THE CHRISTMAS BRIDE (3 page)

“And let her die meantime?” shouted Greg, shaking off the detaining hand and dashing madly in among traffic.

The doorman looked uncertainly after him then turned back to send a gaping bellboy to telephone for an ambulance.

Meantime, a crowd had suddenly gathered and were staring. The clerk of the hotel came out and looked across to the park.

Greg had reached the side of the girl now and was kneeling, looking at her intently, stooping to listen for her heart.

On the way down the stairs, he had thought of possibilities. He hailed from a land where stray bullets were not uncommon, and of course that was the first thing he thought of. Someone had shot the girl, or someone was shooting at birds and sent a wild bullet into the air.

But there was no sign of a wound, no blood on the ground or trickling down the white face. Just a pinched, tired look that went to his heart, just long dark lashes lying over deathly white, thin cheeks.

Greg gave one wild look around and gathered her up into his arms.

“Better leave her lay, buddie,” advised a bystander with his hands in his pockets and his pipe between his teeth. “Always better ta leave ‘em lay till the p’lice gets here, buddie. You don’t get no thanks fer meddling.”

Greg flashed him a look from his steady gray eyes.

“Get me a taxi!” he ordered. “She’s not dead! Only fainted!”

“Ya can’t tell, buddie! She might pass out on ya!” said the bystander.

“Where is the nearest hospital?” demanded Greg, ignoring the man with the advice.

A boy dashed out into the road and stopped a taxi. A shabby man hurried to the fountain and filled his hat full of water from the basin. A woman walking through the park produced a bottle of smelling salts.

Greg wet his handkerchief in the hat and wiped the girl’s forehead and lips. He let the woman hold the bottle of smelling salts under her nostrils, and they were rewarded by a long, slow, trembling breath from the girl, and then a lifting of the fringes of the eyelids just for a fleeting instant that showed great, dark, troubled eyes. The fringes fell almost instantly, but the crowd had seen that she was alive, and a murmur of sympathy went through them like the sighing of the wind.

But Greg saw the taxi draw up at the curb, and he swept them all aside and carried his burden over. He got in with her in his arms.

“The nearest hospital, quick!” he ordered, and they whirled away, leaving the gaping crowd to discuss the incident.

Greg sat holding the girl in his arms, looking down at the white face against his shoulder, the long curling lashes, the disheveled brown hair. Her hat had fallen off, and one of the bystanders had laid it in her arms, a little soft, black felt with a tiny bright feather stuck cockily through the brim, a brave attempt to be like the world. But the rest of her attire was undeniably shabby. Little, stubbed-out shoes, worn down at the heel but bravely polished. Shabby gloves carefully mended. He felt a sudden mistiness in his eyes, a sudden estimate of the preciousness of his burden. Perhaps she was very dear to somebody. There must be people who loved her, many perhaps, but for the time being she was
his
to protect, until someone else should claim her. He perhaps was all that stood between her and death.

He drew his breath in sharply. If she
was
living yet!

He looked down with fear. How white her lips were! Perhaps that look she had given had been her last one on earth! Oh, would they never reach the hospital? How light and frail her body seemed! There was something pitiful in the droop of her lips. Something that made him think with a pang of his mother in her last days. Was this death? He held her lightly and felt the wonder of her delicate face against his shoulder.

There! They were stopping! Yes, this was a hospital building. A white-clad doctor appeared! A nurse! They tried to take her from him, but he bore her swiftly up the steps.

“Hurry!” he said. “She may not be gone yet!”

“The emergency ward is full!” he heard a nurse’s voice say sharply. “That fire! They kept bringing them in! Two have died already, but the beds are full.”

“Take her to a private room!” he commanded.

“A
private
?” another nurse asked. “Who is she? We can’t put her in a private room unless we know she can pay.”

“
I
will pay. Get her somewhere quick!” said Greg.

Magic money! How it oiled the wheels and hastened matters. No, they were not hardhearted. They were used to emergencies. But there had been so many that night. And the head nurse was off on her vacation. It was only a substitute who was trying to be conscientious.

