THE CHRISTMAS BRIDE (12 page)

“This room has been made a special memorial room, Miss Grandon,” he said. “This man has the bronze plate for the door.”

“Bronze plate!” said Miss Grandon, the color rising suddenly in her face. “Memorial room! What do you mean? There must surely have been some mistake. They wouldn’t take this room. This is the room that several of our wealthy patients always choose. And when could this possibly have been done? I was only away from Friday till Sunday night. You certainly have made some mistake. It seems one can’t take any time off in this institution without everything getting upset.”

“This was done Saturday morning at that special meeting that was called to arrange for the extra nurses in the baby ward. It was the donation of Mr. Sterling, a native and for mer resident of our city. Let me introduce him to you, Miss Grandon, Mr. Sterling. And now, Mr. Sterling, how is your patient? I understand I am to have the pleasant duty of dismissing her from our care. I’ve just been studying her report card, and it couldn’t be more satisfactory.”

Miss Grandon’s face was a study in sudden crimson, and Greg acknowledged the introduction only by another stern steady look. Then he turned to the doctor.

“I’m sorry,” he said gravely, “there seems to have been some very unkind work going on here, and our patient has been driven away. I’ll leave you, Doctor, to find out who is at fault, while I go out and try to find the patient. When I find her,
if
I find her, I will bring her back to you. I am sorry to discover that the hospital where I had chosen to put my mother’s memorial should have allowed anything like this. I don’t think I shall be likely to want to put any more money into the institution where a patient was treated in so cruel and discourteous a way. But I have no time to lose. I am very anxious about Miss McLaren, and if all I hear is true, I’m afraid she will take pains that we shall never find her again. Are you coming to help me, Miss Gowen?”

The doctor looked from one to another in perplexity, but Greg walked quickly away to the elevator with the nurse, and the groups about dissolved hastily, so that Miss Grandon was left to face the doctor’s accusing, questioning eyes alone.

T
he taxi was waiting at the door, and Greg put the nurse in it. She had come just as she was except to stop long enough at her room to snatch her cloak.

Greg had given the order to the driver to go around the streets that were nearby the hospital, and as they drove, he looked down at the nurse and found her weeping softly.

“Look here, now,” he protested, “you mustn’t feel that way. It certainly wasn’t your fault.”

“Oh, I can’t help feeling it was,” she said, brushing away the tears. “She was such a sweet little thing, and it must have been awful for her to be talked to that way. I know Miss Grandon. She has the sharpest tongue in the hospital, though she’s a good nurse, of course, and an excellent disciplinarian. The nurses are all afraid to transgress.”

“I should think they would be,” said Greg grimly. “But let’s forget that now. Let’s find Miss McLaren first so we can make it up to her. Come, help me think. Where do you think she would go first?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Miss Gowen. “I’ve been trying to think, but my mind gets all bewildered.”

“Do you think she would go to her old boarding place and try to get her things first?” asked Greg thoughtfully, though he was watching the street on both sides as they passed, and not a single passerby missed his searching gaze.

“No, I don’t believe she would,” said Nurse Gowen. “I think she would hunt a job the very first thing. Of course it was early when she went out. It couldn’t have been more than half past eight. I think it was just a little before that, because I wasn’t gone from the room half an hour. Oh, if I had only done what I planned to do and gone to my breakfast early before she was awake! But I waited to fix her up, and she had her breakfast while I was gone. She seemed so eager to get her hair combed and begin to get ready to go.”

“There!” said Greg soothingly. “Don’t blame yourself. Let’s think hard. How would she go about getting a job as early as half past eight? Most places aren’t open that early, are they?”

“Well, not many. Of course restaurants and places like that. But there are employment offices. Only she wouldn’t have money to pay her fee. But of course there are some that take the fee out of the first week’s wages or get the employer to pay it.”

“Then let’s go to the agencies in the region. She couldn’t have walked far. She was too weak.”

So they got a directory, conferred with the taxi driver, and visited every agency in the neighborhood, but found no trace of Margaret, though they asked at every one if she had registered there.

