THE CHRISTMAS BRIDE (34 page)

Then, while they were singing, the doorbell rang.

Nobody heard it but Jane Garrett, and she slipped quietly to the door and opened it.

There on the portico stood a little company of brightly dressed people, and outside were a couple of big cars.

The Christmas air was keen and cold, and a sharp, little businesslike wind was at work outside with the fine powdery snow. It blew in Jane’s face with stinging little pricks, and it wafted in the clean outside air on the edge of which was a breath of exotic perfume and a taint of liquor on hot breaths mingled with a strange oriental hint of smoke.

A woman with gold hair and a startling scarlet dress led the oncoming visitors, and afterward Jane remembered wondering how she got her dress to match her lips so perfectly, and how strange it was her eyebrows were so thin and highly arched. She wore long, flashing earrings of deep red like drops of blood, and her fingernails were stained to match her garments. Jane shrank back and wondered at her.

“Is this where Gregory Sterling lives?” demanded the lady in a shrill, high voice as if she were speaking to a person far beneath her.

Jane shrank still farther and admitted that it was, and suddenly the whole troop of visitors flocked past her as if she were nothing and surged into the great, beautiful Christmas room beyond that still echoed with the sentence “Jesus may come today!”

The lady paused on the threshold and looked around her, a smile of amusement on her lips, looked from one member of the Christmas party to another, her eyes resting for just an instant on the white-clad girl standing by Greg’s side. Then she called out noisily, “Hello, Greg! Merry Christmas! We heard you’d bought this place, and we just dropped in to get a drink. We’re all simply perishing with thirst, and we happened to know that this house has a fine, old wine cellar stocked with the real thing. Open up, won’t you, and pass it around. Be a good sport, and don’t be a dog in the manger!”

It happened that just as these interlopers entered, the singers had come away from the piano and grouped themselves around the fire, and now they all looked up in startled amazement.

Greg whirled around sharply at the sound of that voice and faced the girl he used to go with in his high school days, faced her with a stern, white face, a deep look of indignation in his eyes, faced her with the look he wore once when he faced a bear in his wilderness home and the odds were against him.

Just an instant he looked at her, then he spoke quietly, coldly. Not a flicker now in his face, even the anger under control.

“Sorry to have to disappoint you,” he said clearly so that everyone in the room could distinctly hear, “but I emptied every drop of that old poison down the drain the first day I owned the place, and then smashed all the bottles and sent them to the dump. But let me introduce you to my friends. This is my grandmother and grandfather, Mr. and Mrs. Lorimer. This is Mr. and Mrs. Steele….” Greg went around the circle and then suddenly drew Margaret’s hand within his arm. “And this is my wife, Mrs. Sterling,” he said, with something in his tone that hushed the amusement on Alice Blair’s lips and for the instant held her scorn in abeyance while she studied the girl in white with the saint-like face. Then her eyes traveled around the circle again with the look of a keen appraiser.

“And now,” said Greg, without attempting to name the rest of the intruders, “Mrs. Blair, we are about to listen to my friend Mr. Steele read to us. If you will be seated, we shall be glad to share the pleasure with you.”

Greg indicated a long, deep-cushioned, built-in seat that ran along the wall between the windows, and something compelling in his voice made those happy strangers sit down. Was it curiosity that made them linger or something outside of themselves that restrained them?

And instantly Rhoderick Steele took his little book out of his pocket and began to describe a scene at a well outside an oriental city. A few vivid sentences, and the attention of the whole little company was upon a majestic figure seated on the edge of the well, watching the approach of a woman, an outcast from society, coming for water at the hour when she would be sure not to meet any who would scorn her and spit on her.

In the same conversational voice, Steele read and explained: “‘Jesus saith unto her, Give me to drink.’ The woman was amazed that anyone, especially a Jew, should speak kindly to her. Then the Man went on, ‘If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water…. Whosoever drinketh of the water shall thirst again: but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst.’”

