Stranger within the Gates

by Grace Livingston Hill

  "But why should your family care whether you go skating on Sunday? My soul! I never heard such nonsense!"

  "Well, it's not just the family, of course; there's God," said Rex reverently. "Sunday is a day set apart to the worship of God. I've always been brought up to make it different from other days, and I mean to do it, so we'll just leave that out. I'll go skating with you tomorrow, but not tonight! Now, come on. It must be suppertime."

  They walked home in almost entire silence, but as they turned into the drive where the sunset sent a rosy glow over the snowy lawn and made a gorgeous picture behind the lovely old house, Florimel said with a toss of her head and a deep, impatient sigh, "Well, I don't believe in Sunday, and I wasn't brought up that way, see? I certainly don't have to do everything you do."

  "No," said Rex sadly, "and, of course, I don't want to force my standards on you. But neither can I let down and take yours. Neither way is my idea of being happily married." Then he swung open the front door, held it wide for her, and entered into the delightful atmosphere of home, trying to cast off the heaviness that the last few minutes' conversation had cast over his spirits. After all, Florimel had been sweet when they started out. Perhaps little by little she would learn a few things. The misunderstanding was probably all due to the way she was brought up, or rather the way she was not brought up.

  Fae and Stan had the supper on the table when they got there and were just bringing in a great pot of hot chocolate. There were hot fried oysters that Fae had cooked, sandwiches, delightful fruit salad, and plenty of chocolate cake. There was a delicious smell of fried oysters and hot chocolate in the air. The walk had made Florimel hungry, and she sat down with quite an appetite, eating without uttering a word.

  It was a very quiet atmosphere. Everybody was trying to be on good behavior and say pleasant things that could not offend the strange new sister-in-law. Mary Garland had a strong sweetness in her face, and eyes full of peace, eyes that had forgotten entirely the unhappy interview of the morning because she had laid it all at her heavenly Father's feet in prayer and left it there.

  After the meal was over, they all picked up their dishes, marched out into the big clean kitchen with them, and proceeded to wash and dry them. All but Florimel. Rex had carried hers.

  "Have the servants left?" asked Florimel of Stan as she stood in the kitchen doorway and watched them in wonder. Stan was drying the silver in a businesslike way and putting it away in the sideboard drawers.

  "Left?" he looked at her with a puzzled frown. "Why, you couldn't induce them to leave. They're a part of the family. They think the world and all of Mother. No, they've just gone out to church, I guess. They always have Sunday afternoon off."

  "Mercy!" said Florimel. "Both of them at once? But why don't you just stack the dishes up and leave them to do when they get home?"

  "Oh, we like to do them," said Stan and went whistling off to the dining room with a handful of spoons to put away.

  Florimel went back and watched them all. Rex, too, with an apron Sylvia had tied around him, looking very masculine, polished away at the glasses as they came from their hot suds and passed through the hot rinsing water. But she didn't lift her hand to help. She considered that she had washed her share of dishes for the rest of her life and didn't care to get into any more of that sort of thing.

  "Now," said Mary Garland as she wrung out the clean dish towel she had been rinsing and hung it up on the rack, "you've just time for a nice little sing before we all go to church!" She said it with a smile that included Florimel, too, but that young woman met her advances like a stone wall, without a lifting of an eyelash.

  The rest, however, went cheerfully into the living room and began to sing hymns. Florimel, with curling lip, went also, because there seemed nothing else for her to do just at that moment and she hadn't as yet acquired a technique that could successfully extract Rex from this musical group, which he seemed so much to enjoy.

