THE CHRISTMAS BRIDE (28 page)

“That sounds good!” said Greg as he mounted the old oak staircase, his arm full of wood and carrying a candle to light him on the way.

“Fried cornmeal mush, and homemade maple syrup, omelet, and fresh brown bread, applesauce, tea, and cookies. Does that seem enough, Margaret?”

“Plenty, Grandmother!” said Margaret with a lilt in her voice.

“Well, now run and wash your face and smooth your hair. I’ll finish the rest. I want to have another pan full of mush going. They always want a lot. Run child, quick! I’m just putting in the omelet, and it will be heavy if it isn’t eaten right away!”

The omelet was a golden brown when the two men came downstairs, and Greg ate his share and said he never had tasted anything better. But it was to the fried mush that he gave the greatest attention. He said he had not had any since his mother used to make it. He had tried his own hand at it in his wilderness shack, but it hadn’t turned out right. It had lumps in it and wouldn’t get brown, just turned a sort of dirty green.

Grandmother laughed at him and told him he let the grease get burned in the pan before he put it in, and then and there she took him over to the stove and gave him a lesson in frying mush.

They had a merry supper, and afterward Greg opened his hamper and brought out things that he didn’t know were in it himself. He had given the man in the store some money and told him to make up a hamper with everything in it that went toward the making of a Thanksgiving dinner. The man had done his best. There was a turkey big enough for a regiment.

There were cranberries and sugar and flour and baking powder and loaves of bread and pounds of butter. There was seasoning of all kinds, and vegetables, some of which Grandmother Lorimer had already, and some of which she had never seen. Broccoli, for instance. She had never eaten broccoli, but she had a canny idea of how it ought to be cooked. There were nuts and raisins and candied fruit, and a great five-pound box of chocolates. There were a great many things that couldn’t possibly belong in a Thanksgiving dinner, but Greg had given the man so much money that he had to fill the hamper up with everything he had, so he put in crackers and cakes and cheese, and a lot of canned goods, until Grandmother thought in her secret heart that it would take them quite all winter to get it all eaten up, and some things she meant to save till next summer.

They had a delightful time putting the things away, and Grandmother Lorimer beamed happily and asked Greg how soon he could get back from Rutland. She said that they would need him to help eat up everything.

It was very late for the Lorimers when at last the old farmhouse settled down for the night, and the old man said to his wife as he got into bed at last, “Well, Rebecca, what did I tell you? Didn’t our Father send us a nice surprise? He never forgets His own.”

“Yes John,” said Rebecca fervently, “I know. I was wrong, of course. I found a little piece of poetry in that book Margaret sent me last summer. It just fits me. I found it several days ago, but I didn’t tell you because I was afraid you would rub it in. Listen. I can say it now because I feel it. I
know
it.

“Yes,” said old John, “that is good. You must say it to me many times, Rebecca. We may not be out of the wilderness yet, but we’ll always know He is getting ready some of His best for us after the hard times. Well, how do you like the young man our Margaret brought home?”

“He’s not a young man, John; he’s just a nice boy. I feel as if we’d always known him.”

“Well, yes, he does fit right in,” mused the old man.

“It would have been nice if Margaret had had a brother like that!”

Rebecca gave a sniff.

“Brother, nothing!” she said with asperity. “If he just doesn’t break her heart, I’ll be thankful! He’s too good-looking for an employer and too young, but I don’t see as there’s anything we can do about it except to pray.”

“And isn’t that enough, Rebecca? Come, now, remember we’re having a real Thanksgiving, and don’t let’s borrow any more trouble, not for five more days anyway.”

The old lady sighed deeply.

“Yes, I know, John.” And then after a moment of silence, “You don’t think you could just ask him if he knows of anybody that could give a us a new mortgage, do you?”

“No,” said the old man firmly, “I’d rather lose the farm than go around hinting for help. That’s what he would think it was.”

“Yes, I suppose so,” sighed the old lady.

“Now, then, Rebecca, what was that about a rainbow out of your tears?”

“Well, John,” said his old wife with a twinkle, “it was the
tears
He made the rainbow out of. If there weren’t any tears, how could there be a rainbow?”