She was on a bed at last with a doctor and nurse working over her. Finally, the doctor straightened up and looked around.

“Who brought her here? What happened?”

“I did,” said Greg. “Don’t know what happened.”

“Is she your wife?” the doctor asked, looking at him intently.

Greg looked at him with startled eyes.

“Oh no. I never saw her before. She was sitting on a bench in the park across from my hotel. I happened to be looking out the window and saw her fall; that was all.”

“H’m,” said the doctor, touching her pulse again. “A clear case of starvation, I guess. That’s all!”

“Starvation!” said Greg aghast. “You don’t mean it! Not in a city full of people!”

“Oh
yeah
?” said the doctor brusquely. “You don’t pick food off trees in parks. Does she look like a girl who would go to your back door and beg?”

He turned to the nurse and gave low-voiced directions, and Greg stood looking down at the pathetic little white face on the pillow. Starving! How could that come about?

They were pressing a spoonful of something between the white lips now, and the girl on the bed drew a slow quivering breath again and opened her eyes for an instant.

“That’s it, sister,” said the doctor cheerfully. “You’re going to feel better now in a minute.”

He watched the patient closely.

“A cup of that broth as soon as you can get it, Nurse,” he said in a low tone, keeping his finger on the pulse. Then to Greg who was standing anxiously by: “Yes sir, you find ‘em like this every day. Proud as Lucifer, lost their job, nowhere to turn. All the worse for them if they happen to be good.”

Greg looked at the delicate high-born features of the girl and understood what the doctor meant. He looked at her slender, patrician, well-cared-for hands and read a tragedy. How had a girl like this one come so near to starvation?

When the broth was brought, the patient swallowed obediently but did not open her eyes again. Greg watched from the doorway with misgiving in his heart. Was this little shadow of a girl going to slip away from them out of life after all, without giving a clue as to her identity? Was there perhaps a mother or some other loved one who was waiting anxiously, pondering on such a tragedy for the friends of this girl? Was there nothing he could do?

“Will this nurse stay by her all night?” he asked the doctor while the nurse was feeding her the soup.

“Oh, she’ll be in and out all night,” said the doctor. “You know she has this whole hall to look out for.”

“I’d like her to have someone with her all night,” said Greg. “I’d feel better that way. I feel sort of responsible because I found her, at least till her folks get here.”

“Of course you could have a special nurse if you’re willing to pay for it,” said the doctor thoughtfully, “but it isn’t necessary. She’ll probably pull through all right.”

“I’d like to have a special nurse,” said Greg decidedly.

“Well, of course it’s always safer in a case like this,” said the doctor. “You can’t always be sure about the condition of the heart.”

So presently a pleasant-faced capable young woman appeared and took charge. Greg motioned her out in the hall and talked to her in low tones.

“This girl was sitting on a park bench when I first saw her from my hotel window,” he told her, “and while I was watching, she fell off the bench. I brought her here, and I’m arranging for her to have this room as long as she needs it till she is able to go away. But she doesn’t know me, and I don’t know her. Maybe she might not like it to have me meddling in her affairs, but you don’t need to say anything about it, do you? Just let on the hospital put her in here, can’t you? I don’t want to put her under any obligation.”

“I see,” said the nurse. “We’ll fix that up all right. It’s awfully fine of you to do all this for a stranger, and you can count on me.”

He looked at her wistfully.

“If there is anything else I could do, I’d be glad,” he said. “It seems a pity we don’t know where to find her friends. I don’t suppose she’ll be able to tell us anything tonight.”

“No,” said the nurse, thoughtfully. “Maybe not even tomorrow. It might be best just to let her alone and let her rest. You can’t always tell about these cases.”

“I wonder, said Greg almost shyly, “if I should leave you my telephone number, would you call me in case you found out, or there was anything at all that I could do to help? In the night or anytime. There’s a telephone in my room. It wouldn’t bother me a bit.”

“Sure, I’ll let you know if there is any change or anything you can do. But I guess you needn’t worry. The doctor seemed to think her heart was pretty good. And I’ll be right here all night.”

