As Lyman 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 racked. 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 you 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 have enjoyed it. I
shall always thank God that He sent you along just then.”
“Well, I certainly have cause 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 sore 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 Lyman 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 to-night. 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 to-night 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 as warm as toast, and Mary put a big bouquet of
chrysanthemums up there. If you don’t sleep there, it will all be
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 Dick’s 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 cent 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, sometime 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 Dick’s
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, is 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,” faltered 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
discouragedest-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, as doubtless 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 night last night or something; lack of sleep makes eyes
look that way; but I believe you’ve got the grippe, 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 grandmother,
and she was a big woman. Come, we’ll go right up-stairs. 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 shoved the young man before her to the stairs.
“But I oughtn’t 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 a lone, 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 warm as toast. There was
something sweet and homelike in the old-fashioned room with its queer,
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 felt 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
forth 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 daze
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 forth presently with the felt slippers
on the front of 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 grippe knows.
Miss Marilla bustled up from down-stairs 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 practised eye at the
thermometer a moment later. “You’ve got quite a fever; 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 what would have happened to you if I’d been weak enough
to let you go off into the cold without any overcoat to-night.”
“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 ache in 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 chairful of clothes, slipped
away to the bathroom, where presently they were all, except the shoes,
soaking in strong, hot soap-suds, and Miss Marilla had gone down-stairs
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 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, listen 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 meagre
outfit came from the steaming suds, 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 serge
morning-dress lay tidily 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 hoarse cough roused her an hour later, and she went with speed to
her patient, and found him tossing and battling in his sleep with some
imaginary foe.
“I don’t owe you a cent any longer!” he declared fiercely. “I’ve 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 hoarse breathing keep on, and knew that
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 some one with whom to advise! On
ordinary questions 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
runabout 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 Jeannette
Clark; so she went away quite hurriedly. Miss Marilla heard the purr of
the engine as 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-reproachful 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 beef-tea, which she took up-stairs. 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, “O 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 her
own--or what her own ought to have been to her. She wouldn’t have him
otherwhere 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 grippe that had taken 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 them 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 strange 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
petted 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 dosed
him, and fed him, and read him to sleep--and Miss Marilla could read
well, too; she was always asked to read the chapter at the Fortnightly
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 entitled grippe 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 daze 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.