 Chapter 1. And you don't think maybe I ought to have had lemon custard to go with the pumpkin instead of the ments? Miss Marilla Chadwick turned from her anxious watching at the kitchen window to search Mary Amber's clear young eyes for the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Oh no, I think ments is much better. All men like ments pie. It's so sort of comprehensive, you know. Miss Marilla turned back to her window satisfied. Well now, if he came on that train, he ought to be in sight around the bend of the road in about three minutes, she said tensely. I've timed it often when folks were coming out from town, and it always takes just six minutes to get around the bend of the road. All through the months of the Great War, Miss Marilla had knitted and bandaged and emergency'd and canteened with an eager, wistful look in her dreamy gray eyes, and many a sweater had gone to some needy lad with a little thrilling remark as she handed it over to the committee. I keep thinking what if my nephew Dick should be needing one, and this just come along in time? But when the war was over, and most people had begun to use pink and blue wool on their needles, or else cast them aside altogether and tried to forget there had ever been such a thing as war, and the price of turkey had gone up so high that people forgot to be thankful the war was over, Miss Marilla still held that wistful look in her eyes, and still spoke of her nephew Dick with bated breath and a sigh. For wasn't Dick among those favored few who were to remain and do patrol work for an indefinite time in the land of the enemy, while others were gathered to their waiting homes and eager loved ones? Miss Marilla spoke of Dick as one who still lingered on the borderland of terror, and who laid his young life a continuous sacrifice for the good of the great world. A neat paragraph to that effect appeared in the Spring Haven Chronicle, a local sheet that offered scant news items and fat platitudes at an ever-increasing rate to a gullible and conceited populace, who supported it because it was really the only way to know what one's neighbors were doing. The paragraph was the reluctant work of Mary Amber, the young girl who lived next door to Miss Marilla, and had been her devoted friend since the age of four, when Miss Marilla used to bake sugar cookies for her in the form of stodgy men with current eyes and outstretched arms. Mary Amber remembered Nephew Dick as a young imp of nine, who'd made a whole long, beautiful summer ugly with his torments. She also knew that the neighbors all around had memories of that summer, when Dick's parents went on a western trip and left him with his aunt Marilla. Mary Amber shrank from exposing her dear friend to the criticisms of such readers of the Spring Haven Chronicle as had memories of their cats tortured, their chickens chased, their flower beds trampled, their children bullied, and their windows broken by the youthful Dick. But time had softened the memories of that fateful summer in Miss Marilla's mind, and besides, she was deeply in need of a hero. Mary Amber had not the heart to refuse to write the paragraph, but she made it as conservative as the circumstances allowed. But now at last among the latest to be sent back, Lieutenant Richard Chadwick's division was coming home. Miss Marilla read in the paper what day they would sail, and that they were expected to arrive not later than the twenty-ninth, and as she read she conceived a wild and daring plan. Why shouldn't she have a real-life hero herself? A bit belated, of course, but all the more distinguished for that. And why shouldn't Mary Amber have a whole devoted soldier-boy of her own for the village to see and admire? Not that she told Mary Amber that, oh no, but in her mind's vision she saw herself, Mary Amber and Dick, all going to church together on Sunday morning, the bars on his uniform gleaming like the light in Mary Amber's hazel eyes. Miss Marilla had one sudden pang of fear when she thought that perhaps he would not wear his uniform home, now that everybody else was in citizens' clothing. Then her sweet faith and the wholesomeness of all things came to her rescue, and she smiled in relief. Of course he would wear it to come home. That would be too outrageous not to when he had been a hero. Of course he would wear it in the first few days, and that was a good reason why she must invite him at once to visit her, instead of waiting until he had been to his home and been demobilized. She must have him in his uniform. She wanted the glory of it for her own brief share in that great time of uplifting and sacrifice that was so fast going into history. So Miss Marilla had hastened into the city to consult a friend who worked in the Red Cross and went out often to the wharves to meet the incoming boats. This friend promised to find out just when Dick's division was to land, to hunt him up herself, and to see that he had the invitation at once. See that he came, she put in, with a wise reservation in her heart, that the dear loving soul should not be disappointed. And now the very night before, this friend had called Miss Marilla on the telephone to say that she had information that Dick's ship would dock at eight in the morning. It would probably be afternoon before he could get out to Springhaven, so she had better arranged to have dinner about half past five. So Miss Marilla, with shining eyes and a heart that throbbed like a young girl's, had thrown her shawl over her shoulders and hastened in the twilight through the hedge to tell Mary Amber. Mary Amber, trying to conceal her inward doubts, had congratulated Miss Marilla and promised to come over the first thing in the morning to help get dinner. Promised also, after much urging, almost with tears on the part of Miss Marilla, to stay and help eat the dinner afterward, in company with Miss Marilla and the young lieutenant. From this part of her promise, Mary Amber's soul recoiled, for she had no belief that the young leopard with whom she had played at the age of ten could have changed his spots in the course of a few years, or even covered them with a silver bar. But Mary Amber soon saw that her presence at the dinner was an intrinsic part of Miss Marilla's joy in the anticipation of the dinner, and as much as she disliked the position of being flung at the young lieutenant in this way, she promised. After all, what did it matter what he thought of her anyway, since she had no use for him, and then she could always quietly freeze him whenever Miss Marilla's back was turned. Mary Amber could freeze with her hazel eyes when she tried. So quite early in the morning, Miss Marilla and Mary Amber began a cheerful stir in Miss Marilla's big sunny kitchen. Steadily, appetizingly, there grew an array of salads and pies and cakes and puddings and cookies and donuts and biscuits and pickles and olives and jellies, while a great bird stuffed to bursting went through the seven stages of its final career to the oven. But no, it was five o'clock. The bird with brown and shining breast was waiting in the oven, done to a turn. Mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, squash, succotash and onions had received the finishing touches and had only to be served. Cranberries, pickles, celery and jelly gave the final touches to a perfect table, and the sideboard fairly groaned under its load of pies and cake. One might have thought a whole regiment was to dine with Miss Marilla Chadwick that day, from