It had been a common saying among his friends that no situation, however unexpected, ever found Lyman Gage off his guard, or ever saw him give away his own emotions. Like lightning, there flitted over his face now a sudden cloud, like a curtain, shutting out all that he had been the moment before, putting under lock and seal any like or dislike he might be feeling, allowing only the most cool courtesy to appear in his expression. Miss Marilla, watching him like a cat, could not tell whether he was glad or sorry, surprised or indignant or pleased. He seemed none of these.
He glanced with cool indifference toward the lovely vision smiling in the doorway now, ready to gush over him, and a stern dignity grew in the set of his jaws. But otherwise, he did not seem to have changed, and most casually, as if he had seen her but the week before, he remarked, “Oh! Is that you, Elinore? Seems to me you have chosen a cold day to go out. Won’t you sit down?” He motioned toward a stiff little chair that stood against the wall, though Mary Amber’s rocker was still waving back and forth from her hasty retreat.
Miss Marilla simply faded out of the room, although Gage said politely, “Don’t leave us, please.” But she was gone before the words were out of his mouth, and with a sudden feeling of weakness, he glanced around the room wildly and realized that Mary Amber was gone, too.
Mary Amber stood in the sewing room and wondered what she ought to do. For the other door of the sewing room was closed and barred by a heavy iron bed that had been put up for convenience during the soldier’s illness, and the only spot that was long enough to hold it was straight across the hall door. Obviously, Mary Amber could not get out of the sewing room without moving the bed, and she knew by experience of making it every morning that it squeaked most unmercifully when it was moved. Neither could she go out through the spare bedroom, for she felt that her appearance would cause no end of explanations. And equally, of course, she dared not shut the door because it would make a noise and call attention to her presence.
So Mary Amber tiptoed softly to the farthest end of the little room and stood rigidly silent, trying not to listen, yet all the more attuned and sensitive to whatever was going on in the next room. She fairly held her breath lest they should hear her and pressed her fingers upon her hot eyeballs as if that would shut out the sound.
“That’s scarcely the way I expected you to meet me, Lyme”—in the sweet lilt of Elinore Harrower’s pampered voice.
“I was scarcely expecting you, you know, after what has happened,” came chillingly in Lyman Gage’s voice, a bit high and hollow for his illness, and all the cooler for that.
“I couldn’t stay away when I knew you were ill, Lyme, dear!” The voice was honeyed sweet now.
“What had that to do with it?” The tone was almost vicious. “You wrote that we had grown apart, and it was true. You are engaged to another man.”
“Well, can’t I change my mind?” The tone was playful, kittenish. It smote Lyman Gage’s memory that he had been wont to call it teasing and enjoy it in her once upon a time.
“You’ve changed your mind once too often!” The sick man’s voice was tense in his weakness, and his brow was dark.
“Why Lyman Gage! I think you are horrid!” cried the girl, with a hint of indignant tears in her voice. “Here I come a long journey to see you when you’re sick, and you meet me that way and taunt me. It’s not like you. You don’t seem a bit glad to see me! Perhaps there’s someone else.” The voice had a taunt in it now, and an assurance that expected to win out in the end, no matter to what she might have to descend to gain her point.
But she had reckoned without knowledge, for Lyman Gage remembered the picture he had torn to bits in the dying light of the sunset and trampled in the road. Those same brilliant eyes, that soft-tinted cheek, those painted lips had smiled impudently up at him that way as he had ground them beneath his heel. And this was Girl, his natural enemy, who would play with him at her pleasure and toss him away when he was no longer profitable to her, expecting to find him ready at a word again when circumstances changed. He straightened up with sudden strength and caught her words with a kind of joyful triumph.
“Yes, there is someone else! Mary! Mary Amber!”
Mary Amber, trying not to hear, had caught her name, heard the sound in his voice like to the little chick that calls its mother when the hawk appears, and suddenly her fear vanished. She turned and walked with steady step and bright eyes straight into the spare bedroom, a smile upon her lips and a rose upon her cheek that needed no cosmetics to enhance its beauty.
