“But it’s yours, Grandmother! Greg got it for you! See how nicely it fits you! Isn’t that wonderful? And he never said a word to me about it. Not a word! Sit down, Grandmother dear. You can’t hurt it. It’s sealskin, and it won’t muss. It looks so pretty on you. Look at her, Grandfather; doesn’t she look sweet?”
There was great excitement and even a little more delay before they could get those two dear old saints to realize that the coats were their very own, but Greg finally coerced the old man out of his thin, shabby, old overcoat that he had worn for years and into the splendid fur-lined coat that made him look like a prince.
“But this is too nice for me,” he said, surveying himself before he got into the car. “Too nice for an old-fashioned farmer.”
At last, however, the sun shot a real ray of light into the dimness of dawn and startled them all, they had planned to get such a good, early start. Then Greg did manage to get them both in their seats, with the car doors shut, and they started down the mountain.
Margaret watched from her vantage of the front seat with the little mirrors arranged so that the two sweet, old faces were reflected perfectly, and presently she signed to Greg to look also, and they saw the looks of admiration that passed from one old lover to the other. Finally, Grandmother in her sealskin wrapping nestled her head furtively down on Grandfather’s fur-lined shoulder, and he stooped over and placed a tender kiss on her wrinkled cheek.
It was better than any wedding trip a couple ever took to watch the joy and delight of the two old people as they began to come again into the world. They enjoyed every minute of the way and did not seem to be in the least tired. Greg’s quiet joy in their pleasure finally expressed itself vocally as he turned around and grinned at them both.
“Oh boy! I’m glad I’ve got a family!” he said joyously.
There was no snow on the ground when they reached Greg’s home city, but there were signs of its soon coming in the lowering clouds that banked themselves above the dark of the pines as Greg turned the car into the driveway and swept up to the house.
The night was coming down, and lights were twinkling from many windows as Grandmother looked out from the car.
“Is this a hotel?” she asked as the car stopped under the porte cochere.
“No dearest!” said Margaret happily. “This is home. At least it’s going to be. It’s the house that Greg has bought for all of us to live in.”
“But I don’t understand,” said Grandmother in a small, frightened voice. “This is a palace. This must be a very expensive place. I don’t understand, Margaret.”
“You don’t have to now, dearest,” said Margaret, taking the hand that Greg held out to help her and springing lightly to the pavement. “We’ll explain it all out to you afterwards. Come now into the house and see how pretty it is, and how homelike.”
Into the beautiful home walked the little old lady in her rich fur garment and her ancient bonnet. She stood looking around her as perhaps she will look again when she first sees heaven. She saw the wide vistas, as roomy as her mountain birthplace, she saw the great fireplace with its burning logs and leaping flames, she saw the comfort and the beauty everywhere, and then she turned to her old husband and buried her face in his new overcoat, shedding actual tears.
He patted her head happily and smiled down upon her.
“What’s the matter, Rebecca! Don’t you like it?”
Then she lifted her tear-wet face.
“Like it?” she said. “Like it! John, it frightens me it’s so grand! It’s as if when He saw I was dissatisfied with things as they were and Margaret away off from us and everything dark, that He should have flung down the finest they had in heaven and said, ‘There, child, take that! If you will be growling all the time, take the best!’ It’s the way He had to reprove the children of Israel when they grumbled.”
But the old man patted her soft fur shoulder and shook his head, smiling.
“No Rebecca, you’re quite mistaken, my dear. It’s not like that at all. Why, this is the rainbow made out of your tears. Don’t you see, Mother, don’t you see? It’s God’s love giving you a glimpse of something as near like what heaven’s going to be as they have here on earth.”
Chapter 21
Everything worked out just the way they had planned it beforehand.
The days preceding Christmas week were not many, but they were filled with delightful bustle and excitement, into which, after a day’s rest, the two old people entered heartily, fully persuaded at last that they were about to acquire the finest grandson-in-law that lived on earth. After they understood that the house they had come to live at least part of each year in, was not for show, but for the service of the Lord Christ, they were content and spent much time going about it and “telling the towers thereof.”
There were still presents to be tied up with tissue paper and ribbon and cards, and Grandmother just loved it all. She took a lesson from the way the orphans’ presents were being tied up and got some paper and ribbon for her own little gifts, which she had selected so carefully from her storehouse of the years.
Early in Christmas week, Rhoderick Steele and his bride arrived and became at once a part of the harmonious family, entering into all the plans.
Mrs. Prentiss, the English woman who did the cleaning, was on hand with her helpers as the festive day arrived, but Grandmother and Mrs. Harris, who came up with Jane part of every day, was an important factor in making arrangements. Grandmother made the mince pies and the stuffing for the turkey, and Mrs. Harris did the plum pudding and fruit cake, so there were plenty of helpers. Margaret had so many other things to look after that for the time being she was glad to relinquish the culinary arrangements into such very able hands.
Rhoderick Steele’s bride, Mary, had a face like a Madonna, and she and Margaret became instant friends and went around together with their shopping secrets.
Grandfather and Rhoderick Steele found great interests in common and spent much time with their Bibles open, sitting around the fire talking, Steele opening up new thoughts to them all whenever there was time for any of them to sit down and listen. Grandfather, too, showed himself to be well informed in the deeper truths of the Bible, and they had sweet converse together.
Packages arrived and were unwrapped and rewrapped and labeled. One day a grand piano came and was set up in the great entrance hall in a niche that seemed built for it, and after that they sang hymns in the evening, Greg, at Rhoderick Steele’s suggestion, producing a lot of hymnbooks.
