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.
“(Signed)
“Lieutenant Richard H. Chadwick.”
Miss Marilla tore the yellow paper hastily, and crumpled it into a ball in her hands as she stared down the road through brimming tears. She managed an upright position; but her knees were shaking under her, and a gone feeling came in her stomach. Across the sunset skies in letters of accusing size there seemed to blaze the paragraphs from The Springhaven Chronicle, copied afterwards in the county Gazette, about Miss Marilla Chadwick’s nephew, Lieutenant Richard H. Chadwick, who was expected at his aunt’s home as soon as he landed in this country after a long and glorious career in other lands, and who would spend the week-end with his aunt, and “doubtless be heard from at the Springhaven Club House before he left.” Her throat caught with a queer little sound like a groan. Still, with her hand grasping the front gate convulsively, Miss Marilla stood and stared down the road, trying to think what to do, how to word a paragraph explaining why he did not come, how to explain to Mary Amber so that that look of sweet incredulousness should not come into her eyes.
Then suddenly, as she stared through her blur of tears, there appeared a straggling figure, coming around the bend of the road by the Hazard house; and Miss Marilla, with nothing at all in her mind but to escape from the watchful, loving eyes of Mary Amber for a moment longer, till she could think what to say to her, staggered out the gate and down the road toward the person, whoever it was, that was coming slowly up the road.
On stumbled Miss Marilla, nearer and nearer to the oncoming man, till suddenly through a blur of tears she noticed that he wore a uniform. Her heart gave a leap, and for a moment she thought it must be Dick; that he had been playing her a joke by the telegram, and was coming on immediately to surprise her before she had a chance to be disappointed. It was wonderful how the years had done their halo work for Dick with Miss Marilla.
She stopped short, trembling, one hand to her throat. Then, as the man drew nearer and she saw his halting gait, saw, too, his downcast eyes and whole dejected attitude, she somehow knew it was not Dick. Never would he have walked to her home in that way. There had been a swagger about little Dick that could not be forgotten. The older Dick, crowned now with many honors, would not have forgotten to hold his head high.
Unconscious of her attitude of intense interest she stood with hand still fluttering at her throat, and eyes brightly on the man as he advanced.
When he was almost opposite to her, he looked up. He had fine eyes and good features; but his expression was bitter for one so young, and in the eyes there was a look of pain.