The old man arose from his chair with an attempt at alertness in spite of his recent rheumatic trouble, and stepping to the door, opened it, holding a lamp from the tea table high that it might shine into the caller’s face.
“Oh,” he said with a gentle dignity that would show no dismay at the identity of the visitor, “it’s you, Mr. Horner. Won’t you come inside? It’s a stormy night. You must have had a hard climb up the hill. It’s not a nice night for traveling.”
The man came in, shaking the icy particles from his shaggy coat, flinging the sleet from the brim of his old felt hat.
“No, it’s not a nice night,” he said in a gruff voice, “but one can’t always wait fer June weather. Had a little business up this way, and I thought I’d just stop and serve you notice, too. Kill two birds with one stone, you know!”
His hard, furtive eyes glittered toward the gentle old lady like a snake’s eyes.
“Yes?” said the old man with a sudden catch in his voice as if warning himself that he must be ready for anything. Then: “Come in, sir!” That “sir” somehow placed a distance between the householder and his visitor, and perhaps the other man felt it, for he flung himself inside and sat down in a chair by the door as if he had a right. His eyes on the depth of the windows in the thick stone wall, the heavy ancient beams of oak that crossed the whitewashed ceiling; his glance was an appraising glance. The old lady recognized it, and her lips grew white with fear.
“I just thought I’d step in and remind you that the interest on the mortgage that I hold on this house and farm comes due the twenty-ninth day of next month, four days after Thanksgiving.”
“Yes,” said the old man, “I am expecting to meet my obligations at that time.” He said it with a quiet confidence, but the old lady looked at him wide-eyed and caught her breath softly. The fright quite evident in her eyes did not escape the sharp eyes of the visitor.
“Are ye getting ready ta pay the principal as well as the interest?” asked the caller, eyeing him sharply from his shaggy, grizzled brows. “Because that’s really what I called ta tell ya. I’m askin’ ya ta pay the whole amount. The mortgage was for three years, ya remember, and the three years is up this November!”
The old man met the frowning adversary with a clear, keen glance.
“Yes,” he said, “I know. I’ve been thinking some of asking you to renew the mortgage for another couple of years. I’m not just sure yet.”
“Well, that’s what I came fer. I came to say that I’m callin’ in my money an’ I’m not renewin’. I need the money, and I’m foreclosin’ ef ya can’t pay!”
The two old people sat there stunned for a minute, the little old lady wide-eyed with sorrow, a slow tear stealing down the cheek that was turned away from the caller.
The old man still kept a calm, sweet look on his face. He took it like a blow that had been long expected.
“Do…I understand…that you…are wanting to take over the farm yourself? Or…were you expecting to sell?” he asked after a minute, quite coolly.
“Well, both,” said Horner, sliding his underjaw out in an ugly way he had when he knew he ought to be ashamed of himself. He knew he was putting these two dear old people through a cruel torture. It was the house where the old lady was born. Four generations had been born in that house. It was dear to them both.
“Ya see,” went on Horner, tilting back his chair against the wall and setting his big, muddy boots on the lower round, “I got a man what wants ta go in with me. We cal’clate ta make this a popular summer resort. That there lake needs ta be commercialized, he says. Bath houses around it in summer, canoes ta hire, a hot dog stand, and in winter a skating place, an’ skiing off on the hills. Build a little movie theayter down at the foot of the hill, an’ campers’ shacks around. It’s a wonder you ain’t never thought of developin’ yer property. So, ya see, I mean business. Ef you can’t fork over my money in November, I gotta foreclose. Just thought I’d let you know.”
“Yes,” said the old man, gently, still with that courtly dignity. “Thank you. It is always best to understand things thoroughly.”
“Wal,” said Horner, half embarrassedly, “that’s about all. That’s what I come fer. So, ef you ain’t got the money yerself, ya better get busy running around among yer rich friends.”
He laughed a hateful little guffaw and stood putting on his rough knitted mittens with their leather palms, smoothing them back on his wrists comfortably. The old lady thought she never would forget that dreadful motion and the sneer in Horner’s eyes as he gave another possessive glance around their snug kitchen, just as if he owned it already.
