And, sure enough, after some further parley, Susan went to the door, and, with a half-defiant gesture, knocked the hook up out of the staple.
“Come along then, if you must!” she said, in scornful tones. Then she marched back till she stood beside me, angry resolution written all over her face and the cleaver in her hand.
A tall, dark figure, opaque against a gleaming background of moonlight and snowlight, was what I for a moment saw in the frame of the open doorway. Then, as he entered, shut and hooked the door behind him, and stood looking in a dazed way over at our lamplit group, I saw that he was a slender, delicately featured man, with a long beard of yellowish brown, and gentle eyes. He was clad as a soldier, heavy azure-hued caped overcoat and all, and I already knew enough of uniforms—cruel familiarity of my war-time infancy—to tell by his cap that he was an officer. He coughed again before a word was spoken. He looked the last man in the world to go about routing up peaceful households of a winter’s night.
“Well, now—what is your business?” demanded Aunt Susan. She put her hand on my shoulder as she spoke, something I had never known her to do before. I felt confused under this novel caress, and it seemed only natural that the stranger, having studied my Aunt’s face in a wistful way for a moment, should turn his gaze upon me. I was truly a remarkable object, with Aunt Susan’s hand on my shoulder.
“I could make no one hear at the other door. I saw the light through the window here, and came around,” the stranger explained. He sent little straying glances at the remains of the pig and at the weapon my Aunt held at her side, but for the most part looked steadily at me.
“That doesn’t matter,” said Aunt Susan, coldly.
“What do you want, now that you are here? Why did you come at all? What business had you to think that I ever wanted to lay eyes on you again? How could you have the courage to show your face here—in my house?”
The man’s shoulders shivered under their cape, and a wan smile curled in his beard. “You keep your house at a very low temperature,” he said with grave pleasantry. He did not seem to mind Aunt Susan’s hostile demeanor at all.
“I was badly wounded last September,” he went on, quite as if that was what she had asked him, “and lay at the point of death for weeks. Then they sent me North, and I have been in the hospital at Albany ever since. One of the nurses there, struck by my name, asked me if I had any relatives in her village—that is, Juno Mills. In that way I learned where you were living. I suppose I ought not to have come—against doctor’s orders—the journey has been too much—I have suffered a good deal these last two hours.”
I felt my Aunt’s hand shake a little on my shoulder. Her voice, though, was as implacable as ever.