Treasured Brides Collection (10 page)

Molly Poke was established in the kitchen downstairs now, and Miss Marilla hovered over her anxiously, leaving the entertaining of the invalid much to Mary Amber, who wrote neat business letters for him, telling his lawyer friend to do just as he pleased with everything till he got back; and who read stories and bits of poems, and played chess with him as soon as the doctor allowed. Oh, they were having a happy time, the three of them. Miss Marilla hovered over the two as if they had been her very own children.

And then, one lovely winter afternoon, when they were discussing how perhaps they might take the invalid out for a ride in the car someday next week, the fly dropped into the ointment.

It was as lovely a fly as ever walked on tiny French heels, and came in a limousine lined with gray duvetyn and electrically heated and graced with hothouse rosebuds in a slender glass behind the chauffeur’s right ear. She picked her way daintily up the snowy walk, surveyed the house and grounds critically as far as the Amber hedge, and rang the bell peremptorily.

Miss Marilla went to the front door, for Molly Poke was busy making cream puffs and couldn’t stop. When she saw the little fly standing haughtily on the porch, swathed in a gorgeous moleskin cloak with a voluminous collar of tailless ermine, and a little toque made of coral velvet embroidered in silver, she thought right away of a spider. A very beautiful spider, it’s true, but all the same, a spider.

And when the beautiful red lips opened and spoke, she thought so all the more.

“I have come to see Lyman Gage,” she announced freezingly, looking at Miss Marilla with the glance one gives to a servant. Miss Marilla cast a frightened glance of discernment over the beautiful little face. For it was beautiful, there was no mistaking that, very perfectly beautiful, though it might’ve been only superficially so. Miss Marilla was not used to seeing skin that looked like soft roseleaves in baby perfection on a person of that age. Great baby eyes of blue, set wide, with curling dark lashes; eyebrows that seemed drawn by a fairy brush; lips of such ruby-red pout; and nose chiseled in warm marble. Peaches and cream floated through her startled mind, and it never occurred to her that it was not natural. Oh, the vision was beautiful, there was no doubt about that.

Miss Marilla closed the door and stood with her back to the stairs and a look of defiance upon her face. She had a fleeting thought of Mary and whether she ought to be protected. She had a spasm of fierce jealousy and a frenzy as to what she should do.

“You can step into the parlor,” she said in a tone that she hoped was calm, although she knew it was not cordial. “I’ll go up and see if he’s able to see you. He’s been very sick. The doctor hasn’t let him see any”—she paused, and eyed the girl defiantly—“any
strangers
.”

“Oh, that’ll be all right.” The girl laughed with a disagreeable tinkle. “I’m not a stranger. I’m only his fiancée.” But she pronounced “fiancée” in a way that Miss Marilla didn’t recognize at all, and she looked at her hard. It wasn’t
wife
, anyway, and it hadn’t sounded like
sister
or
cousin
. Miss Marilla looked at the snip—that was what she began to call her in her mind—and decided that she didn’t want her to see Lyman Gage at all. But, of course, Lyman Gage must be the one to decide that.

“What did you say your name was?” she asked bluntly.

For answer the girl brought out a ridiculous little silk bag with a clattering clasp and chain and took from it a tiny gold card case, from which she handed Miss Marilla a card. Miss Marilla adjusted her spectacles and studied it a moment, with one foot on the lower stairs.

“Well,” she said reluctantly, “he hasn’t seen anyone yet, but I’ll go and find out if you can see him. You can sit in the parlor.” She waved her hand again toward the open door and started upstairs.

The blood was beating excitedly through her ears, and her heart pounded in pitiful thuds. If this “snip” belonged to her soldier boy, she was sure she could never mother him again. She wouldn’t feel at home. And her thoughts were so excited that she did not know that the fur-clad snip was following her close behind until she was actually within the spare bedroom and holding out the card to her boy with a trembling, little, withered roseleaf hand.

The boy looked up with his wide, pleasant smile like a benediction and reached out for the card interestedly. He caught the look of panic on Miss Marilla’s face and the inscrutable one on Mary Amber’s. Mary had heard the strange voice below and arisen from her reading aloud to glance out the window. She now beat a precipitate retreat into the little sewing room, just off the spare bedroom. Then Lyman Gage realized another presence in the room and looked beyond to the door where stood Elinore Harrower, her big eyes watching him jealously from her swathing of gorgeous furs, while he slowly took in the situation.

