THE CHRISTMAS BRIDE (20 page)

“Yes, that is a rule, of course, and my niece Lyddy is awful closemouthed. She took an oath, of course, about their rules and regulations, and she takes it awful serious. So you wouldn’t get nothing out of her. But me, I ain’t took an oath, and I’m glad ta tell ya what I know, only of course it won’t do ya much good, as it happens, ‘cause the last time her folks wrote her, they just addressed it ‘General Delivery.’ I know that fer a fact, because I was helping distribute myself the day it come down, and I took particular notice.”

“I don’t suppose there’s any chance you would know whether Miss McLaren may be coming home for Thanksgiving?” he hazarded suddenly.

“She couldn’t,” said the garrulous voice decidedly. “She wouldn’t have the money ta come. They’re awful poor. I heard say her gram’ma cried when she went away and said would she ever see her again. And you’d know by the size of the money orders she sends home. Sometimes only two or three dollars. Oh, I’m not
supposed
to know, of course, but
I find out
!”

“I see. Well, thank you,” said Greg. “I guess I’ll just have to depend on writing. Sorry to have troubled you.”

“Now ain’t that a pity!” began Aunt Carrie Pettibone and then stopped disappointed and gazed into the receiver.

“He’s hung up!” she said aloud to the post office cat. “I declare, some folks is hasty. I meant ta tell him she had a new job, but I suppose he’ll find that out. I ‘spose mebbe he thought the bill was getting too big. He didn’t say where he was. It musta been long distance, of course. Well, I’m sorry I didn’t find out. I didn’t even ask his name! Now, how can I ever tell M’s Lorimer about it? Well, it’s just as well, mebbe. Lyddy might find I’d answered the phone again. It beats me how she thinks mortal woman can set and listen to that bell ring and know someone’s on the wire, and not go answer it! I can’t figure out why Lyddy don’t trust me. I never tell people’s private affairs. My mother always usedta say I had the best judgment of any of her children. Well, I suppose that’s that! Mercy me, I do wish I’d asked him ef he didn’t want I should send a message up ta the Lorimers tamorra. Mebbe he’d a opened up a bit more and left his name and address.”

So Aunt Carrie sat down with a thump in the rocking chair that was a little too low for her bulk and her lame ankle and, picking up the county paper that she had filched for the evening from the Fagan post box, went back to her perusal of the county social column, which had been interrupted by the telephone ring.

Miles away at the other end of that telephone wire, Greg sat staring at the little tablet he held in his hand, studying over the words he had written down while talking on the telephone. But at least he had learned one thing. Margaret had not yet gone home, or this person would have known.

So, there was danger of the Lorimers losing their farm! Not quite two weeks away the time was, and what could he do? Of course he knew their location now and could go up there and look into things, gain an acquaintance with the old folks perhaps, but would they not resent his intrusion into their affairs? And if he went away, suppose that Margaret were to need him here? Oh, where was Margaret? He must find her first. And the time was so short! Not quite two weeks till Thanksgiving.

The trouble seemed suddenly to thicken around him too much for him to bear, and then he thought of his new friend and began to pray again. Some help would come. He was leaving it with God, and there would be a way!

Then suddenly he sprang up, went to the desk, and wrote rapidly. He had just remembered that he could at least try to communicate with Margaret McLaren through the General Delivery. Perhaps she would be too afraid of him to answer, but at least he could try. So he wrote:

Greg addressed his letter and looked at it wistfully.

“I’ll mail that the first thing in the morning,” he said to himself.

And then he went to bed.

G
reg had been investigating the qualities of various automobiles for the last few days. Rhoderick Steele had assisted in the discussions. They had even tried out a couple. And one came that next morning for Greg to drive himself.

He was not an amateur driver, for before he went west, he had worked as a delivery boy after school hours for a couple of years and full-time summers driving delivery trucks, and had often made a dollar or two driving ladies’ cars for them for an afternoon, so that he took to the wheel quickly again. Somehow it eased his troubled mind that morning to be starting out with a vehicle of his own, not just a chugging taxi panting around corners and always having to be told where to go.

It was a little after nine when he turned into Rodman Street, drew up at the door of Margaret’s former boarding place, and stopped his engine.

He was just preparing to get out when the door opened and someone came out with a suitcase and two large bundles. He looked out the car window, and there she was!

“Margaret!” he called in a strained voice, as if he thought she would get away from him before he could reach her. He sprang out, meeting her halfway up the steps.

“Thank God I’ve found you at last!” he said, taking all three burdens in one hand and laying hold upon her arm gently but firmly with the other hand.

Margaret shrank back and looked up at him.

“Oh,” she protested in a small, frightened tone, “you mustn’t carry those. I can carry them quite easily myself. They are not heavy!”

“They are
very
heavy,” he said in a stern voice, “and you
may not
carry them. You are panting now with having carried them so far.”

He led her down the steps and to the car, putting the packages in the backseat.

“But what are you doing?” she asked in a distressed voice, her eyes large with trouble. He noticed that there were great deep-blue shadows under them.

“I am taking you with me,” he said firmly. “I’ve combed the universe for you, and now you’ve got to come with me and find out the truth. I’m going to show you that I’m not a liar and that I won’t harm a hair of your head. After that, you can do as you like. If you never want to see me again, I’ll clear out. It’s entirely up to you. But I insist that you first find out the truth about me. I have a right to ask this of you. Get in, please.”

His voice was cold and aloof. She gave him another furtive look and spoke in a troubled voice. “But…I don’t think…you are…a liar,” she said. “After I had time to think at all, I knew there must be
some
explanation. But…you don’t understand. There were some terrible things said—”

“Yes, I understand,” said Greg grimly. “I know it all. I don’t think there was a thing left out of the account I had. Get in, please!”

