THE CHRISTMAS BRIDE

by Grace Livingston Hill

“Oh,” she said with a quiver of her lips, “I never heard of having rooms like this for nothing, but it’s heavenly wonderful!” Her lips trembled. “I hope someday there may be a way that I can do something for somebody like this. But now listen, please—wonderful as all this is, and as much as I would love to stay here and just rest”—the white lids quivered shut for just an instant over the big, dark eyes—“I just can’t! “I’ve got to get back to work. There are reasons why—” She paused.

  “You needn’t try to explain,” he said pityingly. “You have a right to keep your reasons to yourself”—he felt a sudden pang of guilt that he had read that letter from the grandmother—“but listen to this. How about trusting your friends to look after a job? I really think I’m much more fit to do that than you are.”

  “You are kind,” she said gently, “but you aren’t really even an acquaintance you know. I mean, of course you’ve been wonderfully friendly, but you are really a stranger. You don’t know a thing about me.”

  “You’d be surprised,” grinned Greg suddenly, “how much I know. One can’t spend nearly twenty-four hours thinking about a person and trying to find her friends without turning up quite a good deal about her.”

  The girl’s eyes flew open wide.

  “You were trying to find my friends? But I haven’t any friends about here.”

  “So I discovered,” said Greg. “But you see, I was thinking there might be a mother somewhere worrying, and I thought I ought to do my best to find her.”

  The girl’s face softened.

  “No,” she said with a hint of tears in her voice, “my mother and father died when I was a child. I have a grandfather and grandmother, but they are away off in Vermont.”

  “Yes,” said Greg. “I found that out, too. I don’t know as I should, but I did. I was going to ask your pardon for that before we get through. But you see, I kept thinking maybe you had somebody who would worry about you.”

  “Why, how could you possibly find that out?” said the girl in wonder.

  “Well,” said Greg, giving her one of his pleasant boyish grins, “you see it was this way. After I got back to my hotel, I walked over to that bench where you were sitting when you fell. You see, I just got back to this town yesterday after ten years out west, and it happens that park used to be a meadow when I was here before, where I used to go with my mother sometimes to pick violets. So when I went back, I sat down awhile and got to thinking about you, wondering who you were and if somebody was worrying about you, and then my foot touched something in the grass, and I picked it up, and it was a pocketbook. I wondered if it could be yours, and I went over to a light and looked at it. There wasn’t anything in it but a handkerchief and a letter.”

  The girl suddenly sat up in bed, a kind of fright in her eyes.

  “Oh, you didn’t telegraph to Grandmother, did you?”

  “I couldn’t,” said Greg. There wasn’t any name signed but Grandmother, and there wasn’t any address. Even the postmark was blurred, so all I could get was Vermont.”

  “Oh, I’m so thankful!” said the girl, dropping back on her pillows. “I wouldn’t have Grandmother know for anything. She couldn’t have come to me. She couldn’t have done a thing! She is there all alone with Grandfather, and he is sick! They haven’t any money either. They lost everything they had in a bank failure this spring. And they would have been so frightened and so unhappy about me. I’m just glad you couldn’t do anything about it.”

  Greg looked at the girl admiringly. There was a sparkle of tears along her lashes. He thought how pretty she was now that she was rested.

  “So am I,” grinned Greg, “if you feel that way about it.”

  The nurse came quietly and brought her a glass of orange juice.

  “Am I staying too long?” asked Greg, springing to his feet and looking apprehensively at the nurse.

  “No, you’re being good for her,” said the nurse. “It was just time she had this, that’s all. She’s going to be fine in a day or so now.”

  “But really,” said the girl as she drained the glass and handed it back to the nurse, “I’ve just got to look up a job tonight and be ready to go to work Monday morning. I’m sorry to disappoint you two; you’ve been so good. But it’s an absolute necessity.”

