Back from the Great War, a penniless and disillusioned young soldier finds himself in the home of Miss Marilla Chadwick, a sweet old lady who is expecting her nephew for dinner. Mary Amber, Miss Marilla's neighbor, is also there. He hates girls. She hates men. What will be the result? He will fight girl in the concrete!
By : Grace Livingston Hill (1865 - 1947)
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“And you don’t think maybe I ought to have had lemon custard to go with the pumpkin instead of the mince?”
Miss Marilla Chadwick turned from her anxious watching at the kitchen window to search Mary Amber’s clear young eyes for the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
“Oh, no, I think mince is much better. All men like mince-pie, it’s so—sort of comprehensive, you know.”
Miss Marilla turned back to her window, satisfied.
“Well, now, if he came on that train, he ought to be in sight around the bend of the road in about three minutes,” she said tensely. “I’ve timed it often when folks were coming out from town, and it always takes just six minutes to get around the bend of the road.”
All through the months of the Great War Miss Marilla had knit and bandaged and emergencied and canteened with an eager, wistful look in her dreamy gray eyes, and many a sweater had gone to some needy lad with the little thrilling remark as she handed it over to the committee:
“I keep thinking, what if my nephew Dick should be needing one, and this just come along in time?”
But when the war was over, and most people had begun to use pink and blue wool on their needles, or else cast them aside altogether and tried to forget there ever had been such a thing as war, and the price of turkeys had gone up so high that people forgot to be thankful the war was over, Miss Marilla still held that wistful look in her eyes, and still spoke of her nephew Dick with bated breath and a sigh. For was not Dick among those favored few who were to remain and do patrol work for an indefinite time in the land of the enemy, while others were gathered to their waiting homes and eager loved ones? Miss Marilla spoke of Dick as of one who still lingered on the border-land of terror, and who laid his young life a continuous sacrifice for the good of the great world.
A neat paragraph to that effect appeared in The Springhaven Chronicle, a local sheet that offered scant news items and fat platitudes at an ever-increasing rate to a gullible and conceited populace, who supported it because it was really the only way to know what one’s neighbors were doing. The paragraph was the reluctant work of Mary Amber, the young girl who lived next door to Miss Marilla and had been her devoted friend since the age of four, when Miss Marilla used to bake sugar cookies for her in the form of stogy men with currant eyes and outstretched arms.
Mary Amber remembered Nephew Dick as a young imp of nine who made a whole long, beautiful summer ugly with his torments. She also knew that the neighbors all round about had memories of that summer when Dick’s parents went on a Western trip and left him with his Aunt Marilla. Mary Amber shrank from exposing her dear friend to the criticisms of such of the readers of The Springhaven Chronicle as had memories of their cats tortured, their chickens chased, their flower-beds trampled, their children bullied, and their windows broken by the youthful Dick.
But time had softened the memories of that fateful summer in Miss Marilla’s mind, and, besides, she was sorely in need of a hero. Mary Amber had not the heart to refuse to write the paragraph, but she made it as conservative as the circumstances allowed.
But now, at last, among the latest to be sent back, Lieutenant Richard Chadwick’s division was coming home!
Miss Marilla read in the paper what day they would sail, and that they were expected to arrive not later than the twenty-ninth; and, as she read, she conceived a wild and daring plan. Why should not she have a real, live hero herself? A bit belated, of course, but all the more distinguished for that. And why should not Mary Amber have a whole devoted soldier boy of her own for the village to see and admire? Not that she told Mary Amber that, oh, no! But in her mind’s vision she saw herself, Mary Amber, and Dick all going together to church on Sunday morning, the bars on his uniform gleaming like the light in Mary Amber’s hazel eyes. Miss Marilla had one sudden pang of fear when she thought that perhaps he would not wear his uniform home, now that everybody else was in citizen’s clothing; then her sweet faith in the wholesomeness of all things came to her rescue, and she smiled in relief. Of course he would wear it to come home; that would be too outrageous not to, when he had been a hero. Of course he would wear it the first few days. And that was a good reason why she must invite him at once to visit her instead of waiting until he had been to his home and been demobilized. She must have him in his uniform. She wanted the glory of it for her own brief share in that great time of uplifting and sacrifice that was so fast going into history.
So Miss Marilla had hastened into the city to consult a friend who worked in the Red Cross and went out often to the wharves to meet the incoming boats. This friend promised to find out just when Dick’s division was to land, to hunt him up herself, and to see that he had the invitation at once. “See that he came,” she put it, with a wise reservation in her heart that the dear, loving soul should not be disappointed.