They bought all the newspapers and studied the advertisements, Greg noticing with a pang how few there were that a girl like the one for whom he was searching could hope to get. They followed clue after clue, but all to no purpose.

“Well, perhaps we’d better try her old boarding place now,” said Greg at last.

“I don’t think she’ll go back there till she has a job,” said the nurse again. “She’s very proud, and she told me how disagreeable that old landlady was. But of course it wouldn’t hurt to try.”

So they drove to Rodman Street and interviewed the landlady again.

“Miss McLaren was to have left the hospital today,” said Greg politely, “I am wondering if she has returned here yet or has gone to some friend’s house? I have a message for her.”

“No, she ain’t here,” said the old woman, looking him sharply over and then taking in the white-capped nurse in the taxi. “Has she got a job yet? I don’t want her back unless she has a job. I can’t stand waiting fer my money. I’m poor. I lost all my money when our bank busted.”

“Miss McLaren has a job,” said Greg firmly, “but I don’t think she intends to return here to stay. I heard her speaking as if she would have to board where it would be more convenient to her work.”

“H’m!” said the old woman sourly. “I suppose you put her up to that! You with your prying into what room she had!”

“I think Miss McLaren will probably come or send for her things very soon,” said Greg, ignoring her insinuation and speaking with far more confidence than he felt.

“Well, she better come soon, or I’ll havta charge her storage for ‘em. Ef you see her, you tell her I can’t have my house cluttered up with folks’s things ef they ain’t goin’ ta be a payin’ proposition. When people leave things more than two weeks, I always send ‘em ta the second-hand store and get what I can out of ‘em.”

“In that case, I’ll just get you to sign a receipt for Miss McLaren’s goods right now, and I personally shall hold you responsible for everything she had. She is a friend of mine, and I intend to see that she is protected. She is not very strong yet, and it may be several days or even a week or two before she feels she can come back and get to work again. In the meantime, her baggage is hers, and you are responsible for it.”

Then he raised his voice a little and called, “Miss Gowen, will you kindly come and witness the signing of this receipt?”

The landlady was a trifle awed by the nurse in her white linen cap and heavy dark blue cape lined with crimson, and she submitted finally to signing her name to the paper that Greg wrote out and read to her, binding her to hand over Margaret’s things when called for.

They drove away into the sunshine of the day that was to have been so very pleasant for them all, filled with trouble and perplexity.

“Have you any other suggestions?” asked Greg, looking at her with the expression of a little boy who had lost his best treasure and didn’t know where to hunt next. “Did you tell her the address of the place where we were going this morning to look at rooms?”

“Why, yes, I did!” said Nurse Gowen, hope springing into her eyes again. “I told her all about it. She asked what part of the city it was in, and I gave her the name of the woman and told her what rooms she had. I could see she thought it would be almost heaven to get into a place like that. I don’t wonder, either, after seeing this creature she’s been boarding with and that noisy, dirty Rodman Street. She’s not used to noise and dirt—you can see that.”

“No, she’s not,” agreed Greg, thinking what a sensible woman this nurse was. “She’s lived in a good home. Well, shall we try your friend?”

So they drove to the house where Nurse Gowen’s friend lived and saw the pleasant double parlors that might be had for an office, and went upstairs to the big back bed-sitting room with a bath adjoining, that might be had for his secretary, and Greg said he would take them on the spot. He said it might be several days before he could bring his things and before his secretary came to board, but he would like to secure the rooms, for they just suited him, and he proceeded to pay a month’s rent in advance. The board was to begin the day his secretary arrived, and he furthermore left word that his secretary’s name was Miss Margaret McLaren, and if she should happen to arrive sooner than he expected to look at the rooms, she was to be told that she must call him up at his hotel immediately, and he left his telephone number.

It is strange what a difference it makes to be doing something at a trying time. They came out actually cheered because they had secured those nice rooms, but then they went on hunting, scouring every street within walking distance of the hospital.