  “Yes?” said Greg, dropping back into his chair again. “I was coming to that job. Tell me about it. Did you really have something definite in mind, or are you all up a tree yet?”

  The color flamed into the girl’s face.

  “I had an advertisement that sounded hopeful,” she said after an instant’s hesitation, lifting truthful eyes to his face. “I wasn’t sure about it, of course. But I had no trouble in getting my first job last fall. But the head of the firm died, and the business went into the hands of a receiver. Then this last job I had to leave. The man was—well—just impossible! He was very offensive. I couldn’t stand it. I had to leave without my pay, which made things very hard. And—I wouldn’t feel like going back for a reference.”

  “Of course not,” said Greg firmly. “We’ll manage without that, I think. Now, suppose you tell me what kind of work you do.”

  “I’m a good secretary,” said the girl earnestly.” I can take dictation rapidly and accurately, and I have a record speed on the typewriter. I understand filing, I can write a good hand, and I’ve done some bookkeeping. I’m willing to do almost anything.”

  “That ought to be a fairly comprehensive line, I should say,” said Greg gravely. “Now, Miss McLaren, suppose you just put this thing out of your mind and rest quietly here. I’ll guarantee to get you a good job by Monday, or as soon after as the doctor thinks it’s safe for you to go back to work, and in the meantime this room and this nurse are yours free, and there’s to be a bronze tablet to that effect put on the door early in the week.”

  “Oh, but I couldn’t let you take any more trouble for me,” protested the girl anxiously. “I really couldn’t.”

  “Well, that’s too bad,” said Greg smiling contagiously, “but I’m afraid you’ll just have to this time. I really couldn’t surrender my rights. I brought you here and feel I have some little right to say what you’ll do. I’m going to guarantee to put you in shape to work and put you into a good-paying job before I hand you over to yourself again. How’s that? By the way, what salary do you usually get?”

  “Oh, I’ll take anything, anything, at first. I must of course.”

  “No,” said Greg, “you won’t. You’ve got to have a good salary. You can’t live on ‘anything.’ Would you mind telling me what you ought to get?”

  The girl named a ridiculously small sum.

  “That’s what I got last, and of course welfare and insurance had to come out of that.”

  “That’s outrageous!”said Greg, drawing his brows together.

  “I had no idea anybody would have the face to pay such small wages.”

  “Jobs are very scarce,” said the girl, looking deeply troubled. “I’m afraid you’ll find out. All wages are very low indeed!”

  “Well, the job that I’ll get for you will have better wages than that!” said Greg with confidence. “Now, you go to sleep again and get really rested. I’ll be seeing you again tomorrow if the nurse doesn’t think I stayed too long today, and Monday I’ll have some good news for you. Now don’t you worry. I’ve killed a bear and a rattlesnake and fought wild steers. There’s just one more thing in that line I’d like to do, and that is beat up that last fellow you worked for, and I will yet if he ever gets in my way. But meantime I’ll land a job for you the first of next week. Now don’t you fret another worry. Good night.”

  He took her slim little hand in his briefly shyly, and then left with a wave of the hand to the nurse and a smile like sunshine.

  The girl lay still looking after him, a wavering smile about her own lips, a questioning relief in her eyes.

  “He…sounds very…sure!” she said doubtfully and gave a tiny sigh. “It would be wonderful…if…he could.”

/>   “He will!”said the nurse breezily. “He’s wonderful! He does things. He’s that way. They say he looked like a young giant when he brought you in, and he wouldn’t let the attendants touch you. He just carried you himself in his arms in the elevator, and he wouldn’t let them put you in the ward.”

  Margaret McLaren lay still for some minutes looking off into space, trying to picture herself being brought into a hospital room that way, her pale cheeks growing rosy, her eyes dreamy. Then she sighed again.

  “I wonder if it’s right to let him help me that way,” she said in a troubled voice. “He’s just a stranger, and I never can repay him.”

