THE CHRISTMAS BRIDE (16 page)

She entered the shop with fear and trembling and looked around her fearsomely.

It was only a tiny shop, and its shelves and counters and even the floor seemed to be cluttered with small pasteboard boxes. On the counter were several of these open, and beneath the wrappings she could see some kind of metal contrivance for household use.

There were two men in the shop, the younger one unloading more little boxes from a large packing box in the middle of the room and putting them on the shelves. The older one, an elderly man with sharp eyes and an unpleasant mouth, came forward and looked her over suspiciously.

“Can you write a good, clear hand?” was the first question he asked her.

Margaret smiled with relief.

“Oh yes!”

He shoved forward a pad and pencil.

“Show me!”

He pointed to an address, and Margaret copied it, trying to keep her hand from shaking.

“Okay,” said the man when she had finished. “Now I got a lotta circulars I want folded and addressed. I pay by the hundred.” He named a pitifully small sum. “It’s upta you how much ya make. I wantta get ‘em out as quick as possible. Ef you don’t work fast enough, I gotta get somebody else ta help. There’s all them! How fast ken ya work?”

He waved his hand toward a counter at the back where were stacked what seemed to Margaret like millions of printed sheets and quantities of envelopes.

“Oh, I can work fast!” promised Margaret breathlessly.

“Want I should get a helper fer ya, or ken ya do ‘em alone an’ make it snappy?”

“I should like to do them
all
,” she answered quietly. “I’m sure I can do them very fast. I’m a rapid writer.”

“Well, I’ll try ya till noon on it, but ef ya don’t get enough done, I’ll havta get a helper. Mike, take that card outta the winder, an’ stick it up on the shelf awhile. We might want it again.”

So Margaret hung her hat on a nail by the window on the dusty back end of the shop and sat down under a green shaded lamp before a stack of envelopes. The pen wasn’t very good, and the envelopes were cheap, the list was long and the surroundings were unspeakably dreary, but Margaret was exceedingly thankful. She had escaped from no telling what peril that threatened, and she had a job! It was barely enough to keep her, and it was obviously temporary, but she was glad.

By tens, she laid the addressed envelopes in long lines around her on the desk till they presently began to assemble into hundreds, and when the desk was full, she stopped and folded circulars and filled them.

Now and then one man or the other would walk by her, pause to watch her flying pen, and scan thoughtfully the piles of finished envelopes that were growing on the counter beside the desk. There was no doubt but that this new girl they had hired could work rapidly.

But as it came toward noon, the tense work was beginning to tell on her. She felt strength running from the tips of her fingers; she felt a deathly faintness stealing over her. The memory of her breakfast became very dim. This was the time that Nurse Gowen had brought her the glass of orange juice yesterday and the day before, but she must not think of that.

At noon she drank two full glasses of water, thankful that water was free, and went on with her work.

On through the afternoon she worked, a giddy faintness beginning to take hold of her. She felt shaky whenever she rose to gather up the finished work and stack it on the counter, but her hand, gripped in a nervous tension, held steadily on its way, though it ached unbearably whenever she released her hold on the pen for a moment. Could she make it? Could she keep on till night? She knew she was working on her nerve alone. She found herself praying in her heart.

“Oh God, keep me from fainting again. Oh God, help me through!”

At half past five, the men began to put up the shutters and put on their coats.

The old man came over to the desk and surveyed with satisfaction the great stack of finished work.

“You’ve worked good!” he said, nodding his approval. “I guess you’ll make the grade without a helper ef you can keep it up a day ur so longer. You better go home an’ get yer dinner now.”

Margaret looked up with a weary smile.

“Could you”—she began hesitantly—”
would
you be willing to let me have just a little money
tonight
?” she asked. “I have been out of work for several days.”

The man eyed her intently.

“Sure you’ll come back tamorra? I wouldn’t wantta break in a new hand. I gotta get these out right away.”

“Oh yes, I’ll come back,” said Margaret, wondering what he would think if she should be unable to come and somebody else would pick her up and take her to a hospital.

“Fifty cents do ya?”

“Oh yes, thank you!” she said.

He flung a fifty cent piece down on the desk beside her half reluctantly. “It ain’t my custom ta pay till the work’s done,” he said grudgingly, “but seein’ you done pretty good, I’ll chance it. Now, tamorra I’ll have the stamps here an’ we’ll mail these, see, an’ then get another batch off in the afternoon mail. Ef you work as good the next two days as you done today, there’s a dollar bonus in it fer ya, see?”

The color flooded into Margaret’s pale cheeks. It was so humiliating to be groveling for a dollar bonus. To have a man suspecting that she might not return! But she tried to answer meekly, “Thank you,” put on her brave little red-feathered hat, and went out into the dark street gripping her fifty cents in one hand and her thin pocketbook in the other. Somehow it never occurred to her to put her money into the pocketbook. She knew she must use some of it at once or collapse, and she hurried down the dusky street searching for a cheap restaurant.

A bowl of soup, a cup of coffee. It didn’t cost so much! She looked wistfully at the change. If only she could find a cheap bed and have a good night’s sleep, but she must have breakfast. There was barely enough left for a meager breakfast and perhaps a sandwich to eat at noon. She mustn’t indulge in a bed. The railroad station would do tonight.

So she dropped the few small coins into the inner pocket of her purse, never noticing how thick the pocket containing the letter from her grandmother had grown since last she saw it, and hurried away to the station.