The Christmas tree was set up and trimmed, all the family helping. Nurse Gowen arrived, and Mrs. Harris and her niece came out from the city to stay till after Christmas.
The day before Christmas in the early afternoon the orphans came and were escorted to the great room at the top of the house, probably intended for a ballroom, but now consecrated to the Lord Jesus Christ.
Here were electric trains and a whole little village of toy houses and delightful contrivances such as children love, also indoor swings, trapezes, dolls, tea tables, and games galore.
Here for three delightful hours the children old and young played and enjoyed every minute. Then as dusk began to come down and the lights came on, they went downstairs and were served a Christmas dinner fit for a king. Turkey and filling and vegetables, cranberries, ice cream and pie, nuts and candies. One wondered where they put it all.
Then they all filed into the big room with the fireplace at one end and the sparkling tree at the other, and screamed with delight at the wonders set before them.
The gifts were distributed, and they grew quiet with their pleasure, each wondering perhaps what a home would have been with fathers and mothers like these people. And then when the last present had been handed out, the last drop of ecstatic delight squeezed from the moment, Greg told them all to turn around and face toward the fireplace.
They had not noticed before, their minds were so filled with the wonders of the tree, but now they saw in miniature on the mantel
a little village stretched out before their eyes, built upon soft green hills where little white sheep clustered around their shepherds or lay huddled under tiny palm trees.
There was a deep midnight sky above the village sprinkled with stars. They did not know that it was only crepe paper with silver paper stars; the little village clustering on the hillside looked very real to them. Strange Eastern houses with outside stairs, the kind of place that belonged to Bible times. A low inn with a wall around it, built of tiny stone blocks, flat-roofed houses, a watchman on a housetop here and there, three camels with turbaned riders, and suddenly a great electric star above all flashed out, and they saw what it was. Bethlehem!
While they were looking, exclaiming, wondering, over the picture that Margaret and Greg and Rhoderick and Mary had built there on the mantelpiece, Rhoderick began to tell the story of that night so long ago, of how the Son of God, the King of Glory, left His throne and came to earth to be born a child that He might live and suffer and die to save us all from the penalty of our sins. Just a touch of Calvary at the end, a picture of that Savior, without a sin of His own, yet weighed down by agony because of our sins, which He took to set us free from their penalty!
It was very still when the brief prayer came, and each child was brought face-to-face with the Savior.
Quietly, gratefully, fervently they said their thanks and went out, with their wonderful gifts, new dresses, suits, toys, candy, and oranges. They had never had such a Christmas before.
Then the tired workers sat back and rejoiced for a little, ate a quiet, little supper of their own, and hung up their stockings around the fire, with only the firelight and the twinkle of the Christmas tree lights to guide them. They stole back and forth, putting their gifts into the stockings, knelt in a brief prayer, and went to their beds.
Christmas morning dawned bright and clear with a heavy fall of snow upon the ground, weighting the branches of the pine trees, picking out every bare branch of the other trees, making the world into a Christmas mystery of beauty.
They all came trooping merrily down, a bit later than they had planned, because the snow had fallen so softly in the night that it seemed to have muffled their sense of time, and like so many children, they went for their stockings and had a wonderful time opening them around the fire. Just a happy, homey family time, for it seemed as if they had always belonged to each other.
Everybody had a present for everybody else. Some of them were very trifles, but each had some significance, some thought behind it that made it valuable. There were bits of jokes and delightful amusing rhymes wrapped with each gift, and before they had read them all and admired everything, the time was hurrying by and it was almost nine o’clock. Suddenly breakfast seemed desirable, and they went happily to the dining room where there were sausages and buckwheat cakes, coffee, and a great pan of sugary doughnuts, Grandmother Lorimer’s doughnuts, the traditional doughnuts that always went with a Lorimer Christmas breakfast.
While they were eating the doughnuts, Margaret, in her simple dark green dress, slipped quietly away for five minutes or so, and as they all came out from the dining room, she came down the stairs attired in white, just a little hand-knit white dress of simple lines and quiet mode, lovely in its texture of heavy silk threads, and most attractive. She was carrying a great armful of white roses and smiling at Greg, who stood at the foot of the stairs looking up.
Grandmother and Grandfather suddenly dropped into two chairs that stood at hand and sat there smiling, and Rhoderick Steele came forward and stood before them.
Then Greg took Margaret’s hand in his and led her down the last step to stand beside him, and so in a solemn, simple service they were married.
It was not like other weddings, truly, for the bride and the groom went about among their dear friends all day long and had a happy time. The Christmas dinner eaten late in the afternoon when the doughnuts were fully forgotten was the best Christmas dinner, Greg said, that he had ever tasted, and they all assented eagerly.
They lingered around the table telling stories, eating nuts and candies, just lingering, reluctant to stir and bring this happy day to its close.
They came back into the great living room then, gathered around the piano, and all sang. They had their hymnbooks out and were singing first the Christmas songs, “Silent Night,” “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” all the dear old Christmas carols, and then they opened the hymnbooks and began to sing others, about the coming back of the Lord Jesus for His own: “He Is Coming Again,” “Jesus May Come Today,” “It May Be at Morn.” There were some good voices among them, and they sang from the heart. The old people felt as if they were almost at the gate of heaven, and it did not seem strange to realize their Lord might come at any minute now and call them all away.
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?”
THE CHRISTMAS BRIDE Page 26