It had been a common saying among his friends that no situation, however unexpected, ever found Lyman Gage off his guard, or ever saw him give away his own emotions. Like lightning, there flitted over his face now a sudden cloud, like a curtain, shutting out all that he had been the moment before, putting under lock and seal any like or dislike he might be feeling, allowing only the most cool courtesy to appear in his expression. Miss Marilla, watching him like a cat, could not tell whether he was glad or sorry, surprised or indignant or pleased. He seemed none of these.

He glanced with cool indifference toward the lovely vision smiling in the doorway now, ready to gush over him, and a stern dignity grew in the set of his jaws. But otherwise, he did not seem to have changed, and most casually, as if he had seen her but the week before, he remarked, “Oh! Is that you, Elinore? Seems to me you have chosen a cold day to go out. Won’t you sit down?” He motioned toward a stiff little chair that stood against the wall, though Mary Amber’s rocker was still waving back and forth from her hasty retreat.

Miss Marilla simply faded out of the room, although Gage said politely, “Don’t leave us, please.” But she was gone before the words were out of his mouth, and with a sudden feeling of weakness, he glanced around the room wildly and realized that Mary Amber was gone, too.

Mary Amber stood in the sewing room and wondered what she ought to do. For the other door of the sewing room was closed and barred by a heavy iron bed that had been put up for convenience during the soldier’s illness, and the only spot that was long enough to hold it was straight across the hall door. Obviously, Mary Amber could not get out of the sewing room without moving the bed, and she knew by experience of making it every morning that it squeaked most unmercifully when it was moved. Neither could she go out through the spare bedroom, for she felt that her appearance would cause no end of explanations. And equally, of course, she dared not shut the door because it would make a noise and call attention to her presence.

So Mary Amber tiptoed softly to the farthest end of the little room and stood rigidly silent, trying not to listen, yet all the more attuned and sensitive to whatever was going on in the next room. She fairly held her breath lest they should hear her and pressed her fingers upon her hot eyeballs as if that would shut out the sound.

“That’s scarcely the way I expected you to meet me, Lyme”—in the sweet lilt of Elinore Harrower’s pampered voice.

“I was scarcely expecting you, you know, after what has happened,” came chillingly in Lyman Gage’s voice, a bit high and hollow for his illness, and all the cooler for that.

“I couldn’t stay away when I knew you were ill, Lyme, dear!” The voice was honeyed sweet now.

“What had that to do with it?” The tone was almost vicious. “You wrote that we had grown apart, and it was true. You are engaged to another man.”

“Well, can’t I change my mind?” The tone was playful, kittenish. It smote Lyman Gage’s memory that he had been wont to call it teasing and enjoy it in her once upon a time.

“You’ve changed your mind once too often!” The sick man’s voice was tense in his weakness, and his brow was dark.

“Why Lyman Gage! I think you are
horrid
!” cried the girl, with a hint of indignant tears in her voice. “Here I come a long journey to see you when you’re sick, and you meet me that way and
taunt
me. It’s not like you. You don’t seem a bit glad to see me! Perhaps there’s someone else.” The voice had a taunt in it now, and an assurance that expected to win out in the end, no matter to what she might have to descend to gain her point.

But she had reckoned without knowledge, for Lyman Gage remembered the picture he had torn to bits in the dying light of the sunset and trampled in the road. Those same brilliant eyes, that soft-tinted cheek, those painted lips had smiled impudently up at him that way as he had ground them beneath his heel. And this was
Girl
, his natural enemy, who would play with him at her pleasure and toss him away when he was no longer profitable to her, expecting to find him ready at a word again when circumstances changed. He straightened up with sudden strength and caught her words with a kind of joyful triumph.

“Yes, there is
someone else
! Mary! Mary
Amber
!”

Mary Amber, trying not to hear, had caught her name, heard the sound in his voice like to the little chick that calls its mother when the hawk appears, and suddenly her fear vanished. She turned and walked with steady step and bright eyes straight into the spare bedroom, a smile upon her lips and a rose upon her cheek that needed no cosmetics to enhance its beauty.

“Did you call me—Lyman!” she said, looking straight at him with rescue in her eyes.

He put out his hand to her, and she went and stood by the bed, over across from the visitor who had turned and was staring amazedly, insolently at her now.

