THE CHRISTMAS BRIDE

by Grace Livingston Hill

  It was a little after nine when he turned into Rodman Street, drew up at the door of Margaret’s former boarding place, and stopped his engine.

  He was just preparing to get out when the door opened and someone came out with a suitcase and two large bundles. He looked out the car window, and there she was!

  “Margaret!” he called in a strained voice, as if he thought she would get away from him before he could reach her. He sprang out, meeting her halfway up the steps.

  “Thank God I’ve found you at last!” he said, taking all three burdens in one hand and laying hold upon her arm gently but firmly with the other hand.

  Margaret shrank back and looked up at him.

  “Oh,” she protested in a small, frightened tone, “you mustn’t carry those. I can carry them quite easily myself. They are not heavy!”

  “They are very heavy,” he said in a stern voice, “and you may not carry them. You are panting now with having carried them so far.”

  He led her down the steps and to the car, putting the packages in the backseat.

  “But what are you doing?” she asked in a distressed voice, her eyes large with trouble. He noticed that there were great deep-blue shadows under them.

  “I am taking you with me,” he said firmly. “I’ve combed the universe for you, and now you’ve got to come with me and find out the truth. I’m going to show you that I’m not a liar and that I won’t harm a hair of your head. After that, you can do as you like. If you never want to see me again, I’ll clear out. It’s entirely up to you. But I insist that you first find out the truth about me. I have a right to ask this of you. Get in, please.”

  His voice was cold and aloof. She gave him another furtive look and spoke in a troubled voice. “But…I don’t think…you are…a liar,” she said. “After I had time to think at all, I knew there must be some explanation. But…you don’t understand. There were some terrible things said—”

  “Yes, I understand,” said Greg grimly. “I know it all. I don’t think there was a thing left out of the account I had. Get in, please!”

  Margaret opened her lips to speak, looked into his set face once more and got in, her face very white, her eyes dark pools of uncertainty.

  Greg drove very fast, threading his way through traffic skillfully, his face stern. He did not speak nor look at her.

  Margaret watched him furtively, one hand gripping the arm of the seat. She wanted to explain, but his manner was so chilly that when she opened her lips to speak, the words would not come. She held herself tense as if there were no cushioned seat there to hold her. Her knuckles were white with the strain of her grip. She felt suddenly faint and dizzy and told herself she ought not to have allowed this strange, stern man to carry her off. It was the kind of thing her grandmother had always warned her against. And yet, even beneath the sternness, there was something so kind and trustable.

  She felt the tears coming to her eyes and drew in her breath to keep them back. And then she noticed that they were drawing up before the hospital entrance.

  “Oh, I can’t go in there again!” she said shrinking back, her lips set thickly in determination.

  Greg shut his own lips hard to hide the quiver that came about them.

  “I’m sorry, but it’s necessary!” he said.

  He stopped the car, got out, and came around to open the door for her.

  “Your things will be quite safe here. I’ll lock the car,” he said. “We shall not need to be here long.”

  There was something aloof yet compelling in his voice, and Margaret, with a baffled look, got out and waited while he locked the car, then went with him like a child who was being punished.

  At the door, she shrank back again, but he touched her arm lightly as any escort might.

  “This way, please!”

  He stopped at the desk and said a few words as if he had authority, and the girl who was in attendance said, “Yes sir,” most deferentially.

  They went up in the elevator and walked down the hall to the room that Margaret had quitted in such haste more than a week ago.

  It was not until they reached the door that she saw the tablet, polished bronze, beautifully inscribed:

  IN LOVING MEMORY OF

  MARY RUSSELL STERLING

  FOR STRANGERS IN NECESSITY.

  DONATED BY HER SON

  GREGORY STERLING.

  Margaret stopped startled and read the words, a look of delight spreading over her astonishment, and then with a light in her eyes as she lifted them, almost a triumph, as if she had found her secret hope to be true, she gave him a rare smile. A smile that went over her face like swift sunshine, coming to its fullness as her gaze met his, lighting its fragile transparency into loveliness.

  Gregory watched her with unchanged countenance, watched her as he used to watch a deer he was stalking, not losing an expression, a reaction, however fleeting, yet giving no sign of either displeasure or satisfaction. His look might almost have been called a jealous one, perhaps even a hungry one.

  “Oh, was that there all the time?” asked Margaret.

  “No,” said Greg, still in that cool, aloof voice, watching her. “It was put there after you left.”

  The thoughts and questions were chasing one another over her expressive face, and Greg missed none of them.

  Then down the hall, her face chalk white, as white as her rattling linen uniform, came the head nurse. Came as if invisible chains were leading her against her will.

  Greg introduced her.

  “This is Miss Grandon, Miss McLaren. Miss Grandon, will you kindly tell Miss McLaren when this tablet was put here and why, and then make your apology to her.”