the sights and smells that filled the house. Up in the spare room the fire glowed in the Franklin Heater, and a geranium glowed in a west window between spotless curtains to welcome the guest. Now there was nothing left for the two women to do but the final anxiety. Mary Amber had her part in that, perhaps even more than her hostess and friend, for she was jealous for Miss Marilla and was youthfully incredulous. She had no trust in Dick Chadwick, even though he was an officer and had patrolled an enemy country for a few months after the war was over. Mary Amber had slipped over to her own house when she finished mashing the potatoes and changed her gown. She was putting little pats of butter on the bread and butter plates now, and the setting sun cast a halo of burnished light over her gold hair and brightened up the silk of her brown gown with its touches of wood red. She was beautiful to look upon as she stood with her butter knife, deftly cutting the squares and dropping them in just the right spot on the plates. But there was a troubled look in her eyes as she glanced from time to time at the older woman over by the window. Miss Marilla had ceased all thought of work and was intent only on the road toward the station. It seemed as if not until this moment had her great faith failed her, and the thought come to her that perhaps he might not come. You know, of course, he might not get that train, she said meditatively. The other leaves only half an hour later, but she said she'd tell him to take this one. That's true too, said Mary Amber cheerily, and nothing will be hurt by waiting. I fixed those mashed potatoes so they won't get soggy by being too hot, and I'm sure they'll keep hot enough. You're a good dear girl, Mary Amber, said Miss Marilla, giving her a sudden impulsive kiss. I only wish I could do something great and beautiful for you. Miss Marilla caught up her shawl and hurried toward the door. I'm going out to the gate to meet him, she said with a smile. It's time he was coming in a minute now, and I want to be out there without her ring. She clambered down the steps, her knees trembling with excitement. She hoped Mary Amber had not looked out the window, a boy was coming on a bicycle, and if he should be a boy with a telegram or a special delivery letter, she wanted to read it before Mary Amber saw her. Oh how awful if anything had happened that he couldn't come today. Of course he might come later tonight or tomorrow, and a turkey would keep, though it was never so good as the minute it was taken out of the oven. The boy was almost to the gate now and, yes, he was going to stop. He was swinging one leg out with that long movement that meant slowing up. She panted forward with a furtive glance back at the house. She hoped Mary Amber was looking at the turkey and not out of the window. It seemed that her fingers had suddenly gone tired while she was writing her name in that boy's book, and they almost refused to tear open the envelope as the boy swung on his wheel again and vanished down the road. She had presence of mind enough to keep her back to the house and the telegram in front of her as she opened it covertly, trying to keep the attitude of still looking eagerly down the road while the typewritten brief message got itself across to her tumultuous mind. Impossible to accept invitation, have other engagements, thanks just the same, signed Lieutenant Richard H. Chadwick. Miss Marilla tore the yellow paper hastily and crumpled it into a ball in her hands, as she stared down the road through brimming tears. She managed in upright position, but her knees were shaking under her, and an empty feeling came in her stomach. Across the sunset skies in letters of accusing sighs, there seemed to blaze the paragraphs from the Spring Haven Chronicle, copied afterward in the country Gazette, about Miss Marilla Chadwick's nephew. Lieutenant Richard H. Chadwick, who was expected at his aunt's home as soon as he landed in this country, after a long and glorious career in other lands, and who would spend the weekend with his aunt, and doubtless be heard from at the Spring Haven Clubhouse before he left. Her throat caught with a strange little sound like a groan. Still, with her hand grasping the front gate convulsively, Miss Marilla stood and stared down the road, trying to think what to do, how to word a paragraph explaining why he did not come, how to explain to Mary Amber so that look of sweet incredulousness should not come into her eyes. Then suddenly as she stared through her blur of tears, there appeared a straggling figure, coming around the bend of the road by the Hazard House. And Miss Marilla, with nothing at all in her mind but to escape from the watchful loving eyes of Mary Amber for a moment longer, till she could think of what to say to her, staggered out the gate and down the road toward the person, whoever it was, that was coming slowly up the road. Unstumbled Miss Marilla, nearer and nearer to the oncoming man, till suddenly through a blur of tears she noticed that he wore a uniform. Her heart gave a leap and for a moment she thought it must be, Dick, that he had been playing her a joke by the telegram and was coming on immediately to surprise her before she had a chance to be disappointed. It was wonderful how the years had done their halo work for Dick with Miss Marilla. She stopped short, trembling, one hand to her throat. Then, as the man drew nearer and she saw his halting gate, saw too his downcast eyes and whole dejected attitude, she somehow knew it wasn't Dick. Never would he have walked to her home in that way, there had been a swagger about the little Dick that could not be forgotten. The older Dick, crowned now with many honors, would not have forgotten to hold his head high. Unconscious of her attitude of intense interest, she stood, with her hand still fluttering at her throat and eyes brightly on the man as he advanced. When he was almost opposite her, he looked up. He had fine eyes and good features, but his expression was bitter for one so young, and in his eyes there was a look of pain. Oh, excuse me, said Miss Marilla, looking around furtively to be sure Mary Amber could not see them so far away. Are you in a very great hurry? The young man looked surprised, amused, and slightly bored, but paused politely. Not specially, he said, and there was a tone of dry sarcasm in his voice. Is there anything I can do for you? He lifted the limp little trench cap and paused to rest his lame knee. Why, I was wondering if you wouldn't mind coming in and eating dinner with me, spoke Miss Marilla eagerly, from a dry throat of embarrassment. You see, my nephew's a returned soldier, and I've just got word he can't come. The dinner's all ready to be dished up, and it needn't take long. Dinner sounds good to me, said the young man with the grim glimmer of a smile. I guess I can accommodate you, madam. I haven't had anything to eat since I left camp last night. Oh, you poor child, said Miss Marilla, beaming on him with a welcoming smile. Now isn't it fortunate that I should have asked you, as if there had been a throng of passing soldiers from which she might have chosen. But are you sure I'm not keeping you from someone else who is waiting for you? If there's anyone else waiting anywhere along the road for me, it's all news to me, madam, and anyhow, you got here first, and I guess you have first rights. He had swung into the easy familiar vernacular of the soldier now, and for the