Lyman Gage put out his big, wasted hand and gathered Mary Amber’s hand in his, and
she let him
!

“Mary,” said Lyman Gage possessively, and there was both boldness and appeal in his eyes as he looked at her, “I want Miss Harrower to know you. Miss Amber, Miss Harrower.”

Elinore Harrower had risen, with one hand on the back of her chair and her crimson lips parted, a startled expression in her eyes. Her rich furs had fallen back and revealed a rich and vampish little frock beneath, but she was not thinking of her frock just then. She was looking from one to the other of the two before her.

“I don’t understand!” she said haughtily. “Did you know her before?”

Lyman Gage flashed a look at Mary for indulgence and answered happily.

“Our friendship dates back to when we were children and I spent a summer with my Aunt Marilla teasing Mary and letting the sawdust out of her dolls.” He gave a daring glance at Mary and found the twinkles in her eyes playing with the dimples at the corner of her mouth, and his fingers clung more warmly around hers.

The two were so absorbedly interested in this little comedy they were enacting that they had quite failed to notice its effect upon the audience. Elinore Harrower had gathered her fur robes about her and was fastening them proudly at her throat. Her dark eyes were two points of steel, and the little white teeth that bit into the pouting crimson under-lip looked vicious and suggestive.

“I did not understand,” said Elinore haughtily. “I thought you were among strangers and needed someone. I will leave you to your friends. You always did like simple country ways, I remember.” And she cast a withering glance around.

“Why, where is Aunt Rilla, Mary?” asked Lyman, innocently ignoring the sneer of his guest. “Aunt Marilla!” he raised his voice, looking toward the door. “Aunt Marilla, won’t you please come here?”

Miss Marilla, her heart a perfect tumult of joy to hear him call her that way, straightened up from her ambush outside the door and entered precipitately, just as the haughty guest was about to stalk from the room, if one so small and exquisite as Elinore can be said to stalk. The result was a collision that quite spoiled the effect of the exit, and the two ladies looked at each other for a brief instant, much as two cats might have done under similar circumstances.

Mary Amber’s eyes were dancing, and Lyman Gage wanted to laugh, but he controlled his voice.

“Aunt Marilla, this is Miss Harrower, a girl who used to be an old friend of mine, and she thinks she can’t stay any longer. Would you mind taking her down to the door? Good-bye, Elinore. Congratulations! And I hope you’ll be very happy!” He held out his free hand—the other still held Mary Amber’s, and the smile upon his lips was full of merriment. But Elinore Harrower ignored the hand and the congratulations, and drawing her fur mantle once more about her small haughty shoulders, she sailed from the room, her coral and silver toque held high and her little red mouth drooping with scorn and defeat. Miss Marilla, all hospitality now that she understood, offered tea and cake but was given no answer whatever. And so in joyous, wondering silence, she attended her soldier’s guest to the door.

Lyman Gage lay back on his pillows, his face turned away from Mary Amber, listening, but his hand still held Mary Amber’s. And Mary Amber, standing quietly by his side, listening, too, seemed to understand that the curtain had not fallen yet, not quite, upon the little play, for a smile wove in and out among the dimples near her lips and her eyes were dancing little happy lights of mirth. It was not until the front door shut upon the guest and they heard the motor’s soft
purr
as the car left the house that they felt the tenseness of the moment relax, and consciousness of their position stole upon them.

“Mary, Mary Amber,” whispered Lyman Gage softly, looking up into her face, “can you ever forgive me for all this?”

He held her hand, and his eyes pleaded for him. “But it’s all true. There
is
another one.
I love you
! And oh, I’m so tired. Mary Amber, can you forgive me—and—and love me, just a little bit?”

Down upon her knees went Mary Amber beside the bed, and gathered her soldier boy within her strong young arms, drawing his tired head upon her firm, sweet shoulder.

When Miss Marilla trotted back upstairs on her weary, glad feet and put her head in at the door fearfully to see how her boy had stood the strain of the visitor—and to berate herself for having allowed a stranger to come up without warning, she found them so. Mary Amber, soothing her patient to sleep by kisses on his tired eyelids, and the soldier’s big pale hand enfolding Mary’s little one contentedly, while the man’s low voice growled tenderly, “Mary, you are the only girl I ever really loved. I didn’t know there was a girl like you when I knew her.”