Margaret opened her lips to speak, looked into his set face once more and got in, her face very white, her eyes dark pools of uncertainty.

Greg drove very fast, threading his way through traffic skillfully, his face stern. He did not speak nor look at her.

Margaret watched him furtively, one hand gripping the arm of the seat. She wanted to explain, but his manner was so chilly that when she opened her lips to speak, the words would not come. She held herself tense as if there were no cushioned seat there to hold her. Her knuckles were white with the strain of her grip. She felt suddenly faint and dizzy and told herself she ought not to have allowed this strange, stern man to carry her off. It was the kind of thing her grandmother had always warned her against. And yet, even beneath the sternness, there was something so kind and trustable.

She felt the tears coming to her eyes and drew in her breath to keep them back. And then she noticed that they were drawing up before the hospital entrance.

“Oh, I can’t go in there again!” she said shrinking back, her lips set thickly in determination.

Greg shut his own lips hard to hide the quiver that came about them.

“I’m sorry, but it’s necessary!” he said.

He stopped the car, got out, and came around to open the door for her.

“Your things will be quite safe here. I’ll lock the car,” he said. “We shall not need to be here long.”

There was something aloof yet compelling in his voice, and Margaret, with a baffled look, got out and waited while he locked the car, then went with him like a child who was being punished.

At the door, she shrank back again, but he touched her arm lightly as any escort might.

“This way, please!”

He stopped at the desk and said a few words as if he had authority, and the girl who was in attendance said, “Yes sir,” most deferentially.

They went up in the elevator and walked down the hall to the room that Margaret had quitted in such haste more than a week ago.

It was not until they reached the door that she saw the tablet, polished bronze, beautifully inscribed:

I
N
L
OVING
M
EMORY OF
MARY RUSSELL STERLING
F
OR STRANGERS IN
N
ECESSITY
.
D
ONATED BY HER SON
G
REGORY
S
TERLING
.

Margaret stopped startled and read the words, a look of delight spreading over her astonishment, and then with a light in her eyes as she lifted them, almost a triumph, as if she had found her secret hope to be true, she gave him a rare smile. A smile that went over her face like swift sunshine, coming to its fullness as her gaze met his, lighting its fragile transparency into loveliness.

Gregory watched her with unchanged countenance, watched her as he used to watch a deer he was stalking, not losing an expression, a reaction, however fleeting, yet giving no sign of either displeasure or satisfaction. His look might almost have been called a jealous one, perhaps even a hungry one.

“Oh, was that there all the time?” asked Margaret.

“No,” said Greg, still in that cool, aloof voice, watching her. “It was put there after you left.”

The thoughts and questions were chasing one another over her expressive face, and Greg missed none of them.

Then down the hall, her face chalk white, as white as her rattling linen uniform, came the head nurse. Came as if invisible chains were leading her against her will.

Greg introduced her.

“This is Miss Grandon, Miss McLaren. Miss Grandon, will you kindly tell Miss McLaren when this tablet was put here and why, and then make your apology to her.”

Miss Grandon’s hard lips were trembling nervously as she began to speak. “Miss McLaren, I owe you an apology!” She tried to speak humbly as she knew was required of her by the institution, but her soul had been too long frozen and self-centered, and an edge of haughtiness crept in. “The arrangement about this room was made during my brief vacation, and I had not been informed about it when I came on duty that morning,” she said in her most frigid manner. “The tablet was put up about three-quarters of an hour after you left, Miss McLaren, and that was the first intimation I had of it officially. It had been promised early that morning, it seems, to be erected before you left the room so that you could see it. Before I left, I had given orders that the room be put in readiness for an old patient who had engaged that room especially, and I naturally supposed that someone had been usurping authority. And when you owned to me, Miss McLaren, that you were paying nothing for the room and felt that you belonged in the ward, I am not so much to blame perhaps for taking you at your word. There are so many impostors going about today—”

“I beg your pardon, Miss Grandon,” interrupted Greg, “I believe you were going to
apologize
“

“Oh, it is not necessary in the least,” said Margaret.

The head nurse swept Greg a look of bitter servitude and spoke quickly: “I was just going to say, Miss McLaren, that I apologize most humbly for having made the mistake that I did, and I certainly am sorry if anything that I said caused you any annoyance. I am sure you will understand that in an institution like this, one meets with all sorts of emergencies, and one is not always infallible in judgment. I hope you will pardon my seeming discourtesy.”

“Please don’t think of it again,” said Margaret regally. “I’m sure you were no more to blame than I was for being here. I hope you will forget it.”

Greg could not keep a bit of satisfaction, of admiration from his eyes then as he watched Margaret. She had managed to show by tone and manner that she was a lady, in spite of her shabby garments.

Greg did not keep her there long. He was dimly aware of nurses nearby, peering around corners, opening casual doors into the hall. For it had not taken long for word to get around that the pretty, little, lost patient had been found and that “Grandon was getting hers.”

Greg escorted her back to the elevator as if she had been a princess, and Margaret held her tired little head high and walked coolly away with such an air of unconsciousness that no one had time to study out her shabbiness, and even the little downtrodden shoes stepped daintily for the occasion. The shabby suit and the brave, little feathered hat were royal apparel for the time being.

Gravely, Greg took her to the office and showed her copies of the papers that had to do with the transaction of the room, saying little himself except to ask the young woman in charge to show the documents.

Gravely, he took her out to the car again and put her in, and she, recognizing that the hospital steps, and the street in front, were no place for an argument, submitted to his courteous leading.