  Miss Grandon’s hard lips were trembling nervously as she began to speak. “Miss McLaren, I owe you an apology!” She tried to speak humbly as she knew was required of her by the institution, but her soul had been too long frozen and self-centered, and an edge of haughtiness crept in. “The arrangement about this room was made during my brief vacation, and I had not been informed about it when I came on duty that morning,” she said in her most frigid manner. “The tablet was put up about three-quarters of an hour after you left, Miss McLaren, and that was the first intimation I had of it officially. It had been promised early that morning, it seems, to be erected before you left the room so that you could see it. Before I left, I had given orders that the room be put in readiness for an old patient who had engaged that room especially, and I naturally supposed that someone had been usurping authority. And when you owned to me, Miss McLaren, that you were paying nothing for the room and felt that you belonged in the ward, I am not so much to blame perhaps for taking you at your word. There are so many impostors going about today—”

  “I beg your pardon, Miss Grandon,” interrupted Greg, “I believe you were going to apologize“

  “Oh, it is not necessary in the least,” said Margaret.

  The head nurse swept Greg a look of bitter servitude and spoke quickly: “I was just going to say, Miss McLaren, that I apologize most humbly for having made the mistake that I did, and I certainly am sorry if anything that I said caused you any annoyance. I am sure you will understand that in an institution like this, one meets with all sorts of emergencies, and one is not always infallible in judgment. I hope you will pardon my seeming discourtesy.”

  “Please don’t think of it again,” said Margaret regally. “I’m sure you were no more to blame than I was for being here. I hope you will forget it.”

  Greg could not keep a bit of satisfaction, of admiration from his eyes then as he watched Margaret. She had managed to show by tone and manner that she was a lady, in spite of her shabby garments.

  Greg did not keep her there long. He was dimly aware of nurses nearby, peering around corners, opening casual doors into the hall. For it had not taken long for word to get around that the pretty, little, lost patient had been found and that “Grandon was getting hers.”

  Greg escorted her back to the elevator as if she had been a
princess, and Margaret held her tired little head high and walked coolly away with such an air of unconsciousness that no one had time to study out her shabbiness, and even the little downtrodden shoes stepped daintily for the occasion. The shabby suit and the brave, little feathered hat were royal apparel for the time being.

  Gravely, Greg took her to the office and showed her copies of the papers that had to do with the transaction of the room, saying little himself except to ask the young woman in charge to show the documents.

  Gravely, he took her out to the car again and put her in, and she, recognizing that the hospital steps, and the street in front, were no place for an argument, submitted to his courteous leading.

  Seated in the car at last, he turned to her, his keen gray eyes searching her face.

  “Now, where were you going when I met you?”

  Margaret started and flushed confusedly.

  “Oh, you can just set me down on the avenue over there,” she answered evasively.

  “Meaning that you can then escape from me and never see me anymore? Is that the idea?” His eyes were upon her, compelling her to look up.

  “No!” said Margaret earnestly. “Not at all. I am not trying to run away. I am deeply grateful to you for all you have done for me, and someday I would like to be able to repay your kindness in some way. But I do not want to be a further burden to you who have already done altogether too much for me. And while we are speaking of it, I want to thank you—”

  But Greg put up a protesting hand.

  “Please, will you let that wait just a little till we have settled one or two matters? Won’t you tell me where you were going?”

  Margaret looked down at her hands folded in her lap and fumbled the fingers in her gloves, smoothing them out and trying to make them look less shabby. He saw that she did not want to answer him, but he kept his gaze on her until she had to lift her honest eyes to his face once more.

  “I was going to the station.”

  He considered that a moment gravely.

  “Were you by any chance about to go home to your people?” he asked.

  “No!” she said quickly. “No, I couldn’t do that. Not now! I wish it were possible, but it isn’t. I’ve got to stay here and work.

  “May I be so inquisitive as to ask why you were going to the station then? Were you moving to another city or to a suburb?”

  “No,” said Margaret, and then after hesitation, “I was checking my things till I could look up another room somewhere. You can check several things together for ten cents. You see, I never discovered the receipt you had put in my grandmother’s letter, nor the money, that wonderful twenty-five dollars, until this morning, and I went right away to get my things. I needed them badly and wanted to get them out of that woman’s house. Oh, you must let me thank you for that money! I really can’t wait! You don’t know how I had prayed for just twenty-five dollars! I needed it so much! And when I opened that pocket to look up the date of Grandmother’s last letter, there it was, just in my time of need! Someday I hope I can repay you, but until then I shall never cease to thank you for it.”

  “But,” said Greg, “you don’t mean you didn’t discover it until this morning? Why, how did you live? Wait, let us get out of this noisy street somewhere where we can talk in peace. What time is it? When did you eat last? Did you have any breakfast? Answer me honestly.”

  “I thought not” he said, looking into her telltale eyes. “We’ll go to a nice quiet place and have a breakfast luncheon. I’m starved myself.”

  “Oh, you mustn’t do any more for me!” said the girl as he whirled the car around a corner and into another street, winding his way skillfully through traffic as he used to do with his delivery truck ten years ago.

  “Why not?” said Greg gravely.

  Margaret gave a hysterical little laugh.

  “Don’t try to answer till we get out of this bedlam,” he said and whirled around another corner, barely escaping a yellow taxi.