moment his bitterness was held in abeyance, and the really nice look in his eyes shone forth. Well then, we'll just go along in, said Miss Marilla, casting another quick glance toward the house. And I think I'm most fortunate to have found you, it's so disappointing to get dinner ready for company and then not have any. Must be almost as disappointing as to get all ready for dinner and then not have any, said the soldier affably. Miss Marilla smiled wistfully. I suppose your name doesn't happen to be Richard, does it? She asked, with that childish appeal in her eyes that had always kept her a young woman and a good company for Mary Amber, even though her hair had long been gray. Might just as well be that as anything else, he responded affably, willing to step into whatever role was set for him in this most unexpected play. And you wouldn't mind if I should call you Dick, she asked, with a wistful look in her blue eyes. Like nothing better, he assented glibly and found his own heart warming to this confiding strange lady. That's beautiful of you, she put out a shy hand and laid it lightly on the edge of his cup. You don't know how much obliged I am, you see, Mary Amber hasn't ever quite believed he was coming, Dick I mean, and she's been so kind and helped me get the dinner and all, I just couldn't bear to tell her he wasn't coming. The young soldier stopped short in the middle of the road and whistled. Horrors, he exclaimed in dismay, are there other guests? Who is Mary Amber? Why, she's just my neighbor who played with you, I mean with Dick. When he was here visiting as a child a good many years ago, I'm afraid he wasn't always as polite to her then as a boy ought to be to a little girl and, well, she's never liked him very well. I was afraid she would say I told you so if she thought he didn't come. It won't be necessary for me to tell any lies, you know. I'll just say, Dick, this is Mary Amber, I suppose you don't remember her. And that will be all, you don't mind, do you, it won't take long to eat dinner. But I'm in a terrible mess to meet a girl, he exclaimed uneasily, looking down deprecatingly at himself. I thought it was just you, this uniform's three sizes too large and needs a drink, besides. He passed a speculative hand over his smoothly shaven chin. I hate girls, there was a deep frown between his eyes, and the bitter look had come back on his face. Miss Marilla thought he looked as if he might be going to run away. Oh, that's all right, said Miss Marilla anxiously. Mary Amber hates men, she says they're all a selfish conceited lot, you needn't have much to do with her, just eat your dinner and tell anything you want to about the war, we won't bother you to talk much. Come, this is the house and the turkey must be on the table getting cold by now. She swung open the gate and laid a persuasive hand on the shabby sleeve, and the young man reluctantly followed her up the path to the front door. End of Chapter 1 Chapter 2 of The Big Blue Soldier by Grace Livingston Hill. When Lehman Gage set sail for France three years before, he left behind him a modest interest in a promising business enterprise, a girl who seemed to love him dearly, and a debt of several thousand dollars to her father, who had advised him to go into the enterprise and furnish the funds for his share in the capital. When he had returned from France three days before, he had been met with news that the business enterprise had gone to smash during the war. The girl had become engaged to a dashing young captain with a well-feathered nest, and the debt had become a galling yoke. Father says tell you you need not worry about the money you owe him, wrote the girl sweetly, concluding her revelations. You can pay it at your leisure when you get started again. Lehman Gage lost no time in gathering every cent he could scrap up. This was more than he had at first hoped, because he owned two houses in the big city in which he had landed, and these houses, though old and small, happened to be located near a great industrial plant that sprung up since the end of the war. And houses were going at soaring prices. They were snapped up at a fabulous sum in comparison with their real value. This, with what he had brought home and the bonus he received on landing, exactly covered his indebtedness to the man who was to have been his father-in-law. When he turned away from the service window, where he had been telegraphing the money to his lawyer in a far state, with instructions to pay the loan at once, he had just 46 cents left in his pocket. Suddenly, as he reflected that he had done the last thing left he now cared to do on earth, the noises of the great city got hold upon his nerve and tore and racted. He was filled with a great desire to get out and away from it. He cared not where, only so that the piercing sounds and rumbling grind of the city traffic should not press upon the raw nerves and torture them. With no thought of getting anything to eat or providing for a shelterless night that was fast coming on, he wandered out into the train area of the Great Station and idly read the names up over the train gates. One caught his fancy, Perlingbrook, it seemed as if it might be quiet there, and a fellow could think. He followed the impulse and strode through the gates just as they were about to be closed. Dropping into the last seat in the car as the train was about to start, he flung his head back and closed his eyes wearily. He did not care whether he got anywhere or not, he was weary in heart and spirit, he wished that he might just sink away into nothingness. He was too tired to think, to bemoan his fate, to touch with torturing finger of memory, all the little beautiful hopes he had woven about the girl he thought he loved better than anyone else on earth. Just passingly he had a wish that he had a living mother to whom he could go with his sick heart for healing. But she had been gone long years and his father even longer. There was really no one to whom he cared to show his face, now that all he had counted dear on earth had been suddenly taken from him. The conductor roused him from a profound sleep, demanding a ticket, and he had the good fortune to remember the name he had seen over the gate. Perlingbrook, how much? 56 cents. Gage reached into his pocket and displayed the coins on his palm with a wry smile. Guess you better put me off here and I'll walk, he said, stumbling wearily to his feet. That's all right, son, sit down, said the conductor half roughly, you pay me when you come back some time, I'll make it good. And he glanced at the uniform kindly. Gage looked down at his shabby self helplessly. Yes, he was still a soldier, and people had not got over the habit of being kind to the uniform. He thanked the conductor and sank into sleep again, to be roused by the same kindly hand a few minutes later at Perlingbrook. He stumbled off and stood, looking daisily about him at the orderly little village. The sleep was not yet gone from his eyes, nor the ache from his nerves, but the clear quiet of the little town seemed to wrap him about soothingly like Sal, and the crisp air entered into his lungs and gave him heart. He realized that he was hungry. It seemed to have been a popular afternoon train that he had traveled upon. He looked beyond the groups of happy homecomers to wear it hurried away gustily down the track, even then preparing to stop at the next near suburban station to deposit a few more homecomers. There, on that train, went the only friend he felt he had in the world at present, that grisly conductor with his kindly eyes licking through great bifocals like a pleasant old grasshopper. Well, he could not remain here any longer, the air was biting, and the sun was going down. Across the road the little drugstore even then was twinkling out with lights behind its blue and green glass urns. Two boys and a girl were drinking something at the soda fountain through straws and laughing a great deal. It somehow turned him sick. He could not tell why. He had done things like that many a time himself. There was a little stone church down the street with a spire and bells. The sun touched the bells with furnished 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 was his soldiers' 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 time-worn song made familiar to them by community song-fest, still good to them because they all knew it so well. There's a long, long trilla winding, until my dreams all come true. 