THE CHRISTMAS BRIDE (26 page)

Greg beamed.

“Had you lived there all your life?” he asked wistfully.

“No,” said Margaret. “I was born in India. My father and mother were missionaries. They both died of fever when I was only four years old, and I was sent home to my mother’s parents. They brought me up. I only dimly remember my parents. So my grandmother and grandfather have been everything to me. They moved to Rutland when I was old enough for high school. Before that I was in the country school. Then when I finished high school, they sent me away to college. It was very hard for them to spare the money. They had to mortgage the farm. But they’ve lived up on the mountain in the old farmhouse ever since, and when I was graduated and came home, I was so happy to be with them again! But it didn’t last long. A little over a year ago, the bank where Grandfather had everything closed, and then I had to come to the city to earn something. It’s been rather hard to be separated from them now when they’re getting old, but they are so sweet about it, and they are going to be so delighted when I come in tonight. It’s going to be just wonderful! I feel as if I ought to have some special words in which to thank you for giving me and them this great pleasure.”

“Please!” said Greg. “I’m enjoying this as much as you are! You don’t know how empty my life has been since my mother died. When I came east, I guess I somehow felt there’d be something left of the old life for me to come into, where I’d be happy and contented and could live as I knew my mother would like me to live. But when I went down to our old house—it was the day I’d made up my mind you were lost hopelessly—I found everything gone flooey. I had always thought I’d buy that house and fix it up just as Mother had it and live in it, but there’s a boiler factory back of it now, and the noise and dirt and squalor are something fierce. There was even a pig in a pen in the back yard grunting at me, and a lot of dirty, squalling children in the front yard, and mud, mud, mud everywhere! Not a spear of our old lawn left! The people on the street all looked dirty and discouraged and shabby.

“I went down to my old school and sat in my same old desk and tried to feel at home. It looked the same, only everything was grimy from the boiler factory and the other industries that had grown up around. Nothing was the same.

“Then, there was a girl I used to go with in high school. Mother never liked her, but I thought Mother didn’t understand her. But when I saw her—well, she’s a
mess
!
You
know! She’s that girl that came to the office the other day. She ran away and got married, but she’s been divorced twice since. She’s just a mess! That’s all there is to say!”

Margaret’s spirit suddenly soared aloft.

“So, perhaps you can understand,” went on Greg, “how kind of lonely and disappointed I felt till I got this idea of business and doing something worth while in the world. There just wasn’t anything to tie to! You see, I had a wonderful mother, and we used to do a lot of things together, and I’ve always been lonesome since she died. So it’s mighty nice to be going to a real home and seeing people together who love each other and are living a decent life. I know I don’t belong there, and I don’t intend to hang around a lot and get in the way, but I’m mighty grateful for a little glimpse of home life on Thanksgiving Day at least, if you’re sure your folks won’t mind having me. I don’t suppose there’ll be any business I can transact on a holiday.”

“Oh, I know they won’t mind,” said Margaret eagerly. “The only thing is they’ll feel badly that they haven’t any turkey to offer you. Grandmother has had to give up raising turkeys. She wasn’t strong enough to look after them right. They take a lot of coddling, you know. But they’ll roast some chickens, and Grandmother certainly does make wonderful roast chicken. It’s almost as good as turkey. That is, if they haven’t had to sell the chickens, too!” she added soberly.

It occurred to her that they might have had to kill the chickens for their own food lately.

“Oh,” said Greg, “you needn’t worry about that. I brought along a turkey! I couldn’t go out to dinner and not bring something. It’s back there in the hamper with a lot of stuff that the man said goes with it. I didn’t know but I was carrying coals to New Castle, but it was the only thing I could think of that I could take, and I couldn’t just invite myself to a Thanksgiving dinner and not bring something.”

“How very wonderful of you!” said Margaret, sitting back and drawing a deep breath of relief. That lack of a turkey had been secretly troubling her mind ever since she started. If she could have hoped at four o’clock that morning to find a food shop open, she would certainly have gone out and purchased one, but it hadn’t occurred to her the night before, and there was no way to get one so early in the morning.