  It was a quiet, dignified tea room on the outskirts of the city where he brought up at last, with space to park the car safely and an air of gentility about it that rested Margaret’s sorrowful soul. She loved pretty, quiet things and places. She loved peace and cleanliness and order, and she had seen so little of any of them during her stay in this great city!

  He found a table in a secluded corner, and there were little white pompon chrysanthemums in a slender brown vase standing at one side against the wall, and a great painted screen of bronze and green that shut them in from the rest of the room. The spicy fragrance of the flowers came like a reviving breeze to Margaret’s senses. And there was warmth from a big fireplace near enough to send its glow around their screen. Margaret shivered deliciously as the warmth pervaded her chilled body and brought a degree of comfort. Greg’s keen eyes noted the shiver and took account of the thin, little jacket she was wearing.

  “Now, first of all, what are we going to have? What do you want?”

  “Just something simple,” answered the girl, resting back in her chair and taking in the beauty of the room like a soothing drink, “something hot, a cup of soup if it’s not too expensive here.”

  “Is that what you’ve been living on?” he asked with another grave, appraising look.

  “Well, I didn’t always have as much as that,” she laughed. “Sometimes soup, sometimes coffee, seldom both.” She was trying to make light of it.

  “I think I’ll do the ordering,” said Greg. “This is my party. Do you like clam chowder, or would you rather have beef bouillon for a start? We’ll save the fruit cup till afterwards I guess. It’s cold stuff to be putting inside, a day like this, when we’re both hungry.”

  He made out his order at last, and when the waitress had gone to fill it, he sat back and looked at her.

  “Now,” said he, looking straight into her eyes, “if you only found the twenty-five dollars this morning, what in the world have you been living on all this time? I know you hadn’t another cent in that purse when you left the hospital.”

  Margaret flushed defensively, a bit of pride rising in her.

  “Oh, I found a job for a while. It wasn’t permanent, but I earned enough to keep me.”

  “What kind of job?” asked Greg. “Perhaps you think I have no business to ask such questions, and I haven’t, of course, but I’ve been a good deal concerned about you since I lost you, and I was somewhat comforted thinking you had that money to keep you for a little while. Of course, if you don’t want to answer my questions, you don’t have to.”

  “I don’t mind answering,” she said, lifting tired eyes and trying to smile, “only I don’t want you to feel you have to worry about me. I got a job addressing envelopes. I did them by the hundred, so it was up to me how much I earned, and I worked early and late and got seven dollars in all out of it.” She lifted her head proudly.

  “Seven dollars!” he exclaimed aghast. “But where—how could you get along on that in a city? It’s been some time since you disappeared.”

  He began to count the days on his fingers.

  “I don’t see how you could possibly get along on that unless you found a boarding place where they would trust you.”

  Margaret shook her head, and then lifting her eyes to his, told him half defiantly, “Three nights I stayed in the station. There was a couch in the ladies’ waiting room, and sometimes I got a chance at that, and there were rocking chairs. It wasn’t bad. There are two stations, you know. I moved around occasionally so I would not be noticed and asked to move on. Then I found a place where I could get a nice clean bed and coffee in the morning for thirty-five cents, and ten cents extra for a shower. That was better. And in the daytime, I hunted for another job.”

  “But you must have had scarcely anything left for food,” said Greg. “I’ve had some pretty tough times myself, but I could always go out and shoot something. You can’t do that in a city.”

  “I got along,” said Margaret with a show of cheerfulness. “It would have b
een all right if I hadn’t been worried. Even when I got down to the last two dimes last night, I wouldn’t have minded if I hadn’t needed that twenty-five dollars so badly to send to Grandfather for the interest on the mortgage. You see, Grandmother had written that they could raise all the interest but twenty-five dollars, and they were a little afraid the man who had the mortgage might foreclose if they failed to pay it on time. And last night I prayed and prayed, and I guess I didn’t really expect I’d get any answer. I didn’t see how God could possibly give me twenty-five dollars. And then when I opened that little bill pocket in my purse to get out Grandmother’s last letter and be sure just what day she said they must have it, there was the twenty-five dollars, and the receipt for my room rent beside it! I just got down on my knees beside that cot in the dormitory and thanked God. It was the most wonderful thing that ever happened to me! And I can never get done thanking you for it.”

  “I guess I ought to thank God for letting me do it!” said Greg thoughtfully.

  Margaret looked up wonderingly.

  “I went out and sent the twenty-five dollars to Grandfather,” she went on, “and then I went right away to Rodman Street to get my things. I wanted some clean clothes. You don’t know how terrible it was getting on without clean things!”

  Greg’s eyes kindled sympathetically.

  “But were you really going to spend ten cents to check your things when you had only twenty cents left in the world?” he asked. “Why, you would have only ten cents left for breakfast!”

  “That would have been quite a lot for me!” she laughed. “But as it happened, I wouldn’t have had but seven left. You can get a peanut butter sandwich for five cents, and you can sometimes get an apple or a banana for two cents if you are not too particular.”

  She laughed happily, though her wan expression quite betrayed her mirth, and the young man was wrapped in a deep sadness for her.

  But the waitress appeared at that moment with the steaming cup of broth, and there was no time for words. When she was gone, Greg spoke.