  So she dropped down in a big, comfortable chair and watched them disinterestedly, not seeming to take any pleasure at all in the very lovely music they were making. All of them had their instruments, playing and singing, too, with the exception, of course, of the two with their horns, who divided their time between playing and taking a turn at singing with their young, sweet voices. Florimel watched them curiously, as if they were a strange breed of animals she had never seen before. She looked at her young husband as if he, too, were an anomaly to her. She couldn't quite figure out what he saw in all the rest of them, and why, when he was old enough to get away from them all and from their straitlaced life that they had laid down for themselves, he didn't seem to want to go. It was all perplexing to her. She was only interested in it, of course, to know how to pry Rex away from it, and it was thus she studied them. And so the tender, lovely melodies and the precious, holy words did not touch her.

  At last Paul, looking to his watch, said, "Time we went to church, folks," and began to put his violin away. "Go get your bonnets on, ladies!" And he smiled in a general way and looked straight at Florimel.

  "Not me!" she said decidedly. "I never go to church. I couldn't be bored that much."

  Rex looked at her with a troubled glance and paused.

  "Well, I suppose I--" he began reluctantly.

  "Why, Rex," said his mother with hesitation, "if you want to go see your old friends--I heard you say so--you go, and I'll stay with Florimel." There was utter kindliness in the glance she gave her new daughter-in-law, but Florimel gave her only a look of hate.

  "Heck! No, you won't! I can stay by myself. It wouldn't be the first time, I guess. I thought I had a husband, but it seems he's got too much family. I don't want you to stay, and I won't stay here alone with you, that's certain. If Rex has got to go and see a lot of folks, I'll go with him. But heck! I didn't know I was going to let myself in for all this religious stuff! Church! Gosh! What have I come down to!"

  Rex had turned perfectly white, and the pupils of his eyes had purpley dark places in them like points of deep fire. He bowed his head and looked shamed. He lifted his miserable eyes in apology to the place where his mother had stood, but Mary Garland had gone quietly upstairs, and the others, too, had stolen away. Even Florimel had gone to get ready, presumably, and only Rex stood there alone, staring into the dying fire, which Paul had just banked away behind its brass screen for safety. There were things that that moment alone taught Rex, things greater perhaps than any other single moment in his life thus far had taught him. He was seeing the gate to Afterward slowly opening before his shrinking soul.

  They all came down presently, ready to go, quietly waiting at the door an instant, Florimel last, insolently stamping down as if she were very angry at them all.

  Rex, standing by the mantel with his elbow on the mantel shelf, his head resting sadly on his hand, watched them all file out and then desolately roused and came after, taking his hat and coat apathetically from the hall rack as he passed. He followed them out and walked along silently beside that little vixen of a wife and wondered why he ever got married. Why did anybody get married? What was there in it, anyway?

  The stars were very bright that Christmas Eve as they walked along together; together, and yet apart. One might almost think of angels up there somewhere gathering to come and make an announcement, winging their way from heights beyond mortal sight. There were snatches of sung carols from a distance, as little groups of young singers went about, from different organizations, various churches and schools.

  The air was so clear and cold that the melodies from other streets seemed something tangible like threads of crystal in the moonlight. And then high and clear and mellow there came chimes from a nearby church--"Silent night! Holy night!"--and they hushed even their low voices to hear it as they walked.

  Then at the next corner Rance Nelius met them and fell into line, walking with Sylvia as Paul fell back with his mother. Florimel heard Rance say, "I was hoping I'd meet you. I thought I'd like to go to church with you tonight!"
>
  And Florimel wondered. How did they all get that same urge to go to church? Did they really mean it? Could they possibly enjoy it, or was it just superstition?

  Then they entered the church and took their seats. Rex and Florimel had to sit across the aisle from the rest, for the church was very full. Presently Rex discovered Marcia Merrill and Natalie Sargent sitting two seats ahead, just where he could see their profiles, and the quiet sense of their reverent presence served to stir him more keenly to see the difference between the two girls who had been brought up as he had been and the girl he had chosen in his haste to be his lifelong companion. He almost groaned within himself with an unnamed dread of the future.

  The service was not long. There was some wonderful music and a short vivid Christmas message. Florimel listened to some of the music, not at all to the message. For she was studying the people around her and comparing the hats they wore with her own for smartness.