And now, the very night before, this friend had called Miss Marilla on the telephone to say that she had information that Dick’s ship would dock at eight in the morning. It would probably be afternoon before he could get out to Springhaven; so she had better arrange to have dinner about half past five. So Miss Marilla, with shining eyes and heart that throbbed like a young girl’s, had thrown her cape over her shoulders and hastened in the twilight through the hedge to tell Mary Amber.
Mary Amber, trying to conceal her inward doubts, had congratulated Miss Marilla and promised to come over the first thing in the morning to help get dinner. Promised also, after much urging, almost with tears on the part of Miss Marilla, to stay and help eat the dinner afterward in company with Miss Marilla and the young lieutenant. From this part of her promise Mary Amber’s soul recoiled, for she had no belief that the young leopard with whom she had played at the age of ten could have changed his spots in the course of a few years, or even covered them with a silver bar. But Mary Amber soon saw that her presence at that dinner was an intrinsic part of Miss Marilla’s joy in the anticipation of the dinner; and, much as she disliked the position of being flung at the young lieutenant in this way, she promised. After all, what did it matter what he thought of her anyway, since she had no use for him? And then, she could always quietly freeze him whenever Miss Marilla’s back was turned. And Mary Amber could freeze with her hazel eyes when she tried.
So quite early in the morning Miss Marilla and Mary Amber began a cheerful stir in Miss Marilla’s big sunny kitchen, and steadily, appetizingly, there grew an array of salads and pies and cakes and puddings and cookies and doughnuts and biscuits and pickles and olives and jellies; while a great bird stuffed to bursting went through the seven stages of its final career to the oven.
But now it was five o’clock. The bird with brown and shining breast was waiting in the oven, “done to a turn;” mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, squash, succotash, and onions had received the finishing-touches, and had only to be “taken up.” Cranberries and pickles and celery and jelly gave the final touches to a perfect table, and the sideboard fairly groaned under its load of pies and cake. One might have thought a whole regiment were to dine with Miss Marilla Chadwick that day, from the sights and smells that filled the house. Up in the spare room the fire glowed in a Franklin heater, and a geranium glowed in a west window between spotless curtains to welcome the guest; and now there was nothing left for the two women to do but the final anxiety.
Mary Amber had her part in that, perhaps even more than her hostess and friend; for Mary Amber was jealous for Miss Marilla, and Mary Amber was youthfully incredulous. She had no trust in Dick Chadwick, even though he was an officer and had patrolled an enemy country for a few months after the war was over.
Mary Amber had slipped over to her own house when she finished mashing the potatoes, and changed her gown. She was putting little squares of butter on the bread-and-butter plates now, and the setting sun cast a halo of burnished light over her gold hair, and brightened up the silk of her brown gown with its touches of wood-red. Mary Amber was beautiful to look upon as she stood with her butterknife deftly cutting the squares and dropping them in just the right spot on the plates. But there was a troubled look in her eyes as she glanced from time to time at the older woman over by the window. Miss Marilla had given over all thought of work, and was intent only on the road toward the station. It would seem as if not until this moment had her great faith failed her, and the thought come to her that perhaps he might not come.
“You know, of course, he might not get that train,” she said meditatively. “The other leaves only half an hour later. But she said she’d tell him to take this one.”
“That’s true, too,” said Mary Amber cheerily. “And nothing will be hurt by waiting. I’ve fixed those mashed potatoes so they won’t get soggy by being too hot, and I’m sure they’ll keep hot enough.”
“You’re a good, dear girl, Mary Amber,” said Miss Marilla, giving her a sudden impulsive kiss. “I only wish I could do something great and beautiful for you.”
Miss Marilla caught up her cape, and hurried toward the door.
“I’m going out to the gate to meet him,” she said with a smile. “It’s time he was coming in a minute now, and I want to be out there without hurrying.”
She clambered down the steps, her knees trembling with excitement. She hoped Mary Amber had not looked out of the window. A boy was coming on a bicycle; and, if he should be a boy with a telegram or a special-delivery letter, she wanted to read it before Mary Amber saw her. Oh, how awful if anything had happened that he couldn’t come to-day! Of course, he might come later to-night, or to-morrow; and a turkey would keep, though it was never so good as the minute it was taken out of the oven.
The boy was almost to the gate now, and—yes, he was going to stop. He was swinging one leg out with that long movement that meant slowing up. She panted forward with a furtive glance back at the house. She hoped Mary Amber was looking at the turkey and not out of the window.
It seemed that her fingers had suddenly gone tired while she was writing her name in that boy’s book, and they almost refused to tear open the envelope as the boy swung on his wheel again and vanished down the road. She had presence of mind enough to keep her back to the house and the telegram in front of her as she opened it covertly, trying to keep the attitude of still looking eagerly down the road, while the typewritten brief message got itself across to her tumultuous mind.
“Impossible to accept invitation. Have other engagements. Thanks just the same...
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