“Did you call me—Lyman!” she said, looking straight at him with rescue in her eyes.
He put out his hand to her, and she went and stood by the bed, over across from the visitor who had turned and was staring amazedly, insolently at her now.
Lyman Gage put out his big, wasted hand and gathered Mary Amber’s hand in his, and she let him!
“Mary,” said Lyman Gage possessively, and there was both boldness and appeal in his eyes as he looked at her, “I want Miss Harrower to know you. Miss Amber, Miss Harrower.”
Elinore Harrower had risen, with one hand on the back of her chair and her crimson lips parted, a startled expression in her eyes. Her rich furs had fallen back and revealed a rich and vampish little frock beneath, but she was not thinking of her frock just then. She was looking from one to the other of the two before her.
“I don’t understand!” she said haughtily. “Did you know her before?”
Lyman Gage flashed a look at Mary for indulgence and answered happily.
“Our friendship dates back to when we were children and I spent a summer with my Aunt Marilla teasing Mary and letting the sawdust out of her dolls.” He gave a daring glance at Mary and found the twinkles in her eyes playing with the dimples at the corner of her mouth, and his fingers clung more warmly around hers.
The two were so absorbedly interested in this little comedy they were enacting that they had quite failed to notice its effect upon the audience. Elinore Harrower had gathered her fur robes about her and was fastening them proudly at her throat. Her dark eyes were two points of steel, and the little white teeth that bit into the pouting crimson under-lip looked vicious and suggestive.
“I did not understand,” said Elinore haughtily. “I thought you were among strangers and needed someone. I will leave you to your friends. You always did like simple country ways, I remember.” And she cast a withering glance around.
“Why, where is Aunt Rilla, Mary?” asked Lyman, innocently ignoring the sneer of his guest. “Aunt Marilla!” he raised his voice, looking toward the door. “Aunt Marilla, won’t you please come here?”
Miss Marilla, her heart a perfect tumult of joy to hear him call her that way, straightened up from her ambush outside the door and entered precipitately, just as the haughty guest was about to stalk from the room, if one so small and exquisite as Elinore can be said to stalk. The result was a collision that quite spoiled the effect of the exit, and the two ladies looked at each other for a brief instant, much as two cats might have done under similar circumstances.
Mary Amber’s eyes were dancing, and Lyman Gage wanted to laugh, but he controlled his voice.
“Aunt Marilla, this is Miss Harrower, a girl who used to be an old friend of mine, and she thinks she can’t stay any longer. Would you mind taking her down to the door? Good-bye, Elinore. Congratulations! And I hope you’ll be very happy!” He held out his free hand—the other still held Mary Amber’s, and the smile upon his lips was full of merriment. But Elinore Harrower ignored the hand and the congratulations, and drawing her fur mantle once more about her small haughty shoulders, she sailed from the room, her coral and silver toque held high and her little red mouth drooping with scorn and defeat. Miss Marilla, all hospitality now that she understood, offered tea and cake but was given no answer whatever. And so in joyous, wondering silence, she attended her soldier’s guest to the door.
Lyman Gage lay back on his pillows, his face turned away from Mary Amber, listenin
g, but his hand still held Mary Amber’s. And Mary Amber, standing quietly by his side, listening, too, seemed to understand that the curtain had not fallen yet, not quite, upon the little play, for a smile wove in and out among the dimples near her lips and her eyes were dancing little happy lights of mirth. It was not until the front door shut upon the guest and they heard the motor’s soft purr as the car left the house that they felt the tenseness of the moment relax, and consciousness of their position stole upon them.
“Mary, Mary Amber,” whispered Lyman Gage softly, looking up into her face, “can you ever forgive me for all this?”
He held her hand, and his eyes pleaded for him. “But it’s all true. There is another one. I love you! And oh, I’m so tired. Mary Amber, can you forgive me—and—and love me, just a little bit?”
Down upon her knees went Mary Amber beside the bed, and gathered her soldier boy within her strong young arms, drawing his tired head upon her firm, sweet shoulder.