“That’s good!” he said and gave her a relieved smile.

So Greg went down and arranged for the private room, paying a week in advance.

“If she doesn’t need it that long, you can put some other little stranger in there after she is gone,” he said happily, and swung off down the street to his hotel, thinking about the little, white-faced girl lying in the hospital bed.

It seemed a strange homecoming, almost the first thing to find this girl sitting over there just where he and his mother had picked violets. And now it seemed as though he could not do anything for himself until he knew the fate of this poor little stranger.

He went into the dining room and ate a good dinner, surprised to find that it was well on toward eight o’clock. Why, it had been still daylight when he took that girl to the hospital!

While he ate, he was thinking about the hospital. He remembered various bronze tablets he had seen about on the walls as he waited for his receipt to be signed at the office.

Wouldn’t it be a nice thing for him to endow one of those rooms so it could be used for strangers? He could put up a tablet on the door with his mother’s name, a memorial to her. Call it the Mary Sterling Memorial Room for Strangers. He would enjoy doing that with some of his new money. It would somehow give his mother a part in it. And she would have liked that. She was always doing beautiful things for lonely people. Perhaps he could get that very room the little girl was in tonight! That would be nice. The girl who had been sitting alone in the very spot where his mother used to pick violets would be the first one to lie in the room endowed to her memory. He would do it! The first thing tomorrow morning, he would go over to the hospital and arrange it! He would get the bronze tablet made and put on the door right away. Then if the girl was worried about his paying for her room, there wouldn’t be any trouble. It would just be a free room for strangers.

The idea made him quite happy, and after he had finished his dinner, he went out and walked beside the fountain in the little park, strolling past the bench where the girl had sat, even sitting down upon it a moment to wonder why she had sat there and what had happened that had brought her into such a sorrowful situation.

As he got up, his foot struck against something in the grass, something soft and yielding that slid across the pavement as he hit it.

He stooped and picked it up wonderingly. It was a flat purse with a strap across the back, one of the kind that most girls carried. It had a look of thinness about it that betokened nothing inside. He took it over and stood thoughtfully. Could that belong to the girl he had picked up, and could she possibly have dropped it as she fell?

He went back and laid it down again just where he had found it, figuring out just how it might have fallen from her grasp. Then he took it back to the light once more and opened it. Perhaps it might give some clue to her family.

But it proved to be absolutely empty save for a thin letter addressed to Miss Margaret McLaren, 1546 Rodman Street, that city. There wasn’t even a penny in the little middle purse that obviously was meant for change. His heart went out with pity toward the poor child, for he felt absolutely certain that this pocketbook belonged to the girl he had picked up in the park.

He studied the envelope carefully. Where would Rodman Street be? Wasn’t there such a street down behind the schoolhouse when he was a boy? He could go and see. Perhaps it was her home. Perhaps her father and mother were waiting anxiously. It was late. He looked at his watch—almost eleven o’clock. Yet if they were worried, they would be only too glad to be disturbed.

He looked at the letter again uncertainly. It was postmarked Vermont, but the town was so blurred it was unreadable. Ought he perhaps to know what was in that letter? Well, not yet anyway. If he could find her people, nothing else was his affair.

So he started out to find Rodman Street and at last discovered the address on one of a row of old brownstone-front houses.

There were lights in the second story, and a dim light coming from the transom over the front door, but it was a long time before anybody came, and then the door was opened but a few inches over a sturdy door chain.

“Who’s there?” asked a sharp elderly voice.

“Does Miss Margaret McLaren live here?” asked Greg.

“No. She certainly doesn’t. Not anymore!” said the sharp voice. “I told her this morning that she needn’t come back tonight whining around for me to let her in. She can’t step her foot inside this house again, not till she pays me the three weeks’ rent she owes me. And if it’s her suitcase you’ve come for, you can’t have it till the room rent’s paid. I told her that, too, this morning. I can’t live on air, and I’ve waited for my money just as long as I can wait. I’ve got another party for her room, and if she doesn’t pay up, they’ll move in in the morning.”