Mary was radiant as the sunny morning in a little red tam, and her cheeks as red as her hat from the drive across country. She appeared at the kitchen door quite in her accustomed way just as Miss Marilla was lifting the dainty tray to carry her boy’s breakfast up-stairs, and she almost dropped it in her dismay. “I’ve had the grandest time!” breezed Mary gayly. “You don’t know how beautiful the country is, all wonderful bronze and brown with a purple haze, and a frost like silver lace this morning when I started. You’ve simply got to put on your wraps and come with me for a little while. I know a place where the shadows melt slowly, and the frost will not be gone yet. Come quick! I want you to see it before[92] it’s too late. You’re not just eating your breakfast, Auntie Rill! And on a tray, too! Are you sick?”
Miss Marilla glanced guiltily down at the tray, too transparent even to evade the question.
“No, why—I—he—my neph——” then she stopped in hopeless confusion, remembering her resolve not to tell a lie about the matter, whatever came.
Mary Amber stood up and looked at her, her keen young eyes searching and finding the truth.
“You don’t mean to tell me that man is here yet? And you waiting on him!”
There were 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 fairy would arrive and waft him away on a breath. All his perfidy in getting sick on a strange gentlewoman’s hands and[93] lying lazily in bed, letting her wait on him, was shown up in Mary Amber’s voice. It found its echo in his own strong soul. He had known all along that he had no business there, that he ought to have gone out on the road to die rather than betray the sweet hospitality of Miss Marilla by allowing himself to be a selfish, lazy slob—that was what he called himself as he hung over the banisters.
“Mary! Why, he has been very sick!”
“Sick?” There was a covert sneer in Mary Amber’s incredulous young voice; and then the conversation was suddenly blanketed by the closing of the hall door, and the sick soldier padded disconsolately back to bed, weak and dizzy, but determined. This was as good a time as any. He ought to have gone before!
He trailed across the room in the big[94] flannel nightgown that hung out from him with the outlines of a fat old auntie and dragged down from one bronzed shoulder rakishly. His hair was sticking up wildly, and he felt of his chin fiercely, and realized that he was wearing a growth of several days.
In a neat pile on a chair he found his few clean garments, and struggled into them. His carefully ironed uniform hung in the closet; and 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.
[95]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[96] 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 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, and 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[97] with a big comfortable, 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 up 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;[98] 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-up bed, and pull down the shades for him to take a nap after the exertion of getting dressed; and he caught her hand, and kissed it fervently as she was leaving him; and cherished her murmured “Dear child!” and the pressure of her old-rose-leaf fingers in parting. Then he closed his eyes, and let her slip away[99] to the kitchen where he knew she would be some time preparing something delicious for his 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 some day 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 looking-glass, 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[100] 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, and held ............