When Miss Marilla trotted back upstairs on her weary, glad feet and put her head in at the door fearfully to see how her boy had stood the strain of the visitor—and to berate herself for having allowed a stranger to come up without warning, she found them so. Mary Amber, soothing her patient to sleep by kisses on his tired eyelids, and the soldier’s big pale hand enfolding Mary’s little one contentedly, while the man’s low voice growled tenderly, “Mary, you are the only girl I ever really loved. I didn’t know there was a girl like you when I knew her.”
So Miss Marilla drew the door closed softly, lest Molly Poke should come snooping round that way, and trotted off to the kitchen to see about some charlotte russe for supper, a great thankful gladness growing in her heart, for—oh! Suppose it had been that other—hussy!
FOUND TREASURE
A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches, and loving favour rather than silver and gold.
PROVERBS 22:1
Chapter 1
New York City, Summer 1928
The younger set was meeting in Ethel Garner’s summerhouse to make plans for an automobile ride and an all-day picnic that was arranged for the next week.
They fluttered in by ones and twos in their little bright dresses, looking like a lot of dressy dolls on the Garner lawn. They hovered about awaiting a few more arrivals, chattering like a flock of birds just alighted.
“Oh Ethel!” screamed her special chum Janet Chipley, “isn’t that a darling new dress! Did your mother make it or did you get it in the city?”
“This?” said Ethel, with a conscious look at the dainty little blue-and-white voile she was wearing. “Oh, it’s a little imported frock Mother picked up. It is rather good, isn’t it?”
“Imported!” exclaimed Maud Bradley, dashing into the conversation with gusto. “My goodness! They don’t import cotton dresses do they? Aren’t you stylish, wearing imported dresses in the afternoon. Say, Ethel, you look precious in it, though, don’t you? That’s a pastel shade of blue, isn’t it? You ought to save it for the ride. It’s awfully attractive. Jessie Heath said she was getting a new dress, too. Her mother ordered it in New York from that great dressmaker she goes to every spring. It’s some kind of pink they’re wearing in Paris. But I’m sure it won’t be any prettier than yours.”
“You’ve got a pretty dress, too, Maud,” said Ethel, somewhat patronizingly. “Did you make it yourself?”
“Yes,” said Maud with a grimace, “sat up till after midnight last night to finish the hemstitching.”
“Aren’t you clever. You don’t mean to say you did all this hemstitching? Why, it looks just like the imported things. I think you are simply great to be able to do it.”
“Oh, that’s nothing,” said Maud. “I’d much rather do it than study Latin. You know I flunked the exam this year. I get more and more disgusted with it. Say, girls, what do you think? I heard Miss House wasn’t going to teach Latin next year. Wouldn’t that be great? I’d almost be willing to go back to school another year, just to be rid of her. My, she was a pain! How anybody could get like that puzzles me. But isn’t it great that we’re done with high school? You couldn’t drag me to college. Emily Morehouse says she’s going, and Reitha Kent. But they always were grinds.”
“Well, I’m going,” said Ethel with satisfaction.
“You’re going!” screamed her friend in dismay. “Why, I thought you said you weren’t.”
“Well, so I did, but Mother has persuaded me. She says she wants me to get the atmosphere! And you really aren’t anywhere if you haven’t been to college these days.”
“Mercy,” said Janet. “Then I suppose I’ll have to go, too. I only begged off by telling Dad and Mother you weren’t going.”
“Oh, come on, Jan, of course you’ll go. I couldn’t leave you behind. And besides, we’ll have heaps of fun.”
“But we aren’t signed up anywhere.”
“Yes we are; that is, I am. I know Dad can get you in at my college. He’s something on the board. Get your father and mother to come over tonight and talk it over with Dad. He’ll fix it. There comes Gladys Harper. Come on, girls, let’s go back to the summerhouse. The rest will know where to find us, and it’s too hot to stay here in the sun. Was that the phone, Flora?” called Ethel as her younger sister came out on the porch. “Who called? I hope nobody is staying away.”
“It was Eleanor Martin. She can’t come till half past four. They’ve got the dressmaker there and she has to be fitted.”
