s like that, and she hasn’t much to care for in the world, either. Which makes it all the worse what you’ve done. Oh, I don’t see how you could deceive her.”
“Deceive her?” said the astonished soldier. “I never deceived her.”
“Why, you let her think you were Dick Chadwick, her nephew, and you know you’re not! I knew you weren’t the minute I saw you, even before I found Dick’s telegram in the stove saying he couldn’t come. And then I asked you a lot of questions to find out for sure, and you couldn’t answer one of them right.” Her eyes were sparkling, and there was an eager look in her face, like an appeal, almost as if she wanted him to prove what she was saying was not true.
“No, I’m not Dick Chadwick,” said the young man with fine dignity. “But I never deceived Miss Marilla.”
“Well, who did then?” There was disappointment and unbelief in Mary Amber’s voice.
“Nobody. She isn’t deceived. It was she who tried to deceive you.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean she wanted you to think I was her nephew. She was mortified, I guess, because he didn’t turn up, and she didn’t want you to know. So she asked me to dinner to fill in. I didn’t know anybody was there till just as I was going in the door. Then I had to go and get sick in the night and ruin the whole thing. I was a fool to give in to her, of course, and stay that night. But it did sound good to have a real night’s sleep in a bed. I didn’t think I was such a softie as to get out of my head and be on her hands like that. But you needn’t worry. I intend to make it up to her fully, just as soon as I can lay hands on some funds—”
He suddenly broke into a fit of coughing so hoarse and croupy as to alarm even Mary Amber’s cool contempt. She reached back in the car, and grasping a big fur coat, sprang out on the hard ground and threw the coat about him, tucking it around his neck and trying to fasten a button under his chin against his violent protest.
“You’re very kind,” he gasped loftily, as soon as he could recover his breath. “But I can’t put that on, and I’m going down to the telegraph office now to see if my wire has come yet.”
“Look here,” said Mary Amber in quite a different tone, “I’m sorry I was so suspicious. I see I didn’t understand. I ask your pardon, and won’t you please put on this coat and get into this car and let me take you home quick? I’m really very much troubled about you.”
The soldier looked up in surprise at the gentleness, and almost, his heart melted. The snarly look around his mouth and eyes disappeared, and he seemed a bit confused.
“Thank you,” he said simply. “I appreciate that. But I can’t let you help me, you know.”
“Oh, please!” she said, a kind of little-girl alarm springing into her eyes. “I won’t know what to say to Miss Marilla. I promised her to bring you back, you know.”
His eyes and lips were hardening again. She saw he did not mean to yield, and Mary Amber was not used to being balked in her purposes. She glanced down the road, and a sudden light came into her eyes and brought a dimple of mischief into her cheek.
“You’ll have to for my sake,” she said hurriedly in a lower tone. “There’s a car coming with some people in it I know. And they will think it awfully strange for me to be standing here on a lonely roadside talking to a strange soldier sitting on a log on a day like this. Hurry!”
Lyman Gage glanced up, saw the car coming swiftly, saw, too, the dimple of mischief; but with an answering light of gallantry in his own eyes, he sprang up and helped her into the car. The effort brought on another fit of coughing, but as soon as he could speak, he said, “You can take me down to that little telegraph office, if you please, and drop me there. Then nobody will think anything about it.”
“I’ll take you to the telegraph office if you’ll be good and put that coat on right, and button it,” said Mary Amber commandingly. She had him in the car now, and she knew she could go so fast he could not get out. “But I won’t stop there until you promise me, on your honor as a soldier, that you won’t get out or make any more trouble about my taking you back to Miss Marilla.”
The soldier looked very balky indeed, and his firm mouth got itself into fine shape again till he looked into Mary Amber’s eyes and saw the saucy, beautiful lights there. And then he broke down laughing.
“Well, you’ve caught me by guile,” he said, “and I guess we’re about even. I’ll go back and make my adieus myself to Miss Marilla.”
A little curve of satisfaction settled about Mary Amber’s mouth.
“Put that coat on, please,” she said, and the soldier put it on gratefully. He was beginning to feel a reaction from his battle with Mary Amber, and now that he was defeated, the coat seemed most desirable.
“Don’t you think it would be a good idea if you would tell me who you really are?” asked Mary Amber. “It might save some embarrassment.”