“Well,” said the old man, “that might be an idea. I’ll think about it. I have one very wealthy friend indeed. I think I’ll consult with him. I’m sure if he thinks it wise, he’ll see that I am able to pay the whole.”
The old lady gave another little gasp and looked at her husband standing there with the glow of the lamp on his white hair as he lighted the visitor out into the storm again. How handsome he looked. How gallant! How dared he brave that cold, hard man?
Horner gave a quick, suspicious glance back at the old man as he answered. Was it possible he did really have a rich friend? But no! Impossible! The whole country ‘round knew the Lorimers, knew their history for a century back. Margaret McLaren, their granddaughter, was down in the city, trying to eke out a scanty living for them all. Through the postmistress’s sister, who was a connection of the Horners, he knew the size of the money orders that came. He felt sure they were not even going to be able to pay the interest. He had been biding his time and waiting.
So he flung back a hateful laugh and said, “Well, get busy then,” and climbed into his rackety old machine and sent it chugging down the mountain.
The old lady waited until her husband had closed and locked the door, set down the lamp upon the supper table, and started to wind the clock. Waited until the sound of the chugging flivver down the mountain had died away in the distance before she spoke. Then she said, “Father! You were wonderful! I feel as if Satan had just gone away from here!”
“‘If God be for us, who can be against us?’” softly quoted the old man. “In God have I put my trust: I will not be afraid what man can do unto me.”
The old lady was still for a minute, and then she lifted troubled eyes: “But, Father, I never heard you tell anything that wasn’t true before. Father, you…you told a lie! What made you do it?”
The old man came around and looked down at her sweet, trembling face.
“What did I say that wasn’t true, Rebecca?” he asked, smiling down at her.
“You said we had a very rich friend, and you were going to consult with him.”
“And so we have,” said the old man, “and so I will. Dear heart, isn’t our Father rich? Doesn’t it say the silver and the gold are His, and the cattle upon a thousand hills? Come, Rebecca, let us go and consult Him right away. It shall be just as He says.”
He reached down and took her two fine, little, frail hands, and lifting her up, led her to the old, patchwork-cushioned chair. There they knelt as they had done many times before, his arm around her, her two hands held close in his own warm brave one.
“Father, we’ve come to ask you what you want done. If you want the old place to go for an amusement park to make Elias Horner rich, it’s all right, but Father, if you’re willing to let us keep it the rest of our journey, then you’ll have to send some miracle to save it for us.”
And while they knelt there, telling all their anxieties and laying their burdens upon the Almighty, the old plotter drove down the dark mountain road smiling to himself as he thought over the interview. Rich friends indeed. The Lorimers hadn’t a friend who had a cent to loan! The farm and the mountain and the rare old house and the gem of a lake were as good as his already. He could go on now and make his plans. There wasn’t a thing Lorimer could do!
And the Lorimers, hand in hand, knelt and prayed till they could look up with shi
ning faces and say, “Thy will be done!”
Chapter 7
Just about the time that Margaret was vanishing around the first corner from the hospital, Miss Gowen arrived at the door of the room where a half hour before she had left her patient quietly eating her breakfast.
She had paused for an instant in the hall to speak to another special nurse who was on a case at the other end of the corridor, then gone swiftly on, a light in her eyes, a pleasant smile on her lips, for she had a box of violets for her patient, and she guessed from whom they came. She liked the two young things for whom she was working just now, and she was anticipating the excursion of the morning. Hospital life at best had so many sad happenings that it was enlivening to come on a morning when one could go out and get a little breath of the outside air and forget for a little while that there was so much sorrow and pain in the world.
And it was especially interesting this morning to think that she could bring pleasure to the little old lady who wanted so much to rent her treasured rooms and so keep her beloved home for a while longer.
So she went with springy strides to the door, swinging her wrist up to consult her watch and see how much time there was in which to prepare her patient for the trip.