“She couldn’t really have gone any farther than this without money,” said Nurse Gowen. “Even this is farther than she could have walked, I am sure. Of course, one can go a long way on nerve under the stress of anger and fear, but she really wasn’t a bit strong. I had her up in a chair yesterday, and she felt topply and dizzy.”

A quick look of anxiety passed over Greg’s face.

“I know,” he said, “that’s what I’ve been thinking. But, you see she did have money. Didn’t she tell you?”

“No,” said the nurse, looking up surprised. “Why, no, from what she told me, she must have spent her last cent.”

“But I put some bills in her pocketbook when I brought it back. Didn’t she get her pocketbook? It had the receipt for her room rent in it. You remember, I told her it was there. And I had put twenty-five dollars inside the envelope that had the letter. I thought she would find it when she went to go away and perhaps it would be nice for her to have a little to start on. Don’t you think she found it?”

The nurse shook her head.

“She didn’t say a word about it. I don’t think she even looked at her pocketbook, though I think she must have taken it with her, for it was gone. There wasn’t a rag nor a shred left that belonged to her. I went in and looked around very carefully before they had done anything to the wardrobe or bureau. I’m sure she must have taken it with her, for it lay right on the top of her clothes in the bureau drawer when I left. My but it’s a comfort to know you put money it! That was awfully kind of you! I never heard of anything kinder. And she will find it, surely, sooner or later, for she’ll open that pocketbook, at least to get out her handkerchief, and she’ll find it, and she won’t be absolutely penniless!”

Greg looked troubled.

“Well, I’m glad I put it there,” he said with a sigh, “but she doesn’t think there is any money there, and she may not open it for days. Not unless she remembers about the receipt for her baggage. But say, here I’m keeping you all this time without any lunch. Why, I declare, it’s after two o’clock. We’re going right away to get something to eat!” and he ordered the driver to take them to a restaurant and come for them again in half an hour.

For three long weary days, Greg carried on the search, combing the city carefully, taking every lead he could think of and following it out, only to find in every case nothing. He spent hours going from one small place of business to another, inquiring if a Miss McLaren was working there, but found nothing, and his heart sank more and more over the ghastly thought that perhaps he should never find her again. Perhaps he would always have to go on through life wondering where she was, if she had fallen off some lonely bench in a far park again, starving sick, and no one to pick her up. Her white face looked up at him as when he had first seen her, from every shadow in the darkness when he laid his weary head upon the pillow, and the thought of her smile that last time he had seen her haunted him during the days and drove him from one possibility to another.

He had gone back to the hospital that first afternoon and had an interview with the powers that be. He had said things to the head nurse and her overlords that had brought down her pride and sharpness and caused the hospital officials to make great apology. Here it appeared was one who could have given even greater benefits than he had already covenanted to their institution! They were mortified that the gift, which had indeed been generous, should have been so unfortunately received. The head nurse was in real trouble. She went about with a furtive fear on her countenance, red rims to her cold eyes, dark hollows under them. Apologies had been demanded of her by the board of directors, but the rich, young donor would receive no apologies himself. He said that when the insulted patient was found—if she ever was found, and his heart quailed at the thought—it would be time for apologies, and he wanted them made to her, not to himself.

So the days dragged by in fruitless search, each morning dawning with new hope and fear. Greg began to lose his fresh color of the wilderness and took on a haggard grayness around the eyes.

The people of the hospital did all in their power to help. It was through their influence that the courtesy of other hospitals was extended to him, and he went around in the wards searching the faces in the narrow white beds and becoming suddenly conscious of the awful suffering in the world.

It was the third day of the search that he thought of the morgue and forced himself to go to that gruesome house of death, looking into strange, unknown dreadful faces, relieved that he did not find them familiar. But still the whereabouts of Margaret McLaren remained a mystery.

Going back to the hotel one night about a week after the disappearance of the girl who had come into his life so unexpectedly and gone out with such seeming finality, he sat down disheartened and began to examine himself.