  “I don’t see that you’ve anything to do about it,” said the nurse crisply. “He’d do it anyway, whether you let him or not. Besides, it will do him good to help somebody. It always does men good to help others. He’ll probably get a kick out of hunting you a job, and for heaven’s sake, why should you quarrel with help when it comes your way? There’s little enough of it these days. And you never can tell about paying back—you might and then some!”

  “But he’s a stranger,” urged the girl. “I don’t know what my grandmother would think of my letting him help me this way.”

  “Well, we’re all strangers more or less, no matter how well we know each other, and for heaven’s sake, what’s your grandmother got to do with it? She isn’t here to be bothered, is she? And where would you have been if it hadn’t been for this young man? Lying dead in the morgue as likely as not, and nobody knowing where to look for your relatives! By the way, it’s high time you let me have the address of that grandmother, if anything should happen to you. It isn’t right for us not to know. Now, there’s a pencil and paper. You write down the address, and then you turn over and go to sleep. You’ve a half hour before your tray comes up, and you need every minute to rest in. If you’re going to work next week, you’ve got to conserve your energy. Now be a good girl and go right to sleep.”

  Chapter 4

  On the way back to the hotel, Greg passed a florist’s shop and gave an order for roses to be sent to the hospital. He spent some time deciding between pink and yellow, and at last bought Ward rosebuds, dozens of them, with the deep apricot glow of sunset in their folding and a rare wonderful fragrance. They would be sent up that night and be there to brighten Sunday morning when she awoke. He did not put his name with them. It was enough that she should just have them. He thought uneasily that perhaps she would not want roses from a stranger. She had tried distinctly to make him feel that he was a stranger. Well, if she objected, he would just tell her that he liked to do it for his mother’s sake, that his mother would have enjoyed sending them to her if she were alive.

  He thought a great deal about the girl that evening, remembered the sweep of her eyelashes, the proud little way she had of lifting her chin, the pleasant tones of her voice. It made a warm glow about his heart to have somebody to think about. After all these years of thinking in terms of cattle and soil, it was nice to feel there was somebody in whom he might be interested, at least for a little while. Maybe if he found a job for her, she would be willing to be friendly when she got to know him better. She seemed like the kind of a girl his mother would have liked.

  Then he set himself to seriously consider how he would go about locating that job for her. It seemed as serious as the fortune he had promised himself that he would make when he went west. The fortune had come true, though not at all by his endeavors.

  But the more that he considered the more he realized that it was not going to be an easy matter to locate a job for a strange girl in a strange city with nothing, absolutely nothing to go on.

  While he was waiting for his dinner order to arrive, he took out his notebook and wrote down the names of people whom he remembered who used to be friends of his mother and who were in business. He thought of going to some of them, but he began to realize that it was going to be awkward, perhaps embarrassing both for him and the girl. How, for instance, was he to explain the girl and why he was after a job for her? It was ten years since he had met any of these businessmen he was thinking of. They might not even recognize him. They had little to remember to particularly recommend him either. He had been just a willful, wild boy when he went away. They probably had all disapproved of him for not following their advice. No, it would be better to go to strangers for help.

  He bought an evening paper and set himself to study the want advertisements but was struck with the scarcity of them. Moreover, the paper was full of talk of the unemployed. It appeared that employment was a problem and that there was such a thing as a depression enveloping the land.

  It hadn’t reached to his wilderness home. It was always depression there. It was something he had expected, and it didn’t bother him. It was only astonishing that it had been lifted so suddenly and so fully in his case. Instead of just taking his money as something that would make him independent for life, something that he was to absorb in his own selfish plans and pursuits, why oughtn’t he to make that money work for others, in part at least? Perhaps that was why he had such an indifference toward trying to seek amusement for himself. Perhaps he was meant to enter into a scheme that would help others, and only through others could he really get the whole pleasure that his money was meant to give. Perhaps there was a business somewhere that he would buy or set up that would employ a lot of despairing ones. Almost every column of the paper had some story of a suicide or death or desperation of someone who was depressed because of business conditions. That was a terrible state of things. Why, there must be other people besides himself who had a little money. Why didn’t they think out a way to make that money work for others as well as themselves? Not just give it away, for then soon it would be gone, but keep it going in a continual circuit to make profit both for its owner and for those who were employed through it? Well, there must be a way. He would have to think it out.

