Mary Amber was bearing in the great platter of golden-brown turkey when he first saw her, and had not heard him come down. She was entirely off her guard, with a sweet, serious intentness upon her work and a stray wisp of gold hair set afloat across the kitchen-flushed cheek. She looked so sweet and serviceable and true, with her lips parted in the pleasure of the final completion of 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 is true, with[46] all the grace of a young queen, but nevertheless an opponent, cold as a young icicle.
Miss Marilla with bright eyes and preternaturally pink cheeks spoke into the vast pause that suddenly surrounded them all, and her voice sounded strangely unnatural to herself.
“Dick, this is Mary Amber; I suppose you don’t remember her.”
And the young soldier, not yet quite recovered from that first sweet vision of Mary Amber, went forward with his belligerence to woman somewhat held in abeyance.
“You—have changed a good deal since then, haven’t you?” he managed to ask with his native quickness to say the right thing in an emergency.
“A good many years have passed,” she said, coolly putting out a reluctant hand to please Miss Marilla. “You[47] 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 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 with whom he was supposed to have played 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, to-morrow he would need another dinner, and all the to-morrows through which he might have to live. What was one[48] 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[49] the truth that he told, and he looked into her eyes, but saw that she did not believe him. Her dislike and distrust of the little boy Dick had come to the front. He saw that she believed that Dick had been boasting to his aunt of honors that were not his. A wave of anger swept over his face; yet somehow he could not summon his defiance. Somehow he wanted her to believe him.
They sat down at the beautiful table, and the turkey got in its work on his poor human sensibilities. The delicate perfume of the hot meat as it fell in large, flaky slices from Miss Marilla’s sharp knife, the whiff of the summer savory and sage and sweet marjoram in the stuffing, the smoothness of the mashed potatoes, the brownness of the candied sweet potatoes, all cried out to him and held him prisoner. The odor of the food brought a giddiness to his head, and the faintness of hunger attacked[50] him. A pallor grew under the tan of his face, and there were dark shadows under his nice eyes that quite touched Miss Marilla, and almost softened the hard look of distrust that had been growing around Mary Amber’s gentle lips.
“This certainly is great!” he murmured. “I don’t deserve to get in on anything like this, but I’m no end grateful.”
Mary Amber’s questioning eyes recalled him in confusion to his r?le of nephew in the house, and he was glad of the chance to bend his head while Miss Marilla softly asked a blessing on the meal. He had been wont 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[51] 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 thee with loving-kindness and tender mercies, so that thy youth is renewed like the eagle’s.”
An intense desire to put his head down on the table and cry came over him. The warmth of the room, the fragrance of the food, had made him conscious of an ache in every part of his body. His head was throbbing too, and he wondered what was the matter[52] with him. After all the harshness 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 r?le before he realized. He told of the voyage over and the people he had met, and he kept most distinctly away from anything personal, at least as far away as Mary Amber would let him. She with her keen, questioning eyes was always bringing up some question that was almost impossible for him to answer directly without treading on dangerous[53] ground, and it required skill indeed to turn her from it. Mary listened and marvelled, trying continually to trace in his face the lines of the 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 table-cloth. 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[54] 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 ride 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 a 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[55] 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 bearing 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, what ever became of Barker?” she requested, fixing her clear eyes on his face.
“Barker?” said Lyman Gage, puzzled and polite, then, remembering his r?le, “Oh, yes, Barker!” He laughed. “Great old Barker, wasn’t he?” He turned in troubled appeal to Miss Marilla.
[56]“Barker certainly was the cutest little guinea-pig I ever saw,” beamed M............