“Why, certainly!” said the soldier in surprise. “It hadn’t occurred to me, that’s all. I’m Lyman Gage, of Chicago.” He named also his rank and regiment in the army. Then, looking at her curiously, he said, hesitating, “I’m—perfectly respectable, you know. I don’t really make a practice of going around sponging on unprotected ladies.”
Her cheeks flamed a gorgeous scarlet, and her eyes looked rebuked.
“I suppose I ought to apologize,” she said. “But really, you k
now, it looked rather peculiar to me—” She stopped suddenly, for he was seized with another fit of coughing, which had so shrill a sound that she involuntarily turned to look at him with anxious eyes.
“I s’pose it did look strange,” he managed to say at last, “but, you know, that day when I came in I didn’t care a hang.” He dropped his head wearily against the car and closed his eyes for just a second, as if keeping them open was a great effort.
“You’re all in now,” she said sharply. “And you’re shivering. You ought to be in bed this minute.” Her voice held deep concern. “Where is that telegraph office? We’ll just leave word for them to forward the message if it hasn’t come, and then we’ll fly back.”
“Oh, I must wait for that message,” he said, straightening up with a hoarse effort and opening his eyes sharply. “It is really imperative.”
She stopped the car in front of the telegraph office. The little operator, sensing a romance, scuttled out the door with an envelope in her hand and a different look on her face from the one she had worn when she went to her lunch. To tell the truth, she had not had much faith in that soldier nor in the message he had sent “collect.” She hadn’t believed any answer would come, or at least any favorable one.
Now she hurried across the pavement to the car, studying Mary Amber’s red tam as she talked and wondering whether she couldn’t make one like it out of the red lining of an old army cape she had.
“Yer message’s come,” she announced affably. “Come just after I got back. An’ I got yer check all made out fer yah. You sign here. See? Got anybody to ‘dentify yah? ‘Tain’t necessary, see? I c’n waive identification.”
“I can identify him,” spoke up Mary Amber with cool dignity, and the soldier looked at her wonderingly. That was a very different tone from the one she had used when she came after him. After all, what did Mary Amber know about him?
He looked at the check half wonderingly, as if it were not real. His head felt very strange. The words of the message seemed all jumbled. He crumpled it in his hand.
“Ain’t yah going to send an answer?” Put in the little operator aggrievedly, hugging the thin muslin sleeves of her little soiled shirtwaist to keep from shivering. “He says to wire him immediately. He says it’s important. I guess you didn’t take notice to the message.”
The soldier tried to smooth out the crumpled paper with his numb fingers; and Mary Amber, seeing that he was feeling very miserable, took it from him, and capably put it before him.
AM SENDING YOU A THOUSAND. WIRE ME YOUR POST OFFICE ADDRESS IMMEDIATELY. GOOD NEWS. IMPORTANT.
(SIGNED)
ARTHUR J. WATKINS
“I guess I can’t answer that now,” said the soldier, trying his best to keep his teeth from chattering. “I don’t just know—”
“Here, I’ll write it for you,” said Mary, with sudden understanding. “You better have it sent in Aunt Rill’s care, and then you can have it forwarded anywhere, you know. I’ll write it for you.” And she took a silver pencil from the pocket of her coat and wrote the telegram rapidly on a corner she tore from the first message, handing it out for his inspection and then passing it on to the operator, who gathered it in capably.
“Send this c’lect too, I s’pose,” she called after the car as it departed.
“Yes, all right, anything,” answered Lyman Gage, wearily sinking back in the seat. “It doesn’t matter, anyway.”
“You are sick!” said Mary Amber anxiously, “and we are going to get right home. Miss Marilla will be wild.”
The soldier sat up, holding his precious check.
“I’ll have to ask you to let me out,” he said, trying to be dignified under the heavy stupor of weariness that was creeping over him. “I’ve got to get to a bank.”
“Oh, must you today? Couldn’t we wait till tomorrow or till you feel better?” asked Mary anxiously.
“No, I must go now,” he insisted doggedly.
“Well, there’s a bank on the next corner,” she said, “and it must be about closing time.” She shoved her sleeve back and glanced at her watch. “Just five minutes of three. We’ll stop, but you’ll promise to hurry, won’t you? I want to get you home. I’m worried about you.”
Lyman Gage cast her another of those wondering looks, like a child unused to kindness suddenly being spoiled. It made her feel as if she wanted to cry. All the mother in her came to her eyes. She drew up in front of the bank and got out after him.
“I’ll go in with you,” she said. “They know me over here, and it may save you trouble.”