“I think you must be related to a fairy godmother!” she said, her eyes starry. “I never saw anybody with money before who used it in such beautiful ways!”

“I’m glad you’re pleased!” said Greg. “I got to thinking maybe you would think I was presumptuous! But of course you didn’t have to use the things if you didn’t want to. That’s why I told you before we got there. If you aren’t perfectly sure they won’t be offended, I can stop at some poor little cottage on the way and leave it, or even sling it out on the road. I wouldn’t hurt your people for the world.”

“I’m perfectly certain that they will think that the Lord sent it!” said Margaret solemnly.

“He did!” said Greg as solemnly. “I asked Him last night what to do about it, and He told me to take it.”

“Then why did you ask me?” asked Margaret with a twinkle in her eye, and then they both laughed heartily.

“Well, you see, I’m rather new at praying,” explained Greg, “and I wasn’t sure that perhaps I had understood the Lord aright. But say, wouldn’t this be a good time for those chicken sandwiches? I believe I’m hungry.”

Margaret produced the box and the thermos bottle, and they had a merry time at the side of the road on the edge of a little grove that was mostly bare branches now, with an evergreen here and there. There were paper cups and plates, and the contents of the box were ample and delicious.

“That Mrs. Harris is a crackerjack cook,” said Greg as he finished off with a big piece of Mrs. Harris’s spice cake and a large hunk of cheese.

“She certainly is, and she’s a wonderful woman. I can’t think how it ever fell to my lot to board with her after all the terrible places I’ve been since I came to the city. Why, when I think of where I stayed last week at this time and how I scrimped along hungry all the time, I have to pinch myself to believe it’s myself riding along in state today. It doesn’t seem possible!”

“And a week ago today, I didn’t know where you were!” mused Greg. “Gosh, I’m glad I found you! I couldn’t forget how sick you looked and how you needed somebody to take care of you. And…I couldn’t see going all my life and thinking you thought such rotten things about me!”

Margaret’s spirit soared again. He cared what she thought of him! Later she told herself that any decent man would care about having any girl think things like that about him, of course. But at the time, she was just happy about it, and the day seemed bright indeed.

“It was good of you to care!” said Margaret gravely. “I guess if it hadn’t been for you, I might not have been alive by now. Or at least, maybe I’d have been very sick somewhere in a hospital, nobody knowing where I was. That last morning before I found the twenty-five dollars in my purse, I was just about as near desperate as any human being could be. I had prayed twenty-five dollars and thought twenty-five dollars till I couldn’t think of anything else, and I hadn’t eaten anything for a whole day. I could hardly topple along the sidewalk, and I wasn’t in any condition to work if I had found a job. And then when I’d just begun to realize it, after bringing my baggage down from the third story, God sent you! He sent the money, and He sent you!”

Greg gave her a look then, a look that went way down deep into her soul and seemed to come from deep in his soul. And the look was followed by a smile that seemed to enfold her and take her right to his heart. It filled her with a quivering joy, and her conscience flew right up and told her to choke it. Told her it was all her silly, little, sick imagination, and she must not be glad like that for a man who was really a stranger, just an employer, who had done all this for her merely because he was a Christian and wanted to help her, had just been sorry for her, that was all.

The little glad quiver lay down in her heart ashamed, but every time he looked into her eyes, it rose up and soared again, and finally she gave up and decided she was having a nervous breakdown or something and must try to take things as they came along and be glad and not be so self-conscious.

They stopped for lunch early in the afternoon, and Greg made her take a rest on the couch in the empty parlor of a country hotel while he went to a garage to have the car looked over.

Late that afternoon they fell to talking about their childhood days, she telling how she used to skate and swim and trudge to school across the mountain, and how on rainy days, her grandfather took her to school with the old horse and buggy. Then Greg told little anecdotes of his own boyhood, things he had not thought of for years, precious, sweet, little memories about how Mother had oyster soup on a cold night when he had been out shoveling sidewalks all afternoon.