  But neither did Rex hear much of the message, for he was beginning to see his own rashness, and the knowledge was very bitter indeed. Perhaps if he had listened, he might have caught the meaning of Christmas for himself in all his youth and helplessness; he might have begun to see how he had been depending too much on his family and the way he had been brought up, the traditions of the Christian ages, and not at all on a personal Christ. Though he had been brought up to believe in Jesus Christ as his Savior, he had never as yet yielded his will and his whole life to Christ. His Christian life, such as it was, had consisted mostly in maintaining great general principles that his dearly beloved and respected family considered right, and that therefore he chose to consider right. But they had been to him just an atmosphere, a pleasant background and nothing more.

  If his family had been openly opposed to his marriage, if they had argued with him and berated him for marrying her, if they had been disagreeable to her and found fault with her, he would have been belligerent at once and defended her even in the things about which he did not agree with her. But they had been lovely to her. They had not reproached him. Even in the brief business talk his mother had had with him, in which she made plain to him the financial arrangements his father had left, she had been gentle and kind, even loving. And Florimel hadn't understood. She had been angry, said all those terrible things. Would he ever be able to make Florimel understand what a wonderful person his mother was and how his father had really been great and wise! And to think she dared suggest breaking his will! Oh, what had he done to his life and to his family, his dear family? He looked at those two girls ahead of him there in the church, those girls who had been close friends before he went away, and shrank from the idea of what they would think of him when they found out what kind of girl he had married.

  Tomorrow--no, tomorrow was Christmas--the next day he would have to go out and hunt a job. He went over in his mind all the possible places he could go where he might hope to get in. There were one or two friends, confidants of his dear father, who could have been counted on to make a place for his father's son in their prosperous business, that is, if he had finished college and been ready to go into the kind of life their business would require. He doubted if they would have a place for such as he was now. Office boy would likely be the best that they could offer. And how could he support a wife on the pay of an office boy? And such a wife as Florimel was evidently going to be. She would want continual money spent upon her, and always on things in which his own tastes could have no part with her.

  These plain facts came out in the open there in the church with Florimel sitting sullenly beside him, and those two old friends just ahead where he could see their sweet faces as they listened to the service. Several times during the past twenty-four hours things that Florimel had said in her wrath had made him suspect that he was facing a dubious future; and now, in this holy atmosphere, with sacred words and heavenly melodies in the air, with good Christian people all about him, and still the sound of Florimel's high, strident sneers in his memory, he had to face hard facts. He had to consider, at least briefly, the possibilities that might be before him.

  There was just one thought that came to him from that service. It was toward the end of the sermon, and at the time it didn't occur to him that it was in any way remarkable or had any particular bearing upon his own case. But afterward in the still watches of the night it came back to him and went deep into his heart like a sharp prod that was meant to call his attention to danger:

  "And to you who are troubled by things in your life that are bringing you disappointment and sorrow, there comes this message of peace, that God has not let anything come to you that is not going to work out some good for you, to the end that His glory may shine forth through you, and that you may pass on this Christmas message of joy and salvation to other lives. Christ was born for you, all those years ago, and some of the hard things had to come to call your attention to your great need of Him in your life. Perhaps you thought you were serving Him already. But come with all the adoring hosts today and worship Him, look into His wonderful face, let Him smile into your heart, and see if He is really born into your life today, for you to love and serve and enjoy as you would a visible Christ born in your home."

  After the benediction Florimel pulled his sleeve.

  "Come on! Let's get out of here! I'm fed up with all this!"

  And Rex, too, felt that he would like to get out. Somehow he had a sudden shrinking from introducing Florimel to those two girls ahead. He felt self-conscious and mightily uncomfortable, and so he engineered their way willingly out of the crowded Christmas audience and into the quiet of the night. But when they got outside, Florimel held back.