“You’re very kind,” he said, almost curtly. “I dislike to make you so much trouble—”
Perhaps it was owing to Mary’s presence that the transaction went through without question, and in a few minutes more they were back in the car again, Mary tucking in her big patient fussily.
“You’re going to put this around your neck,” she said, drawing a bright woolly scarf from her capacious coat pocket. “And around your head,” she added, drawing a fold comfortingly up around his ears and the back of his head. “And keep it over your nose and mouth. Breathe through it; don’t let this cold air get into your lungs,” she finished with a businesslike air as if she were a nurse.
She drew the ends of the scarf around, completely hiding everything but his eyes, and tucked the ends into the neck of the fur coat. Then she produced another blanket from some region beneath her feet and tucked that carefully around him. It was wonderful being taken care of in this way. If he only had not been so cold, so tired, and so sore all over, he could have enjoyed it. The scarf had a delicate aroma of spring and violets, something that reminded him of pleasant things in the past, but it all seemed like a dream.
They were skimming along over the road, up which he had come at so laborious a pace, and the icy wind cut his eyeballs. He closed his eyes, and a hot curtain seemed to shut him out from a weary world. Almost he seemed to be spinning away into space. He tried to open his mouth under the woolen fragrance and speak, but his companion ordered him sharply to be still till he got where it was warm, and a sharp cough, like a knife, caught him. So he sank back again into the perfumed silence of the fierce heat and cold that seemed to be raging through his body and continued the struggle to keep from drifting into space. It did not seem quite gallant or gentlemanly to say nothing, nor soldierly to drift away like that when she was being so kind. And then a curious memory of the other girl drifted around in the frost of his breath mockingly, as if she were laughing at his situation, almost as if she had put him there and was glad. He tried to shake this off by opening his eyes and concentrating them on Mary Amber as she sat sternly at her wheel, driving her little machine for all it was worth, her eyes anxious and the flush on her cheek bright and glowing. The fancy came to him that she was in league with him against the other girl. He knew it was foolish, and he tried to drive the idea away, but it stayed till she passed her own hedge and stopped the car at Miss Marilla’s gate.
Then it seemed to clear away, and common sense reigned for a few brief moments, while he stumbled out of the car and staggered into Miss Marilla’s parlor and into the warmth and cheer of that good woman’s almost tearful, affectionate welcome.
“I want you to take that,” he said hoarsely, pressing into her hand the roll of bills he had got at the bank. And then he slid down into a big chair, and everything whirled away again.
Miss Marilla stood aghast, looking at the money and then at the sick soldier till Mary Amber took command. He never remembered just what happened, nor knew how he got upstairs and into the great warm, kind bed again, with hot broth being fed him and hot-water bags in places needing them. He did not hear them call the doctor on the telephone, nor know just when Mary Amber slipped away down to her car again and rode away.
But Mary Amber knew this was the afternoon when The Purling Brooke Chronicle went to press, and she had an item that must get in. Quite demurely, she handed the envelope to the woman editor, just as she was preparing
to mail the last of her copy to the printer in the city. The item read:
Miss Marilla Chadwick, of Shirley Road, is entertaining over the weekend Sergeant Lyman Gage, of Chicago, but just returned from France. Sergeant Gage is a member of the same division and came over in the same ship with Miss Chadwick’s nephew, Lieutenant Richard Chadwick, of whom mention has been made in a former number, and has seen long and interesting service abroad.
Mary Amber was back at the house almost before she had been missed and just as the doctor arrived, ready to serve in any capacity whatever.
“Do you think I ought to introduce him to the doctor?” asked Miss Marilla of Mary in an undertone at the head of the stairs, while the doctor was divesting himself of his big fur overcoat. She had a drawn and anxious look, like one about to be found out in a crime.
“He doesn’t look to me as if he were able to acknowledge the introduction,” said Mary, with a glance in at the spare bed, where the young man lay sleeping heavily and breathing noisily.
“But—ought I to tell him his name?”
“That’s all right, Auntie Rill,” said Mary easily. “I told him his name was Gage when I phoned and said he was in the same division with your nephew. It isn’t necessary for you to say anything about it.”
Miss Marilla paused and eyed Mary strangely with a frightened, appealing look, and then with growing relief. So Mary knew! She sighed and turned back to the sickroom with a comforted expression growing round her mouth.
But the comforted expression changed once more to anxiety, and self was forgotten utterly, when Miss Marilla began to watch the doctor’s face as the examination progressed.