They began to feel as if they had known one another for a long time. They had come in Vermont now, and the little mountain stream rushed away, making hurrying melody over great boulders or cascading down a cut in the hillside. Now and then they came upon a casual railroad rambling out of the dense forest of hemlock and spruce, and into it again on the other side of the road without any warning whatsoever. On and on they went without meeting anyone for an hour or two at a time. Impressive silence reigned.

“I didn’t know we had any such vastness unoccupied in the east,” said Greg. “And yet they say that there is danger of the world getting overpopulated! Plenty of room right here for a good many thousands to live comfortably for several eons to come, I should say. It reminds me of the West. I’m glad I came up here. I had a feeling that all the East was one city after another. I guess I need to do a little traveling around my home parts and find out where I’m living. But this is great! I’d like to come up here summers! Yes, and winters, too. This would be splendid with snow on the ground and branches.”

“It is,” said Margaret wistfully. “It’s wonderful at Christmas, with snowshoes. We used to have an old sleigh, too, when I was a child.”

“It must have been wonderful! But say, we’ve come a long way since morning, and I believe we’re going to get there before dark,” said Greg, taking a look at the map.

“We are indeed!” said Margaret excitedly. “We’re coming into Booker’s Corners, and that’s only three miles from Crystal, the foot of the mountain where the station and the post office are.”

“Booker’s Corners!” said Greg looking around. “Is that a town?”

Margaret laughed.

“It’s a township. There’s a schoolhouse on a crossroad, a company store, and a little station, but people live all about on the mountains, and they come together for school entertainments and sometimes protracted meetings in the schoolhouse. They have to go to Crystal to church. Here we are. This is Booker’s Corners, and this is the company store. Take the turn to the right here. There…there’s the schoolhouse. Now it’s only three miles to Crystal.”

Margaret was watching every tree and familiar turn as they drove through the rough dirt road into a dense thicket of pines and tall forest trees, some of them still hanging on to their brown, dead leaves of summer and rattling them.

“How still it is!” exclaimed Greg. “The motor sounds almost irreverent!”

As they drew near to Crystal, Greg was watching the girl by his side. Her eyes were starry with excitement, her cheeks were flushed, her lips were parted with her eagerness.

“There! Now you can see the post office. That brick building. After it burned down, they built it of brick,” she explained, her voice sweet with interest. “And there! There’s somebody just coming out. Oh, why, that’s Aunt Carrie Pettibone! What would she say if she knew
I
was in this lovely car! But oh, don’t let her see me! She’d never let us go till she had found out everything about us and why we are here. She has eyes like a ferret and a tongue like perpetual motion. She is quite capable of holding us up to find out who we are.”

“Aunt Carrie Pettibone!” said Greg with a grin. “How are you, Aunt Carrie!” he called out with a low bow as the car swept on by.

Aunt Carrie, a little shoulder shawl thrown over her bulky shoulders, paused in her progress down the street to Mrs. Silas Manley’s house and stared after the elegant car and the courteous gentleman who had called out her name. Who was he? She couldn’t place him. Must be a summer visitor, of course, but who? How maddening not to have recognized him in time! Her reputation as a newsmonger was at stake, and what should she do? Well, at least whoever she heard of as being in town she could tell how he called out to her.

Margaret was convulsed with laughter.

“Now she won’t sleep all night trying to think out who you are!” she giggled.

“Well, she looks as if she could stand the loss of one night’s rest,” grinned Greg. “Aunt Carrie Pettibone! She looks like a character!”

“Oh, she is,” said Margaret. She’s the world’s worst talker. But here, this is our turn. That house up the road there is Elias Horner’s. He’s supposed to be the richest man in Crystal, and the crookedest. He’s cheated everybody he came near all his life. And just beyond in that little white house in the field lives his sister-in-law, Kate Lavette. She used to own the big house he lives in and was left well off when her husband died, but he made her think he could handle her money better than she could, and there she lives in a little shack and he lives in hers. Everybody in town is furious about it, for Kate Lavette is a lovely old lady, but nobody could ever do anything. He got it fixed somehow so he had the law on his side, and he is posing as being very good to her because he lets her live in the shack on her own land that he stole from her.”