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. 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 needed to 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 him 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 as 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 as he had hoped to have some day, 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 passers-by 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 soldier-like 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 naive 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 had 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 false-hearted 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 oil-cloth-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 soap-suds, 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 the 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. CHAPTER III Mary 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-fleshed 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. Ms. Marilla, with bright eyes and preternaturally pink cheeks, spoke into the vast paws 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 Ms. 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 Ms. 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 Ms. 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 Ms. Marilla softly asked the 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 false-hearted 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. Who crowneth you with loving kindness and tender mercies, so that thy youth is renewed like the eagles? 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 realised. 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 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. Mary rose to take the plates, and the young soldier insisted on helping. Miss Marilla pleased to see them getting on so nicely, sat smiling in her place, reaching out to brush away a stray crumb on the tablecloth. Mary, lingering in the kitchen for a moment to be sure the fire was not being neglected, lifted the stove lid, and with the draught a little flame leaped up around a crumpled smoldering yellow paper with the familiar Western Union telegraph heading. Three words stood out distinctly for a second, impossible to accept, and then were enveloped by the flame. Mary stood and stared with the stove lid in her hand, and then as the flame curled the paper over, she saw Lieutenant Richard revealed and immediately licked up by the flame. It lay a little crisp black fabric with its message utterly illegible, but still Mary stood and stared and wondered. She had seen the boy on the bicycle right up and go away. She had also seen the approaching soldier almost immediately, and the thought of the telegram had been at once erased. Now it came back forcefully. Dick then had sent a telegram, and it looked as if he had declined the invitation. Who then was this stranger at the table? Some comrade working Miss Marilla for dinner, or Dick himself, having changed his mind or playing a practical joke? In any case, Mary felt she ought to disapprove of him utterly. It was her duty to show him up to Miss Marilla, and yet how could she do it when she did not know anything herself? Hurry, Mary, and bring the pie, called Miss Marilla. We're waiting. Mary put the stove lid down and went slowly, thoughtfully back to the dining room carrying a pie. She studied the face of the young soldier intently as she passed him his pie, but he seemed so young and pleasant and happy she hadn't the heart to say anything just yet. She would bide her time. Perhaps somehow it was all explainable, so she set to asking him questions. By the way, Dick, whatever became of Barker, she requested, fixing her clear eyes on his face. Barker, said Leem and Gage, puzzled and polite, then remembering his role. Oh yes, Barker, he laughed. Great old Barker wasn't he? He turned in troubled appeal to Miss Marilla. Barker certainly was the cutest little guinea pig I ever saw, beamed Miss Marilla, although at the time I really wasn't as fond of it as you were. You would have it around in the kitchen so much. There was a covert apology in Miss Marilla's voice for the youthful character of the young man he was supposed to be. I should judge I must have been a good deal of a nuisance in those days, hazarded the soldier, feeling that he was treading on dangerous ground. Oh no, sighed Miss Marilla, trying to be truthful and at the same time polite. Children will be children, you know. All children are not alike. It was as near to snapping as sweet Mary Amber ever came. She had memories which time had not dimmed. Was it as bad as that? The young man laughed. I'm sorry. Mary had to laugh, his frankness certainly was disarming, but there was that telegram, and Mary grew serious again. She did not intend to have her gentle old friend deceived. Mary insisted on clearing off the table and washing the dishes, and the soldier insisted on helping her. So Miss Marilla, much disturbed that domestic duties should interfere with the evening, put everything away, and made the task as brief as possible, looking anxiously at Mary Amber every trip back from the refrigerator and pantry to see how she was getting on with the strange soldier, and how the strange soldier was getting on with her. At first she was a little troubled, lest he shouldn't be the kind of man she would want to introduce to Mary Amber. But after she had heard him talk and expressed such thoroughly wholesome views on politics and national subjects, she almost forgot he was not the real Dick, and her doting heart could not help wanting Mary Amber to like him. He was, in fact, the personification of the Dick she had dreamed out for her own, as different, in fact, from the real Dick as could have been imagined, and a great deal better. His frank eyes, his pleasant manner, his cultured voice all pleased her, and she couldn't help feeling that he was Dick come back as she would have liked him to be all the time. I'd like to have a little music, just a little, before Mary has to go home. Miss Marilla said wistfully, as Mary Amber hung up the dish towel with an air that said plainly without words, that she felt her duty toward the stranger was over, and she was going to depart at once. Sure, said the stranger. You sing, don't you, Miss Mary? There was no alternative, and Mary resigned herself to another half hour. They went into the parlor, and Mary sat down at the old square piano and touched its asthmatic