THE CHRISTMAS BRIDE (7 page)

Once when they sat on the observation platform together speeding away from a gorgeous sunset with deepening shadows on either side of the way, and majestic scenery melting into the obscurity of twilight, Rhoderick Steele began to talk of his childhood home in an old Virginia farmhouse amid cotton plantations and lovely hazy blue mountains. He told of his father, a man of God, and the firm foundation of the Gospel that had been laid in his young life; of the family worship where he and his brothers and sisters knelt and heard themselves prayed for daily. He spoke of his own early turning to God, of his struggle to earn enough for the education he must have if he went into the ministry, and of the wonderful way he had been led through his youthful years.

Then shyly, hesitatingly, Greg was led to tell of himself. Of his own lonely thoughts and feelings. Of the fierce fight to get a foothold, and how he had just sold his holdings for a price far beyond his wildest dreams.

They held sweet counsel that last evening of their journey together and lingered talking far into the night. The private car was to be switched to a southern train in the morning, and they were both to part.

When at last they said good night, Steele gave him a Bible like his own.

“When I bought it, I thought I might find someone who would enjoy it. Now I’m so glad to have something I love to give you. I’ve written a bit of a note on the flyleaf. Read it when we’re gone on our way. And don’t forget you’re to let me know when you get located. I want to keep in touch with you, and when I get a home of my own, as I’m hoping to soon, I want you to come and visit me. It won’t be grand like this car”—he looked around on his borrowed splendor with his pleasant smile—”but it’ll be home, and you’ll be greatly welcome.”

Greg left him finally, his heart warmed and comforted. Here was one who would be a friend always. It was great to know there was such a man in the world. He went to sleep planning that when he got a place of his own he would have this man often to see him. Maybe he could give some money to help along whatever he was interested in. He remembered the light in his eyes. He laid his hands on the yielding roughness of the beautiful little Bible that lay by his side. He resolved to look into it, to study it, and if possible to find the mysterious secret it seemed to have imparted to this prince of a man who was his friend.

That had been only a few short days ago that he had parted from this man whom he had come so to admire and love, yet he seemed almost like a dream now. He had kept his word and sent him his address that first night he had located at Whittall House after he came back from the hospital, but of course he had heard nothing from him yet.

Greg got up and paced back and forth through his hotel room and began to go over the whole experience in his mind again. How he wished that Rhoderick Steele would drop in for a few minutes this very evening. He would like to put his problems before him. A man like that would have insight and could help.

He thought of the Bible. He hadn’t read in it much yet. Perhaps it, too, would help to solve problems, only he felt so very inexperienced and helpless when he read, even with the help of the enlightening footnotes in the margin to which his new friend had introduced him. When things settled down he must study that Bible and get to know it better. His friend had told him it would be a lamp unto his feet and a light unto his path.

By and by when he got this little girl started in some position where she was safe perhaps he would run down to Virginia and see his friend, or get him up here for a few days. He would talk over what a man should do in these days to help get the world straightened out again. This man would know, he was sure he would know.

He went to bed eventually but he did not sleep much. He was trying to see just how he was going to keep his promise to Margaret McLaren. Some kind of a position must be forthcoming by Monday morning and he had to thrash it out before he went to see her on the morrow.

M
eanwhile, in an altogether up-to-date apartment not many blocks away from the Whittall House where Greg tossed the night through and worked out his problems, a girl whose name had once been Alice Blair wakened late that Sunday morning and lay luxuriously reading the society column in the morning paper while she toyed with grapefruit and ate delicate bits of Melba toast and drank strong coffee.

Idly she ran her eye down the columns—the debutantes of the coming season, the luncheons and teas, the theater dinners, the dances of the younger set—eagerly lapping up all the news of the cream of that ultra higher social set to which she had never as yet obtained an entrance.

There was news of the great hospital drive to which the smart set of the city was lending its gilded influence. Alice cared nothing of that except that there were occasional openings in such activities where an outsider might slip in and render a service that would be recognized and give entrée later to more sacred circles. Then suddenly, as her practiced eye ran down the column, a name stood out that made her catch her breath and read more carefully.

It was just the last paragraph of the column about the drive and the opening luncheon at which all the great were to appear. It said:

Alice Blair read the paragraph over several times with narrowing vision, considering just what this might mean. If Greg had returned and was doing things in this high-handed way in memory of his mother, he must have prospered. He must have made some money!

Alice half closed her eyes and looked off into space through their yellow fringes, at least as much space as there was between her rose taffeta–shrouded couch with its billows of pillows, mounted on its silver dais, and the odd construction she called a dressing table flanked by great pointed slabs of mirrors set in the wall.

Alice considered her former friend. He had been big and fairly nice looking, only far too much devoted to his prudish mother. But that mother was gone now. She wouldn’t be a drawback any longer.

So Greg had returned!

But he hadn’t come to hunt her up, though almost any of his old friends could have given him her history. Alice smiled shrewdly. Well, he might be worth looking up. She had no doubt but she could call him to her side again if she found it worthwhile. And one couldn’t have too many admirers.

So Alice arose, put on her war paint, got out her feathers, and took to the warpath.

She drove a high-powered cream-colored roadster and wore a stunning crimson dress. She drove about the city in various haunts new and old; she made descent upon various hotels and inquired sweetly if there was a Mrs. Hemingway-Smith staying there. Not that she knew a Mrs. Hemingway-Smith, but that made no difference to Alice. She had made up the name on her way in.

The clerk, of course, would shake his head and hand over the registry book, saying, “Those are our arrivals today.” And Alice would run through the list for several days back, and finding no name that interested her, she would sigh and say that she must have been mistaken about the date and hurry out to her cream-colored car and pass on to another. At the next hotel, she would have a different friend to inquire for, and always manage to run through several days’ records in the registry.