But what was this? The door, standing wide open, and the scrub woman down on her knees just sloshing the first application of soapy water onto the floor. Why! How outrageous! What could this mean? This room was just cleaned before the patient came in, and it couldn’t need cleansing now. Besides, it was beyond precedent to go at a room this way with the patient still in bed!
She gave a quick glance toward the bed, which was a trifle out of the range of vision from the doorway, and there was no patient lying in it! The bed was stripped of its linen entirely. Another glance showed a stepladder by the far window and a man standing on it taking down the curtains! Had she made a mistake and turned the wrong way in the corridor? She looked back to the desk that stood at the junction of the two halls. No, she was in the right wing of the building. Well, she must have come to the wrong floor. That was it. She had been so preoccupied with anticipation of the morning that she had not noticed what floor she was on. This wouldn’t do! She must snap out of this. A nurse ought to have her faculties about her all the time, no matter if she wasn’t on a critical case. It was a bad habit to fall into.
She wheeled around and started back to the elevator, but just then the door of the room across the hall swung open, and there she saw the little woman with the broken leg lying in her bed as usual, and her own special nurse just coming out the door. Why, this was the right floor! What could it mean?
She whirled around again and spoke to the scrub woman.
“What on earth are you doing in that room, Maggie, and where’s my patient?” she demanded.
“This is what I was ordered to do, Nurse, and do it quick, she said!” replied the woman, slapping her sudsy cloth down recklessly on the floor and rubbing away.
“But I don’t understand,” said the nurse. ‘I haven’t been down to breakfast but half an hour, and I left my patient in the bed eating her breakfast. What have they done with her? What happened? Who ordered this?”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” replied the woman stolidly. “This was orders for the head nurse, and they was pretty snappy. There wasn’t no patient in the bed when I come. I just got here and had ta leave my breakfast half unet ta come. The bed was just like you see it when I come. I’m doin’ what I was ordered ta do.”
Miss Gowen, now thoroughly bewildered, hurried down the hall to the desk.
“Where is the head nurse?” she asked of the nurse who sat there answering the telephone. “Is she back yet?”
“She’s back with bells!” said the young nurse with a dark look. “Stole in on us all as usual and found everything all wrong! She says she’s going to report me to the board for neglect of duty, and I was only down getting medicine the doctor had ordered. She’s down in the other corridor now raising a rumpus. I wouldn’t advise you to get in her neighborhood even if you are special. She’s no respecter of persons this morning. She must have had a disappointing weekend.”
Miss Gowen set her lips and hurried down the other corridor and presently located the head nurse. She had perhaps forgotten some of the reverence due a head nurse as she approached her.
“What have you done with my special patient, Miss Grandon?” she demanded excitedly.
The head nurse swung around upon her, offended dignity in her manner.
“Oh, it’s you, is it, Miss Gowen? Well I wondered when you’d turn up. Just what have you been trying to put over on the hospital authorities, I should like to know? Letting a charity case in to our most expensive private room that had been under special orders for one of our best paying patients?”
Miss Gowen’s pleasant eyes flashed fire.
“I had nothing to do with letting my patient into the room,” she said. “She was there when I came on the case. I understood that she was placed there by orders for the office. I have nothing to do with that, but I have to do with looking after my patient. I was paid to see that she was specially cared for and had no excitement nor anything to exhaust her. Will you kindly tell me what you have done with her? I will go to her at once, and you can settle the other question with the people who put her there. Where is she?”
“I’m sure in don’t know,” was the cold reply. “I told her that I would give her five minutes to dress and get out of the hospital if she was able to go. If she wasn’t, I said I would have her moved to the ward, where she belonged. She seemed to think she could go, so I hope she has gone. I suppose perhaps I ought to have held her for arrest or something, but I really hadn’t time to bother with her. But how you all let a girl of that stamp get away with a thing like that is beyond my comprehension. You’ll probably have plenty of chance to explain to the office. The idea, a girl like that in that room!”
“What do you mean, a girl like that?” asked Margaret’s nurse, now thoroughly roused. “She was a lovely girl. I never saw a lovelier.”