  "Where were all those young fellows your mother wanted you to meet tonight? She seemed to think you were so set on it."

  "Oh, come on," he said impatiently. "If you don't feel up to scratch, we'd better get home."

  "Oh, no, I don't mind waiting if you've got some interesting fellows you want to see. I always like to meet young men." She laughed foolishly.

  "Come on!" he said sharply. "I don't want to see anyone."

  "Well, then why did you let your mother make such a fuss about it and fix it so I had to go to your old church?" she said petulantly.

  "Come on," said Rex haughtily. "I don't want to wait to see anybody. I'm fed up with the way you're acting, if you want to know the truth." And he took hold of her arm possessively and marched her rapidly down the street. He had no desire to be caught out in front of the church having an altercation with his new wife.

  So they went on in a sulky silence to the house, and when the rest of the family got home, they were in their room and didn't come down again that night.

  Rex had heard them come in and gave a glance toward Florimel, who sat puffing a cigarette in a long wreath of smoke over her head, ignoring him.

  "We ought to go down," he said at last with an annoyed glance at her. "This is Christmas Eve."

  "What's that got to do with the price of diamonds?" said Florimel sharply. "I'm fed up, I tell you. I've had enough of your old stuffy religious family. They can't poke their religion down my throat, not on your life they can't. I'm modern, I tell you, and I don't believe that stuff."

  Although Rex was not himself deeply spiritual, it shocked him to hear a woman's lips speaking that way of matters he had been brought up to consider sacred.

  "Don't!" he said sharply. "I don't like it. I won't listen to any more of that rot! If you don't believe yourself, for pity's sake, keep your mouth shut about what I believe, won't you? I won't stand for any more of it!"

  "Oh, you won't, won't you? What'll you do about it?"

  But Rex had sense enough to close his lips. He was too angry to trust himself to speak.

  After a little, Florimel finished her cigarette and flung the stump in a delicate china tray that graced the bureau, where were several earlier remains of former cigarettes. She got up and fluffed up her hair, added some lipstick, and then whirled upon him.

  "What's all this Christmas
Eve you were wailing about? Why did you think we should go downstairs because it's Christmas Eve?"

  Rex drew a deep breath and hesitated. Finally he turned toward her.

  "Christmas Eve has always been a very happy time with us," he said. "I know they will be expecting us down and probably wait for us. They won't understand if we don't come."

  "Oh, for heaven's sake! You always have so many traditions. What do you do when you go down? What kind of a 'happy time,' as you call it? I like to know what I'm getting into."

  "Well, first we usually sing Christmas carols awhile," he began.

  "Nothing doing!" sneered Florimel. "I've listened to all that rot I'm going to. You call that a happy time, I suppose, but I don't. Well, what else?"

  "And then after a little we all hang up our stockings," he finished, in a tone that showed that the ceremony meant a lot to him.

  But Florimel shouted.

  "Hang up your stockings?" She laughed in derision. "What are you? Little babies? Hang up your stockings and expect some nice old Santa Claus to come down the chimney and fill them? Well, I never heard the like. Grown-up people doing a silly baby thing like that! What is this family I've married into, anyway? A lot of morons? Well, I sure don't want any part in an orgy like that! Preserve me from any more fanatical rites. I've had religion enough to last me for my lifetime."

  "Hanging up stockings has nothing to do with religion," said Rex coldly.

  "Oh, well, what's the difference? Santa Claus or God, it's all one to me. I'm sick of the whole thing! I certainly wish I hadn't married you. I took you for a human being and not a moron!"

  Suddenly Rex was aware of an echo of that wish in his own heart, and he was terrified that it should have passed through his mind. He turned and went out of the room, closing the door quietly. But though Florimel listened tensely for a full minute, she did not hear him go downstairs. If she had, she would have pursued him and found some way to bring him back. She did not hear his stealthy footsteps to the next door, which opened into his old boyhood room, nor the quick turning of the key in the latch as he fastened himself in.