When Steele had finished and closed his little book, the guests drew quick, sharp breaths, and there was a stir among them. Greg sensed the tenseness in the air and dared not look toward Alice. Alice was capable of turning this whole thing into mockery. Instead, he looked quickly toward the white-haired, old man sitting with his sweet, old wife beside the fire.

“Grandfather,” he said, and his voice was clear and distinct, “will you pray?”

There was the soft stir of garments as the family and house guests knelt. Greg, kneeling beside Margaret, gathered her hand in a close clasp and prayed in his own heart, “Oh Father, control this situation! Let it be according to Thy will.”

Grandfather began to pray as only one who knows the Lord intimately can pray, and he did not forget to include the strangers who had just come among them.

And those strangers who had come to make mockery sat there strangely stunned, their faces a study of fear mingled with scorn. But there was only one in the room who saw them, and that was Nurse Gowen. Not being much of a Christian herself, and being deeply astonished and curious about the strange, unworldly atmosphere by which she had found herself surrounded during the last few days, she felt herself privileged to pursue her investigations under all circumstances. Being a woman of keen perceptions and by reason of her calling skilled in judging humanity, she had immediately sensed the situation. Therefore, though she knelt with the rest for the prayer, she kept a calm, furtive eye open for observation and lost nothing. Through her long lashes, she saw the dull, stupid stare of Mortie as he watched the kneeling act, saw the little shudders of dislike and terror creep over the group, saw the blank, ghastly look on the face of the woman with the red lips who had called the host intimately by his first name. Saw her actually shiver and turn white beneath her rouge. Saw her look toward the door, measuring the distance like a hunted animal.

Nurse Gowen could not possibly know that there had been a day long ago in this woman’s girlhood when she had once been in a Sunday school class of girls and heard this story of the woman at the well fully explained. She could not know how the story with Rhoderick Steele’s clear comments cut deep into her own experience, laying bare a heart that was full of sin. She only saw the fear in her eyes, the look of a hunted animal at bay, saw her eyes rest upon the girl in white kneeling there so quietly, her hand in her husband’s, then saw a look of pain and jealousy writhe around her little red mouth. She saw her rise cautiously, tiptoe noiselessly from the room to the vestibule, and opening the front door silently, pass from view into the night. The others of her company, realizing one by one her absence, followed her, Mortie stupidly bringing up the rear and stumbling noisily over Jane Garrett’s meek, little foot that happened to be in his way. And so they all disappeared, and the prayer went on following them into the Christmas night, under the Christmas stars, drawing their minds inevitably to one other Christmas star of long ago and what it meant today.

But Mortie had failed to latch the door as he stumbled out, and they could all hear a hollow, empty, cheerful, little laugh ringing out on the cold air before Nurse Gowen, roused to her duty, went softly and gave the door a final closing. Even Grandfather must have heard that rowdy laughter, for he prayed more earnestly than ever for those lost spirits who had dropped in on their worship and slipped away into their own darkness again.

It was very still when they rose from that worship and stood thoughtfully together, and then Rhoderick Steele quoted solemnly: “When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against him.”

Later, when at last Greg and Margaret went to their own apartment, he gathered her into his arms tenderly and looked deep into her eyes: “And to think,” he said sorrowfully, “that I used to believe I cared for that girl! Oh, the Lord has been gracious to me to save me from her and to give you to me! My precious Christmas gift!”

G
RACE
L
IVINGSTON
H
ILL
(1865–1947) is known as the pioneer of Christian romance. Grace wrote more than a hundred faith-inspired books during her lifetime. When her first husband died, leaving her with two daughters to raise, writing became a way to make a living, but she always recognized storytelling as a way to share her faith in God. She has touched countless lives through the years and continues to touch lives today. Her books feature moving stories, delightful characters, and love in its purest form.

Love Endures
Grace Livingston Hill Classics

Available in 2012

The Beloved Stranger
The Prodigal Girl
A New Name
Re-Creations
Tomorrow About This Time
Crimson Roses
Blue Ruin
Coming Through the Rye
The Christmas Bride
Ariel Custer
Not Under the Law
Job’s Niece