Stranger within the Gates (23 page)

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.

Florimel listened for a long time and finally opened her door to see if she could hear his voice downstairs. But she only heard low words now and then, as if the family might be keeping still to let someone sleep. She even stole a little way down the stairs and listened some more, but evidently Rex was not there, so she crept back up to her room and sat a long time staring out the window at the lonely, strange white world with all those sharp stars up there carrying out this absurd Christmas stuff everybody was so crazy about. What had it ever brought her? It was all a lot of hooey, she decided. At last she got tired and went to bed, wondering and fuming in her heart because Rex didn't come back.

But Rex was in his own old room, kneeling beside his boyhood bed and meeting a God whom he never really had known before. Being searched by God on that Christmas Eve, as he had never been heart-searched before.

Quite early in the morning, before the world had begun to wake up and realize it was Christmas morning, before even the smallest, most eager boy had realized that Santa Claus might already have visited his home and had stolen forth to investigate, there were stealthy footsteps down in the living room and in the big sunporch where the mammoth Christmas tree had been awaiting its time. Stan and Paul were working silently in the almost dark, with only a tiny light in the far corner of the living room where it was to be set up.

It was an old story, the setting up of that tree, and they had done it so many times that the actual work presented no difficulties. There was a well-made frame with a deep socket that fitted the tree trunk, and it took no time at all to set the tree into the socket. There were accurately measured wires that went around the tree trunk at a certain height and fastened into little hooks well concealed behind pictures, that would steady it and keep it in balance. It was not a great undertaking. But usually there had been three of them to do it. Rex had always been there to help before. Then there were strings of lovely lights ready to wind about among the branches and attach to the socket on the wall. That would take more time because that had always been Rex's special work, but they went silently on with their work.

Suddenly Rex was among them, putting his hand to the work in the old accustomed way.

It was a new Rex, though they didn't know it then. He looked as if he had not slept. They hoped they hadn't wakened him, but they only smiled their welcome in the dim light and were glad he had come. They couldn't see the look of purpose on the strong young face, the look of another kind of assurance from any he had ever had before.

Presently Sylvia came down with Fae just behind, her eyes bright like two morning stars. She helped Sylvia to bring out some boxes from the locker in the sunporch, and together they worked, Fae putting threads of silver icicles straightly on the branches, handing up handfuls now and then to Rex to put on where she could not reach. Sylvia, with long accustomed skill, built a lovely Bethlehem on the mantel, crumpling green tissue paper for hills with little woolly lambs grazing naturally; stone blocks made very realistic flat-roofed houses, with tiny stone stairways leading up to the housetops in the most unexpected way. When it was finished, Paul and Rex hung the great electric star above it all, right over the stone arches where the stable was, with the manger and the cattle and the little figures that represented shepherds and wise men with their camels.

It was wonderful how lovely it all was when it was done, and the brothers and sisters stood for an instant in a group looking it over with the old pleased look in their eyes and the old Christmas thrill in their hearts. Then they whispered, "Merry Christmas!" and stole one by one silently up to their rooms to sleep a little while till the full morning came. But they left behind them all the lights of the tree burning softly under their silver tinsel and all the full blaze of blue light from the great star above the mantel as it shone down on the little town of Bethlehem, reminding of long ago. Somehow not even a new and alien sister-in-law could quite dim the joy in their hearts over this morning of Christmas that had always been to them the best day of all the year.

The stars were still shining, and the silver night still held sway over the white earth when there came a silver sound out of the quietness--soft singing, sweet as angel-song, and growing clearer now from the depths of shadows under the windows below.

Was that only two voices at the start, pure and sweet as angels' trumpets?

Rex, listening from his sleepless bed, thought it sounded like Marcia and Natalie, as they used to sing in their little-girl days:

 

"This is the winter morn,

Our Savior, Christ, was born,

Who left the realms of endless day,

To take our sins away."

 

Then other voices, a chorus of them. How had they come so quietly there under the windows in the snow?

 

"Have ye no carol for the Lord,

To spread His love abroad?

Have ye no carol for the Lord,

To spread His love abroad?"

 

Then a single voice, ah, that was Natalie's, sweet and tender. It made the tears come to his eyes. A ringing triumphant answer to the chorus:

 

"Hosanna! Hosanna! Hosanna in the highest!"

 

And then Marcia:

 

"Hosanna to our King!"

 

He did not stir. He dared not creep to the window as he used to do when his friends were below singing. He must not let them know he was listening. He must not let Florimel know. He might just listen and know that his God, his newfound God, was going to help him, was sending all this beauty of sound, this lovely silver night with its promise of eternity, for him, and God must have His way in him.

Silently the singers melted away without much sound of their going. The dawn crept up all gold and rose, and the stars were put out. The silver Christmas Eve was over, but the blessedness still lingered in the air. The colored lights from the tree still gleamed, and the great star blazed out of the living room. They must have shone afar and touched the faces of the singers just outside the window. Rex thought of it as he came downstairs and stopped at the door to look at them. He could see their light touching the faces of those two singers, as he had so often seen it in other years, and he was glad they were there, glad they had seen the star and the tree and the lights and had a part in the Christmas morning celebration. Only one thing had been omitted, and that was the glad "Merry Christmas" that had always rung out from the singers on the lawn in years gone by and had been answered from the house. It left a sadness that it had not been complete. Yet, it would not have been the same. Florimel would not have understood.

And then Florimel came down in a bright red dress, with her lips still redder, and looked at him with cold, hard gray eyes and a scornful mouth. Florimel had had no part in his real Christmas. He began to doubt if she ever would. But he must not let the others know this. He had married her, and he must be loyal to her.

Florimel paused in the living room doorway and surveyed the work of the night.

"Mercy!" she said to Stan. "Couldn't you find any ornaments? That tree looks awfully bare!"

Stan gave a gasp, and then with a bright look at his mother he strode up the stairs to his room. His brothers and sisters looked knowingly at one another. All but Rex, in their hearts, knelt before the throne and asked for help and quietness.

But then Florimel's eyes traveled to the star.

"Why on earth didn't you put in red lights?" she asked, looking at Paul. "Blue makes such a horrid, ghastly light. I should think you'd have something bright and festive for a holiday!"

Fae, with her young lips set hard and her eyes stormy, made a sudden dash to the stairs and went up to her room. Paul looked over at Sylvia and grinned, it was so apparent what the children had gone upstairs for. Florimel's quick eyes caught their look and wondered if they were laughing at her. She flashed a look at Sylvia.