keys that sounded the least bit tinny, even under such skilled fingers as hers. What shall I play? questioned Mary. The long, long trail. There was a bit of sarcasm in her tone. Mary was a classical musician and hated ragtime. No, never, said the soldier quickly. I mean, not that, please. A look of such bitter pain swept over his face that Mary glanced up surprised and forgot to be disagreeable for several minutes while she pondered his expression. Excuse me, he said, but I loathe it. Give us something else. Sing something real. I'm sure you can. There was a hidden compliment in his tone, and Mary was surprised. The soldier had almost forgotten that he did not belong there. He was acting as he might have acted in his own social sphere. Mary struck a few chords tenderly on the piano and then broke into the delicious melody of The Spirit Flower. And Lehman Gage forgot that he was playing a part in a strange home with a strange girl, forgot that he hadn't a scent in the world and his girl was gone and sat watching her face as she sang. For Mary had a voice like a thrush in the summer evening that liquid appeal that always reminds one of a silver spoon dropped into a glass of water, and Mary had a face like The Spirit Flower itself as she sang she could not help living, breathing, being the word she spoke. There was nothing, absolutely nothing about Mary to remind him of the girl he had lost, and there was something in her sweet serious demeanor as she sang to call his better nature. A wholesome serious sweetness that was in itself a kind of antiseptic against bitterness and sweeping denunciation. Lehman Gage as he listened was lifted out of himself and set in a new world where men and women thought of something besides money and position and social prestige. He seemed to be standing off apart from himself and seeing himself from a new angle, an angle in which he was not the only one that mattered in this world and in which he got a hint that his plans might be only hindrances to a large life for himself and everyone else. Not that he exactly thought these things in so many words, it was more as if while Mary sang a wind blew freshly from a place where such thoughts were crowding and making him seem smaller in his own conceit than he had thought he was. And now sing laddie pleaded Miss Marilla. A wave of annoyance swept over Mary Amber's face. It was plain she did not wish to sing that song. Nevertheless she sang it, forgetting herself and throwing all the pathos and tenderness into her voice that belonged to the beautiful words. Then she turned from the piano decidedly and rose. I must go home at once was written in every line of her attitude. Miss Marilla rose nervously and looked from one of her guests to the other. Dick, I wonder if you haven't learned to sing. Her eyes were so pathetic that they stirred the young man to her service. Besides there was something so contemptuous in the attitude of that human spirit flower standing on the wing as it were in that done with him forever attitude that spurred him into a faint desire to show her what he could do. Why sure, he answered lazily and with a stride transferred himself to the piano's stool and struck a deep strong chord or two. Suddenly there poured out a wondrous sparatone such was seldom heard in Perlingbrook and indeed is not common anywhere. He had a feeling that he was paying for his wonderful dinner and must do his best. The first song that had come to his mind was a big blustery French patriotic song and the very spirit of the march was in its cadence. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Mary Amber still poised but waiting in her astonishment. He felt that he had already scored a point. When he came to the grand climax she cried out with pleasure and clapped her hands. Miss Marilla had sunk into the mahogany rocker but was sitting on the edge, alert to prolong this gala evening and two bright spots of colorful delight shown on her faded cheeks. He did not wait for them to ask him for another. He dashed into a minor key and began to sing a wild sweet sobbing song of love and loss till Mary entranced, softly slipped into a chair and sat breathless with clasped hands and shining eyes. It was such an artistic perfect thing that song that she forgot everything else while it was going on. When the last sob died away and the little parlor was silent with deep feeling he whirled about on the piano stool and rose briskly. Now I've done my part, am I to be allowed to see the lady home? He looked at Miss Marilla instead of Mary for permission and she smiled half frightened. It isn't necessary at all, spoke Mary crisply rising and going for a wrap, it's only a step. Oh I think so surely, answered Miss Marilla as if a great point of etiquette had been decided. She gave him a look of perfect trust. It's only across the garden and through the hedge you know, she said in a low tone, but I think she would appreciate it. Certainly, he said and turned with perfect courtesy as Mary looked in at the door and called, good night. He did not make a fuss about attending her, he simply was there close beside her as she sped through the dark without a word to him. It's been very pleasant to meet you, he said as she turned with a motion of dismissal at her own steps. Again, he added lamely, I, I've enjoyed the evening more than you can understand, I enjoyed your singing. Oh my singing, blung back Mary, why I was like a sparrow beside a nightingale, it wasn't quite fair of you to let me sing first without knowing you had a voice. It's strange, you know you never used to sing. It seemed to him her glance went deep as she looked at him through the shadows of the garden. He thought about it as he crept back through the hedge, shivering now, for the night was keen and his uniform thin. Well, what did it matter what she thought? He would soon be far away from her and never likely to see her again. Yet he was glad he had scored a point, one point against girl in the concrete. Now he must go in and bid his hostess goodbye, and then away to where? End of Chapter 3 Chapter 4 of The Big Blue Soldier by Grace Livingston Hill This liprivox recording is in the public domain. Recording by like many waters Chapter 4 As Lehman Gage went up the steps to Miss Marilla's front porch, a sick thrill of cold and weariness passed over his big frame. Every joint and muscle seemed to cry out in protest, and his very vitals seemed sore and wracked. The bit of bright evening was over, and he was facing his own gray life again, with a future that was void and empty. But the door was not shut, Miss Marilla was hovering anxiously inside, with the air of just having retreated from the porch. She gave a little relieved gasp as he entered. Oh, I was afraid he wouldn't come back, she said eagerly. And I did so want to thank you and tell you how we, how I, yes, I mean we, for I know she loved that singing, how very much we enjoyed it, I will always thank God that he sent you along just then. Well, I certainly have caused to thank you for that wonderful dinner, he said earnestly, as he might have spoken to a dear relation. And for all this, he waved his big hand toward the bright room. This pleasantness, it was like coming home, and I haven't any home to come to now. Oh, haven't you? said Miss Marilla caressingly. Oh, haven't you? she said again wistfully. I wonder why I can't keep you a little while then. You seem just like my own nephew, as I had hoped he would be. I haven't seen him in a