When Lyman 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 furnished
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.”
Lyman Gage lost no time in gathering together every cent he could
scrape up. This was more than he had at first hoped, because of the
fact that he owned two houses in the big city in which he had landed;
and these houses, though old and small, happened to be located in the
vicinity of a great industrial plant that had sprung up since the end
of the war, and houses were going at soaring prices. They were snapped
up at once at a sum that was fabulous 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; and, when he turned away from the 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 forty-six cents left
in his pocket.
Suddenly, as he reflected that he had done the last thing there was
left that he now cared to do on earth, the noises of the great city got
hold upon his nerve, and tore and racked it.
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
traffic of the city 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, “PURLING BROOK.” 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 ever 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 that he had woven about
the girl he thought he loved better than any one 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: “Purling Brook. How much?”
“Fifty-six 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 sometime. 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 Purling Brook.
He stumbled off, and stood looking dazedly about him at the trig 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 salve, 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 travelled
upon. He looked beyond the groups of happy home-comers to where it
hurried away gustily down the track, even then preparing to stop at the
next near suburban station to deposit a few more home-comers. There on
that train went the only friend he felt he had in the world at present,
that grizzly conductor with his kindly eyes looking 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 drug-store 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 burnished 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 cab 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 were his soldier’s 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 sing-songs, still good to them because
they all knew it so well,
“There’s a long, long trail a-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 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!
After all those months of waiting! 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 needn’t 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 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 and 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 that 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 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; and
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 naïve, 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 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 be 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 oilcloth-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 his discouraged-looking uniform, he set his lips
grimly, and went down-stairs, 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.