She found a corner in the big outer waiting room, a bit sheltered from the glaring lights, and sat down, resting her head back and sleeping fitfully for a couple of hours. Then a wedding party breezed in hilariously and filled the station with clamor and merriment.

Margaret watched them a few minutes wearily, noted the happy look on the bride’s face, the pride on the bridegroom’s face, wondered how it would be to be riding away on a wedding trip, joyous, lighthearted and free, no worries about money, someone to care for you always, someone to love you and protect you!

She tried to banish the thought of Sterling and the look on his face when she had thanked him for the flowers, tried to realize that he was false and had deceived her. But somehow sleep had banished those facts and brought back the vision of his kindness only, the heavenly plans he had suggested. She let her weary mind revel for a little in the thought of what it would have been if it had all been true. A lovely second-floor room for herself, an office right downstairs in the house where she boarded. A man to work for such as Sterling had seemed to be, a chance to earn a good salary and perhaps be able to get together enough to save the old farm for Grandfather and Grandmother. Ah, that would have been heaven below. If there only were men such as Sterling had almost succeeded in making her believe he was, what joy it would be to live!

Then suddenly she became aware of a burly policeman who kept walking back and forth, looking in her direction, and panic seized her. She knew it was against the law for vagrants to hang around a railroad station. She must not stay here too long.

She started up and looked at the big clock, noted that it was almost midnight. The wedding party had trailed off to the platform. She could hear their voices laughing; she could hear them singing jolly scraps of songs and laughing again. She could see the path of rice and rose leaves that lingered in their wake. She got up and followed out to the platform, for now an official was calling out a local train, and she went as if in answer to the call.

Out on the platform, she mingled with the crowd for a little and then found her way back by another door and entered the ladies’ waiting room.

There were not so many people in here, and it was quieter. She sat for a long time behind a big post, anxious lest that policeman should trace her. Finally, she went into the inner room and found a rocking chair unoccupied. That was a great rest, almost as good as lying down. The couch was occupied by a woman with a little baby in her arms, both sound asleep, but about two o’clock the porteress came and touched her on the shoulder, told her that her train was called, and she arose hastily and hurried away. Then Margaret, with a furtive look around, slipped into her place on the couch and stretched her weary limbs out straight. Ah, how good this was! She thought of the hospital bed she had left so hastily that morning, its clean, sweet sheets, the roses on the little bedside stand, like the roses the bride had carried to her wedding train, and she drifted off into deep sleep. By and by it came about that the wedding procession was coming back, only strangely enough, she was the bride and Sterling was the bridegroom. He was looking at her in that tender way he had looked when he told her he thought his mother would have liked him to send her the flowers, and her tired heart thrilled with the joy and peace of it, till suddenly the head nurse came with a broom and drove them all away, filling her with chagrin and humiliation, and she awoke suddenly to find the porteress tapping her on the shoulder. She looked up out of a haze of pain and loss and sleep, not knowing where she was.

“There is a sick woman being brought in,” said the porteress. “She was taken sick on the train. Would you mind getting up and letting them put her here? She is having a heart attack!”

Margaret arose quickly and found the early dawn was stealing in at the windows. The woman was brought in looking ghastly in the mingled light of night and morning. Margaret hurried into the washroom and dashed cold water in her face. She felt sick and sore from head to foot. Every muscle and nerve was crying out for rest and relief, but she remembered her job and took heart of hope.

She went out again and sat in one of the rocking chairs with her eyes closed till morning was fully come and it was time to go and hunt a cheap little excuse for a breakfast.

For three days and nights, Margaret went on in this way, with only broken scraps of sleep here and there in some public place, working with superhuman energy in the daytime, driving herself in spite of weakness and pain and faintness, eating the least that any human being could get along with and live and work. And at the end of the third day, she finished the last envelope, stamped the last stack of circulars, and looked up to see her employer standing before her with a few grimy bills in his hand.

“You done good!” he said. “Here’s the rest of your money—what you ain’t had—and your bonus. We got no more use for you just now. Anytime you come ‘round and see that card in the winder, you come in. You’re sure of a job. But we ain’t got no more use fer no helper till after the orders come in. Maybe we need some help then. You stick around oncet in a while. See?”

Margaret saw, and her heart sank. She had begun to hope that this was permanent at least until she could find something better. Still, she was glad to get a little money, and there was always Hope stalking ahead of the way.

Wearily she put on her hat and went out. It had turned cold, and she shivered in her little fall jacket that matched her suit. She turned the scanty collar up around her neck and bent her head to the sharp wind, which went through her like a knife. It was almost dark, and she felt as if she just must have a real bed tonight. She must go somewhere and think it out. Perhaps that Traveler’s Aid woman she had read about in the framed certificate on the wall of the station could help her to find a cheap, respectable bed. She would try her. They had lodging houses for men where you could get a bed and coffee for a quarter. She had read about them. Did they have places for destitute women also? It seemed terrible for a daughter of a fine old New England family to have come to a place of need like this, but she could. There was no telling how long it would take to locate another job. But first she must go to the post office. There would surely be a letter from home. There hadn’t been time to go, and she had been too tired to make the extra effort since she came out of the hospital.

So Margaret went to the post office and found a letter from home. She cried all the way back to the station in the darkness of the street over the joy of just holding the envelope that she knew the precious old hand of her grandmother had touched.

She sat down in a rocking chair in the ladies’ waiting room and read her letter before she even stopped to get the food that she needed so much.