long time, where were you going when I stopped you? The young man lifted heavy eyes that were bloodshot and soared to the turning, and tried to smile, to save his life he couldn't lie blithely when it seemed so good to be in that warm room. Why, I was, I don't know, I guess I just wasn't going anywhere. To tell you the truth, I was all in and down on my luck, and as blue as indigo when you met me, I was just tramping anywhere to get away from it. You poor boy, said Miss Marilla, putting out her fine little blue-veined hands and caressing the old khaki sleeve. Well, then you're just going to stay with me and get rested. There's no reason in the world why you shouldn't. No, indeed, said Lehman Gage, drawing himself up bravely. I couldn't think of it, it wouldn't be right, but I certainly thank you with all my heart for what you have done for me tonight, I really must go at once. But where, she asked pathetically, as if he belonged to her, sliding her hands detainingly down to his big rough ones. Oh, anywhere it doesn't matter, he said, holding her delicate little old hand in his with a look of sacred respect, as if a nice old angel had offered to hold hands with him. I'm a soldier, you know, and a few storms more or less won't matter, I'm used to it. Good night. He clasped her hands a moment and was about to turn away, but she held his fingers eagerly. You shall not go that way, she declared, out into the cold without any overcoat and no home to go to. Your hands are hot too, I believe you have a fever. You're going to stay here tonight and have a good sleep and a warm breakfast, and then, if you must go, all right. My spare bed is all made up, and there's a fire in the Franklin Heater, the room's all warm as toast, and Mary put a big bouquet of chrysanthemums up there. If you don't sleep there it will be all wasted. You must stay. No, it wouldn't be right, he shook his head again and smiled wistfully. What would people say? Say, why, they've got it in the paper that you're to be here, at least, that dicks to be here. They'll think you're my nephew and think nothing else about it. Besides, I guess I have a right to have company if I like. If there was any way I could pay you, said the young man, but I haven't a scent to my name and no telling how long before I will have anything. I really couldn't accept any such hospitality. Oh, that's all right, said Miss Marilla cheerily. You can pay me if you like some time when you get plenty, or perhaps you'll take me in when I'm having a hard time. Anyhow you're going to stay, I won't take no for an answer. I've been disappointed and disappointed about dicks coming, and me having no one to show for all the years of the war, just making sweaters for the world it seemed like, with no one belonging to me. And now I've got a soldier and I'm going to keep him at least for one night. Nobody's to know but you're my own nephew, and I haven't got to go around the town, have I, telling that dick didn't care enough for his old country aunt to come out and take dinner with her? It's nothing to them as it if they think he came and stayed overnight too, or even a few days, nobody'll be any the wiser and I'll take a lot more comfort. I'd like to accommodate you, altered the soldier, but you know I really ought. Suddenly the big fellow was seized with a fit of sneezing, and the sick sore thrills danced all down his back and slapped him in the face and pricked him in the throat and banged against his head. He dropped weakly down in a chair and got out the discourages looking handkerchief that ever a soldier carried. It looked as if it might have washed the decks on the way over, or wiped off shoes and dapless it had. And it left a dull streak of olive drab dust on his cheek and chin when he had finished polishing off the last sneeze and lifted his suffering eyes to his hostess. You're sick, declared Miss Marilla, with a kind of satisfaction, as if now she had got something she could really take hold of. I've thought it all the evening I first laid it to the wind in your face, for I knew you weren't the drinking kind, and then I thought maybe you'd had to be up all last night or something. Lack of sleep makes eyes look that way, but I believe you've got the grip, and I'm going to put you to bed and give you some homeopathic medicine. Come, tell me the truth, aren't you chilly? With a half sheepish smile the soldier admitted that he was, and a big involuntary shudder ran over his tall frame with the admission. Well, it's high time we got to work, there's plenty of hot water, and you go up to the bathroom and take a hot bath. I'll put a hot water bag in the bed and get it good and warm, and I've got a long warm flannel nightgown I guess you can get on. It was made for my grandmother and she was a big woman. Come, we'll go right upstairs. I can come down and shut up the house while you're taking your bath. The soldier protested, but Miss Marilla swept all before her. She locked the front door resolutely and put the chain on. She turned out the parlor light and chugged the young man before her to the stairs. But I oughten to. He protested again with one foot on the first step. I'm an utter stranger. Well, what's that? said Miss Marilla crisply. I was a stranger and ye took me in. When it comes to that, we're all strangers. Come, hurry up, you ought to be in bed. You'll feel like a new man when I get you tucked up. You're awfully good, he murmured, stumbling up the stairs with a sick realization that he was giving way to the little imps of chills and thrills that were dancing over him, that he was all in, and in a few minutes more he would be a contemptible coward, letting alone old woman fuss over him this way. Miss Marilla turned up the light and threw back the covers of the spare bed, sending a whiff of lavender through the room. The Franklin heater glowed cheerfully, and the place was as warm as toast. There was something sweet and home-like in the old-fashioned room, with his strange ancient-framed photographs of people long gone, and its plain but fine old mahogany. The soldier raised his bloodshot eyes and looked about with a thankful wish that he was well enough to appreciate it all. Miss Marilla had pulled open a drawer and produced a long fine flannel garment of nondescript fashion, and from a closet she drew out a long pink bathrobe and a pair of felt slippers. There, I guess you can get those on. She bustled into the bathroom, turned on the hot water, and heaped big white bath-towels and sweet-scented soap upon him. In a kind of days of thankfulness he stumbled into the bathroom and began his bath. He hadn't had a bath like that in. Was it two years? Somehow the hot water held down the nasty little sick thrills and cut out the chills for the time. It was wonderful to feel clean and warm, and smell the freshness of the towels and soap. He climbed into the big nightgown, which also smelled of lavender, and came out presently with the felt slippers on his feet and the pink bathrobe trailing around his shoulders. There was a meek, conquered expression on his face, and he crept gratefully into the warm bed according to directions and snuggled down with that sick sore thrill of thankfulness that everybody who has ever had flew knows. Miss Marilla bustled up from downstairs with a second hot water bag in one hand and a thermometer in the other. I'm going to take your temperature, she said briskly, and stuck the thermometer into his unresisting mouth. Somehow it was wonderfully