Alice was not easily balked. She had a gift of continuance. But it was not until midafternoon of Monday that she found the name Gregory Sterling, in the same old familiar scrawl she knew so well, registered at the Whittall House. She had a bunch of letters tied with blue ribbon in her desk, done in that same scrawl, a little more unformed perhaps, but still the same characteristic turn to the letters.

It gave her quite a thrill to see his name once more.

A whimsical smile played around her thin red lips. He might be very well worth looking up. She had been told that he had taken it hard when she ran away to marry Murky Powers.

Well, she would go cautiously. She didn’t want to get entangled with him again if he was an undesirable, but—well, there would be ways of finding out.

Greg slept late on Sunday morning, and then, without waiting for breakfast, because it was almost eleven o’clock, he went down the broad avenue and presently found the street where was located the old brick church that his mother used to attend. It somehow seemed to him that the old church, and the old back pew under the balcony, where they used to sit so long ago, was the hometown. He wanted to do the thing that would have pleased his mother, and this he knew was what she would have wanted.

But he scarcely saw a familiar face as he sat there under his balcony and cast a keen glance around. He found himself looking among the boys and girls for his friends, and then remembered that ten years had passed since he was a boy. They would be older. But he could not identify any of his former companions.

There were one or two elders, grown more feeble. There up near the front was the old grouch who wouldn’t lend him the twenty dollars to start his newsstand. There he was with the same old projecting underjaw, the same old beetling brows, grown a trifle whiter perhaps, the same old look as if he never smiled. A rich old miser in a seedy coat. Greg wondered what he would say if he could know what his present bank account amounted to.

There was a little woman who always used to smile and speak to his mother after church. She was wearing spectacles now and looked frail and thin. The church somehow made him sad, but he sat there dutifully for his mother’s sake and bowed his head when they prayed.

The minister did not have a message like the man he had met on the train, but he did say that God was love, and that He wanted us to do good to one another, and that seemed somehow along the line of Greg’s thoughts. He put a five-dollar bill in the collection plate and noticed that the plate held mostly nickels and very few bills. Then he wondered if his five dollars would do any real practical good to anybody there. Somehow the church seemed so musty and dead, and the message so sleepy. The music wasn’t very inspiring either, but he sat there with his eyes closed and remembered how he used to slip his hand inside his mother’s hand during prayer, oh so very many years ago when he was just a little kid first beginning to go to church, and the tears came into his eyes.

Then his thoughts wandered off into what he might do to help Margaret McLaren, and he failed to find out whether the message came alive or not, for here in the house of God his plans seemed to mature and ripen, and he suddenly knew what he was going to do. Not fully, just a hazy sketch, but enough to make his problem of the next day clear a step at a time.

And that afternoon he went to the hospital to see her.

The nurse had fixed her up in a sweet, little blue bed jacket of her own, trimmed with scallops and lace on the edge. The sleeves were wide and fell away from the soft line of the slim young arm, and the neckline was fluffy with frills of lace. Her hair was all soft and curly around her face, in brown waves and little rings over her forehead, and Greg stood a moment admiring her, his eyes lighting with pleasure. She was just as pretty as he had thought she was in his dreams all night, and he was strangely happy to see her. The coolness of her slim hand in his was something precious, a privilege that made him shy. And she smiled at him like an old friend.

She wasn’t angry about the roses then.

The roses were there on the little bedside stand beside her, and one was tucked in the throat of the little jacket where she could smell it.

“Of course you sent the roses,” she challenged him, “and you know you shouldn’t have done it, but I couldn’t help being glad, you know, that they were here. I couldn’t help enjoying them. And I thank you very, very much for being so kind to me.”

He smiled down upon her with a glad light in his eyes.

“I thought my mother would like you to have them if she were here,” he said with a quaint formality, though she saw his eyes were pleased that she liked them. “The flowers just go with the room, you know. You don’t need to feel uncomfortable about them. But I’m glad you enjoy them. And now, how are you?”

“I’m fine!” she said, her eyes shining. “I’m all eager to get up and go to work. And unless you have already found something for me, you’d better let me release you from your promise. For I know it’s not going to be an easy thing to find a job for another person, especially a stranger.”

“I protest,” he said with a grin. “You’re not a stranger. You may have been once, but we’re really acquainted now, aren’t we?”

“Well,” he said gravely, “joking aside. I promised you a job tomorrow sometime, and I mean to keep my promise. All I ask of you is to lie still till the doctor comes on his rounds—when is that, Nurse, about eleven o’clock?—Well, I’ll be in about twelve, and if the doctor says you are able, we’ll go into the matter and get it all fixed up. Now, shall we just let it go at that, and will you be good and not think about it till tomorrow? You know yesterday it was too late to do anything about it, and I naturally couldn’t see anybody on Sunday.”

“I know,” she said, looking troubled, “and that is why it seems as if I’d better go out, too, because, you know, I just might happen to land something and go right to work. And you can’t, of course, be sure that you’ll find anything.”

“I beg your pardon,” said Greg gravely. “I have a job for you now. You could go to work tomorrow morning, only that there are a few little details I’d like to settle first. But if you must get active tomorrow, I’ll promise you it can be done.”

She gave him a keen glance.

“Really?”

“Yes, really. I’m going to give you a job myself. You see, I’ve only been in this town a few days, and I haven’t got everything figured out the way I want it yet. That’s one reason why I didn’t want you to be in such a hurry. But if you must go to work at once, all right, we’ll get right on the job and get you an office.”