“I know,” said Ethel. “Come on, we’re going around to the summerhouse. I wonder what she had to telephone for. She told me that this morning.”
Flora, in her bright pink organdy, followed the girls around to the summerhouse.
“Why, it was about Effie,” she admitted with a troubled look as they drifted into the big rustic arbor against its background of tall privet hedge and settled down among the cushions with which it was amply furnished. “You know Effie Martin wants to go with us on the picnic. Eleanor is taking their big new car, and Effie wants to drive it part of the time. She asked me to get her an invitation. But Eleanor has found it out, and she doesn’t want her to go.”
“The very idea!” said Janet Chipley sharply. “Why, that would be ridiculous. Why, she doesn’t belong to our crowd at all.”
“Well, she evidently wants to,” said Flora with a troubled sigh, “and I promised her I’d do my best to get her an invitation. She’s simply wild to go. And it’s really the first time she’s ever seemed to care much. What could I do but promise?”
“Well, she’s not going to get any invitation if I’m on the committee,” announced Maud Bradley. “I’ll tell you that! Why, she’s unbearable. Nobody else would want to go if she went, that’s certain. Just tell her we had our list all made up and there wasn’t room, Flora.”
“But she’d say she could ride on the running board,” said Flora, still troubled. Flora did not like to be unkind.
“Yes, that’s just what she would do,” asserted Ethel. “Anything to make a sensation. And she doesn’t seem to know how disgusting she is. She has a disagreeable habit for every minute in the day, I believe. She bites her nails continually. It sends shivers down my back. I sat behind her in church last Sunday and I nearly went wild. She just took each finger in turn and chewed right around them, and then she put one knee over the other and swung her foot, jarring her knee against the pew in front where that meek little Mrs. Elder sits. I thought I should shriek she made me so nervous. Mrs. Elder kept turning her head just a little and looking distressed, but she couldn’t get the courage to turn clear around and look her in the face and make her stop. I almost disgraced myself sighing with nervousness. I’m sure she heard me, but it didn’t make any difference. She didn’t even know what it was all about. She turned and stared at me a minute with those great black eyes of hers and kept right on. I don’t want any worse punishment than to be obliged to sit beside her in any gathering again.”
“Yes, I know just how she is,” chimed in Maud Bradley. “S
he just fidgets and fidgets. She’s for all the world as bad as her eight-year-old brother, and he is the most disagreeable little kid in the whole town. I sat beside her in church one Sunday when our seat was full, and I was glad when the service was over. She kept turning and twisting and fixing her hat and smoothing her gloves. She had gloves on, so she couldn’t bite her nails then. She hummed the tunes while the minister was reading the hymns, and she tore a paper into small bits while the prayer was going on. I didn’t have a minute’s peace. I’m sure I don’t know how anybody could be expected to enjoy her company. She’s enough to spoil things wherever she goes. By all means, don’t let us invite her. Don’t you say so, Cornelia? Wouldn’t it simply spoil everything if Effie Martin went along with us?”
Cornelia Gilson, a flashy little girl with copper-colored bobbed hair and a yellow frock, had come in while they were talking and listened with an indignant frown.
“What! That Martin girl? Eleanor’s kid sister? Well, I should say so,” she answered quickly. “What are you all thinking about? Why should she be invited? She never was before!”
Janet Chipley ventured to explain. “Why, Flora Garner says she told her she wanted to go just awfully, and now they have the new car, and Eleanor is to be allowed to take it, and she thinks the girls will ask her.”
“Well, we certainly will not!” declared Cornelia indignantly. “She’ll find she is mistaken. I should think her own sister would make her understand that. She is not old enough for our crowd. She’s only fourteen.”
“Well, I guess she’s fifteen,” admitted Maud reluctantly, “but she doesn’t act like it.”
“Girls, you’re all mistaken about her age. She’s sixteen. Her birthday was last week,” spoke up Flora Garner timidly. “She wants to go dreadfully. Her sister doesn’t want her to, one bit, and she didn’t want to ask her to secure an invitation, so she asked me. I felt awfully embarrassed, for I didn’t know what to say.”