“You being the judge!” sneered Miss Grandon. “Well, we’ll see whether the board of directors agree with you when it comes to a showdown. However, in case you haven’t been informed of the facts, she told me with her own lips that she was a charity patient and ought to be in the ward, that she had told you so, and she owned up that a strange man had brought her here, a man she never knew before, just a pickup on the street, and that he was paying for her. Perhaps she thought he was, I don’t know, but in this age of the world, strange men who scrape an acquaintance with a girl on the street and then bring her to a respectable hospital and visit her here aren’t to be trusted.”
“Did you dare to tell her that?”
“Dare?” said Miss Grandon with a lifting of her eyebrows. “Dare? Yes, I dared. Just please remember who you are talking to! Certainly I told her that. And some other things. I told her plenty! This isn’t a reform school, and we don’t keep our most expensive private rooms for young women who run around with strange young men who pretend they are paying for it and tell lies about memorial rooms.”
“But it is a memorial room,” said Miss Gowen breathlessly. “The bronze tablet is expected to arrive today!”
“Oh, so he put something over on you, too, did he? It seems to me you are old enough to have a little sense and judgment after all these years of nursing. I begin to see why they never made you a head nurse!”
Miss Gowen grew white with anger, and her eyes grew dark with indignation for an instant. Then she turned and strode away down the hall to the stairs and disappeared, while Miss Grandon watched her with a supercilious smile and then remarked to a young intern who had been near enough to hear the altercation, “Ah! I thought that would finish her! Did you ever happen to hear why she never went back to St. Luke’s after that case of the man who took the wrong medicine? Well, I guess if the facts were looked into, we’d be surprised. I have heard whispers, but I wouldn’t like to say.”
&nbs
p; But Miss Gowen had already forgotten the sneering insinuations, the stinging tones of the woman who had been her enemy for several years back because of the preference of a rich patient. She flew down the stairs, not waiting for the elevator, and hurriedly located the young nurse who had been in Miss Grandon’s place during her absence. When found, this nurse had a look like a scared rabbit but admitted that Miss Grandon had been furious with her, and she denied any knowledge of the vanished patient.
Miss Gowen inquired wildly of every nurse and attendant who had been around during the last half hour, but none of them had see Margaret McLaren, except a man down in the front office who thought he had seen a young woman come down the stairs a few minutes ago and slip hurriedly out of the street door.
The nurse went out in the street, up and down wildly, in her uniform, the cold wind blowing her hair untidily around her face, but there was no sign of her patient.
She dashed back into the hospital and interviewed all the nurses on her hall, but no one had seen Margaret leave, and all she gained was a glowing account from a couple of nurses who happened to overhear the conversation between Miss Grandon and the patient.
At last, filled with chagrin and embarrassment, Miss Gowen took her way to the telephone booth and tried to call up Greg.
Now Greg had arisen early, for he realized that he had many things to set in order if he was to be honestly a businessman before he took on a secretary in earnest. He had spent much time in his room formulating plans, for he felt strongly that this girl would be suspicious of him if his mind appeared to be in chaos regarding his business. Indeed, he had spent much of the night thinking things out, tossing on his hotel bed and sighing for the quiet of his wilderness shack. How could any man think in a noisy place like this? Thunder of trains, clang of trolley cars, whirr of motors, bang, bang, bang of fire engines, whistles of sirens. He didn’t remember that home used to be so noisy. And then he recalled that he hadn’t been near his old home yet. Well, that could wait till he got this girl settled. Then, later, he would go and look up little old Maple Street and the white cottage where he and his mother used to live. If it was for sale, perhaps he would buy it and go and live there. Probably it would be quiet down around Maple Street. It used to be. But now he had much to do. He felt that the first and most important thing was to get that tired, sad little girl located in a comfortable room and somehow provide her salary in advance so that she would be relieved from financial worry. He could see that was the thing that was troubling her above all else. Perhaps it was almost time to send some more money to those old people who had written her that pitiful little letter he had read.
THE CHRISTMAS BRIDE Page 8