  He wished he had a few good, wise friends to talk this matter over with. He had come back into a world that seemed to be sick and sad and confused. He couldn’t remember that things had been this way when he went away. But he had been only a kid and perhaps didn’t understand. Still the papers spoke as if this was something comparatively new, this depression. Of course there had been more or less talk about it for the last year or two in the very few papers that had come his way, but he had not taken in the real purport of it. Living off that way alone gave one a selfish point of view.

  There was just one man, as he thought it over, who might have some sane solution of this problem. It was a man he had met on his journey eastward. He had known him only for a day, but his whole attitude of life had made a deep impression upon him. His name was Rhoderick Steele, and he had come to know him in a somewhat dramatic fashion.

  It was the second evening of Greg’s trip, and he was returning from the diner. As he reached his own section, he saw coming toward him an elderly man whom he recognized as the occupant of the drawing room section whose door was just beyond his own seat. The man’s face was ghastly, a blue look about his lips, and suddenly he put one hand to his heart as if he were in distress, reeled, and fell headlong in the aisle.

  Greg was on his knees beside him instantly, lifting him in his arms, fanning him with his newspaper.

  The porter came rushing from the other end of the car; people rose from their seats and offered help. Someone brought ice water. A flask of brandy was produced. A doctor appeared from another car. The porter brought a pillow and slipped it under the sick man’s head, and Greg lowered him gently upon it.

  Greg stood beside the man while the doctor worked over him, watching the gray shadows gather over the haggard face, purple and gray under the eyes. He noticed the deathly pallor, the whiteness of the old lips. He knew this man was very near the end. He had the same look that old Luke had when he died. Strange, in spite of this man’s distinguished garments, he looked like old Luke. It came to Greg then that Death was no discriminator. He leveled all alike. This man was not immune because
of his money and fine garments. The ashen look sat as desperately upon his well-groomed features as upon Luke’s stubbly old face.

  Then the sick man had opened his eyes, as a quiver of pain shot across his face, and his look went around the group, frightened eyes searching for something, for hope, for someone to help. He read his doom in the doctor’s grave face. There was a convulsive twitch of his lips, and his eyes started on their quest again, coming to rest on Greg’s face.

  “Get me a clergyman! Quick!” implored the dying man.

  Greg gave a swift glance around at the faces of the men in the car. None of them looked like clergymen.

  “I will!” he said and started away.

  “Preacher right back in the private cah, sah! Second cah back!” murmured the porter as he hurried past with the glass of water and spoon the doctor had demanded.

  Greg followed the motion of the porter’s head toward the end of the train, going with long strides. He burst into the luxurious quiet of the private car, shocking its well-trained attendants.

  “Is there a preacher here? A dying man wants him quick!”

  The attendants barred his way and eyed this strangely garbed young westerner coldly, but a young man rose from a chair by the window in the room just beyond and appeared at once.

  “Coming!” he said instantly.

  Greg gave him a quick appraising look and turned, satisfied. He wasn’t much older than himself, and he did not wear clerical garb, but there was a light in his blue eyes and a purpose in his kind, firm lips and chin that were entirely satisfactory. They did not stop for words.

  The young minister knelt in the aisle with sympathetic eyes on the dying man.

  “What can I do for you, brother?” he asked, and the man turned his anguished eyes toward him.

  “I’m dying…and I’m a sinner—a very…great…sinner!” The last word came with another horrible grimace of pain.

  “But you have a very great Savior!” said the minister in a confident voice.