sweet to be fussed over this way, almost like having a mother. He hadn't had such care since he was a little fellow in the hospital at prep school. I thought so, said Miss Marilla, casting a practice die at the thermometer a moment later. And you've got to lie right still and do as I say, or you'll have a time of it. I hate to think of what would have happened to you if I'd been weak enough to let you go off into the cold without any overcoat tonight. Oh, I'd have walked it off likely. Faintly spoke the old Adam in the sleepy sick soldier, but he knew as he spoke that he was lying, and he knew Miss Marilla knew it also. He would have laughed if it hadn't been too much trouble. It was wonderful to be in a bed like this and be warm, and that aching his back against the hot water bag, it almost made his head stop aching. In almost no time at all he was asleep. He never realized when Miss Marilla brought a glass and fed him medicine. He opened his mouth obediently when she told him and went right on sleeping. Bless his heart, she said. He must have been all worn out, and she turned the light low and gathering up his chair full of clothes, slipped away to the bathroom, where presently they were all except the shoes soaking in strong hot soap suds. Miss Marilla had gone downstairs to stir up the fire and put on irons, but she took the precaution to close all the blinds on the amber side of the house and pull down the shades. Mary had no need ever to find out what she was doing. The night wore on and Miss Marilla wrought with happy heart and willing hands. She was doing something for somebody who really needed it, and who, for the time being, had no one else to do it for him. He was hers exclusively to be served this night. It was years since she had had anybody of her own to care for, and she luxuriated in the service. Every hour she slipped up to feel his forehead, listened to his breathing and give him his medicine, and then slipped down to the kitchen again to her ironing. Garment by garment the soldier's meager outfit came from the steaming suds, then was conveyed to the kitchen, where it hung on an improvised line over the range and got itself dry enough to be ironed and patched. It was a work of love, and therefore it was done perfectly. When morning dawned the soldier's outfit, thoroughly renovated and pressed almost beyond recognition, lay on a chair by the spare room window, and Miss Marilla in her dark blue surge morning dress lay tidally down on the outside of her bed to take forty winks, but even then she could hardly get to sleep. She was so excited thinking about her guest and wondering whether he would feel better when he awoke or whether she ought to send for a doctor. A horse coughed roused her an hour later, and she went with speed to her patient, and found him tossing at battling in his sleep with some imaginary foe. I don't owe you a cent any longer, he declared fiercely. I paid it all, even to the interest, while I was in France, and there's no reason why I shouldn't tell you just what I think of you, you can go to thunder with your kind offers. I'm off you for life, and then the big fellow turned with a groan of anguish and buried his face in his pillow. Miss Marilla paused in horror, thinking she had intruded upon some secret meditation, but as she waited on tiptoe and breathless in the hall, she heard the steady horse breathing keep on, and knew he was still asleep. He did not rouse more than to open bloodshot unseeing eyes and close them again when she loudly stirred his medicine in the glass and held the spoon to his lips. As before he obediently opened his mouth and swallowed and went on sleeping. She stood a moment anxiously watching him, she did not know just what she ought to do, perhaps he was going to have pneumonia, perhaps she ought to send for the doctor, and yet there were complications about that. She would be obliged to explain a lot, or else lie to the neighborhood, and he might not like it for her to call a doctor while he was asleep. If she only had someone with whom to advise. On ordinary question she always consulted Mary Amber, but by the very nature of the case, Mary Amber was out of this. Besides, in half an hour Mary Amber very discreetly put herself beyond a question, outside of any touch with Miss Marilla's visitor, by taking herself off in her little car for a short visit to a college friend over in the next county. It was plain that Mary Amber did not care to subject herself to further contact with the young soldier. He might be dick, or he might not be dick. It was none of her business while she was visiting Jeanette Clark, so she went away quite hurriedly. Miss Marilla heard the purr of the engine, and the little brown car started down the hedged driveway, and watched the flight with a sense of satisfaction. She had an intuition that Mary Amber was not in favor of her soldier, and she had a guilty sense of hiding the truth from her dear young friend, that made her breathe more freely as she watched Mary Amber's flight. Moreover, it was with a certain self-approachful relief that she noted the little brown suitcase that lay at Mary Amber's feet as she slid past Miss Marilla's house without looking up. Mary Amber was going away for the day at least, probably overnight, and by that time the question of the soldier would be settled one way or the other without Mary Amber's having to worry about it. Miss Marilla ordered a piece of beef and brewed a cup of the most delicious broth which she took upstairs. She managed to get her soldier awake enough to swallow it, but it was plain that he did not in the least realize where he was, and seemed well content to close his eyes and drowse away once more. Miss Marilla was deeply troubled. Some pricks from the old time-worn adage beginning, oh what a tangled web we weave, began to stab her conscience, if only she had not allowed those paragraphs to go into the county paper. No, that was not the real trouble at all, if only she had not dragged in another soldier and made Mary Amber believe he was her nephew. Such an old fool, just because she couldn't bear the mortification of having people know her nephew, hadn't cared enough for her to come and see her when he was close at hand. But she was well punished, here she had a strange sick man on her hands and no end of responsibility, oh if only she hadn't asked him in. Yet as she stood watching the quick little throb in his neck above the old flannel nightgown and the long curly sweep of the dark lashes on his hot cheek as he slept, her heart cried out against that wish. No, a thousand times no, if she had not asked him in, he might have been in some hospital by this time cared for by strangers. And she would have been alone with empty hands, getting her own solitary dinner, or sewing on the aprons for the orphanage, with nothing in the world to do that really mattered for anybody. Somehow her heart went out to this stranger boy with a great yearning, and he had come to mean what her own, or what her own ought to have been to her, she wouldn't have him elsewhere for anything, she wanted him right where he was for her to care for, something at last that needed her, something she could love and tend, even if it were only for a few days. And she was sure she could care for him, she knew a lot about sickness, people sent for her to help them out, and her wonderful nursing had often saved a life where the doctor's remedies had failed. She felt sure this was only a severe case of flu that had taken a fierce hold on the system, thorough rest, careful nursing, nourishing broth, and some of her homeopathic remedies would work the charm. She would try it a little longer and see, if his temperature wasn't higher than the last time, it would be perfectly safe to get along without a doctor. She put the thermometer between his relaxed lips and held it there firmly round it until she was sure it had been there long enough. Then she carried it softly over to the front window and studied it. No, it had not risen, in fact it might be a fifth of a degree lower. Well, she would venture it a little while longer, for two days Miss Marilla cared for her stranger soldier as only a born nurse like herself could care, and on the third morning he rewarded her by opening his eyes and looking about. Then meeting her own anxious gaze, he gave her a weak smile. I've been sick, he said, as if stating an astonishing fact to himself. I must have given you a lot of trouble. Not a bit of it, you dear child, said Miss Marilla, and then stooped and brushed his forehead with her lips in a motherly kiss. I'm so glad you're better. She passed her hand like soft old fallen rose leaves over his forehead, and it was moist. She felt of his hands, and they were moist too. She took his temperature, and it had gone down almost to normal. Her eyes were shining with more than professional joy and relief. He had become to her in these hours of nursing and anxiety as her own child, 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 Fort Knightley 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 Grib 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 days 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. Mary was radiant as the sunny morning in a little red tan, 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 raps and come with me for a little while. I know a place where the shadows melt slowly and the frosts 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 to transparent even to evade the question. No, why, I, he, my nephew. 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 patted 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 floor in the big flannel nightgown, which hung out from him with the outlines of a fat old ante, and dragged down from one bronzed shoulder rakeishly. 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 new 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 coffee pot 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 ablutions. Miss Marilla put down her tray and stood with tears in her eyes, waiting for him to return, trying to think of 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 pulled 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 rosely fingers and 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 note paper he found there. Dear wonderful little mother, he wrote, I can't stay here any longer, it isn't right, but I'll be back someday to thank you if everything goes all right, sincerely, your boy. 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 days 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 about 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 going. Will you send that, collect? he asked the operator when he had finished writing. The girl took the form and read it carefully. Arthur J. Watkins Esquire, La Salle Street, Chicago, Illinois. Please negotiate a loan of five hundred dollars for me, using Old House as collateral, wire money immediately, Little Silverton, entirely out of funds, have been sick, leave and gauge. 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 weight, 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 lawyers 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 gauge 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 are you 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 and thyme 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. What becomes of the message if it comes while you're away, he asked feverishly. Oh, it'll be repeated, she replied easily. You can come back by and by, about two o'clock or later and maybe it'll be here, I gotta lock up now. Lehman Gage dragged himself to his feet and looked daisily about him, then he staggered out on the street. The sun hit him in the eyes again in a way that made him sick, and the wind caught his sleeves and ran down his collar gleefully. The girl shut the door with a click and turned the key, eyeing him doubtfully. He seemed to her very stupid for a soldier. If he had given her half a chance she would have been friendly to him, she watched him drag down the street with an amused contempt, then turned to her belated lunch. Lehman Gage walked on down the road a little way and then began to feel as if he couldn't stand the cold a second longer, though he knew he must. His heart was behaving strangely, seeming to be absent from his body for whole seconds at a time and then returning with leaps and bounds that almost suffocated him. He paused and looked around for a place to sit down, and finding none dropped down on the frozen ground at the roadside. It occurred to him that he ought to go back now while he was able, for he was fast getting where from sheer weariness he couldn't walk. He rested a moment and then stumbled up and back toward Little Silverton, automobiles passed him and he remembered thinking if he weren't so sick and strange in his head he would try to stand in the road and stop one and get them to carry him somewhere. He had often done that in France or even in this country during the war, but just now it seemed that he couldn't do that either. He had set out to prove to Mary Amber that he was a man and a soldier, and holding up automobiles wouldn't be compatible with that idea, then he realized that all this was crazy thinking that Mary Amber had gone to Thunder and so had he and it didn't matter anyway. All that mattered was for him to get that money and go back and pay Miss Marilla for taking care of him, and then for him to take the next train back to the city and get to a hospital if he could only hold out long enough for that. But things were fast getting away from him. His head was hot and in a whirl and his feet were so cold he thought they must be dead. Without realizing it he walked by the telegraph office and on down the road toward Perlingbrook again. The telegraph girl watched him from the window of the tiny bakery where she ate her lunch. There goes that poor boob now, she said, with her mouth full of pie à la mode. He gets my goat, I hope he doesn't come back, he'll never get no answer to that telegram he sent. People ain't going round picking up $500 to send to broke soldiers these days. They got him all in Liberty Bonds. Say Jess, give me one more of them chocolate eclairs won't you, I gotta get back. About that time Lehman Gage had found a log by the wayside and sunk down permanently upon it. He had no more breath to carry him on and no more ambition. If Mary Amber had gone to thunder why should he care whether he got an answer to his telegram or not. She was only another girl anyway, girl, his enemy, and he sank into a blue stupor with his elbows on his cold, cold knees and his face hidden in his hands. He had forgotten the shivers now. They had taken possession of him and made him one with them. It might be after all that he was too hot and not too cold. And there was a strange burning pain in his chest when he tried to breathe, so he wouldn't breathe. What was the use? End of chapter 5