“Well, Rebecca, that’s so, too. So perhaps the hard things He’s giving us are so we may have more rainbows! Who knows?”

Greg tore himself away from the farm about half past ten the next morning and went on his way to Rutland. He didn’t know a soul in Rutland, and he didn’t have any business there, but just to be speaking the truth, he went to the post office in Rutland and mailed a few of his little books to the ministers in town after carefully inquiring their names from the postmaster. After that he drove back to Crystal as fast as his automobile could travel and went stealthily by a back road he had figured out on the way down to the house of one Elias Horner.

Elias Horner was out, so he sat himself down to wait and spent his time wondering what Margaret and her family were doing at the farm and how soon he could plan to get back without exciting their suspicions.

Elias Horner had seen the shining car from afar as he drove up to his house and had expected to find one of the city syndicate who were interested in making Crystal Lake a summer resort.

So when he entered his house and found a strange young man whom he had never seen before, who introduced himself as a friend of Mr. Lorimer, he frowned heavily and set out his ugly underjaw. This upstart from the city was probably some young puppy from a law school who had been sent here to intimidate him or to wheedle him into not foreclosing on that farm. So he set his jaw and spoke with a snarl.

“So you’ve come from Lorimer, have ya? Well, it’s no use your wasting my time and yours tying any smooth words on me. I want my money, and if I don’t get my money, I’m going to foreclose at once! Money’s the only thing that’ll speak to me!”

“That’s entirely satisfactory to me, Mr. Horner,” said Greg with a smile. “That’s what I’ve come for, to pay you your money!”

“What?” The old fighter’s jaw shot out like a serpent’s tongue, and Elias’s little beady, slippery black eyes tried to pierce him, but Greg didn’t pierce easily.

“I said I had come to pay the mortgage for Mr. Lorimer. You know it’s not easy for him to get down the mountain, so I’ve undertaken to attend to the matter for him.”

“Who are you? How do I know your check is good?”

“Why, did you want it in a check?” asked Greg innocently. “I’ve brought it in cash.”

“Cash!”
The old man snapped out the word incredulously. “I guess you don’t know how much that mortgage is.”

“Yes,” said Greg steadily, “I know. Suppose you bring on your papers. I’m prepared to pay the whole.”

Reluctantly, Elias Horner went to the safe back of his desk and got out his papers. He saw his dreams of wealth from the new syndicate melting away, and yet there was nothing he could say. He had demanded his money, and this casual young stranger had produced it. The farm, which had been all but in his grasp, which had been his highest ambition and aim for several years—in fact, ever since his old neighbor had come to borrow of him—had slipped away from him in a moment, and so unexpectedly! Better it would have been to have let the mortgage run on a little until Lorimer got so far behind in his interest that he had to give it up, sometime when there was no rich, young friend at hand to help. Perhaps it was not too late yet. He would try.

He returned with the papers in his hand but sat down and looked at the caller. “I’ve been thinking it over,” he said, clearing his throat noisily to adjust a philanthropic smile on his hard, old, grizzly lips. “If Lorimer feels that he would like to let this mortgage run on a year or two more, at a little higher rate of interest say, I’d be willing. I don’t like to press an old neighbor too hard in these times!”

“No,” said Greg decidedly, “Mr. Lorimer wishes to have this mortgage paid off at once.”

The old jaw shot out again, and the smile disappeared.

“You making a new mortgage?” he asked with a sharp look at Greg.

“No,” said Greg calmly, “Mr. Lorimer wants his property clear. Now, are these the papers?”

Greg left with a long envelope tucked in his inside pocket, and Elias Horner sat by his fireside fingering the pile of hundred dollar bills ruefully and thinking that he had made a bungle of the whole affair. Now, what would the syndicate people say to him? He had been so confident, and they had gone ahead with their plans just as if the land was theirs.

G
reg had always been closemouthed; therefore he had no trouble in going back to the farm and enjoying himself hugely all the rest of the day, saying absolutely nothing about his business of the morning, with all the time that long envelope in his inside pocket.

They gave him gingerbread hot out of the oven and a glass of Sukey’s creamy milk for lunch when he got back, because it was so near dinner time he mustn’t have a regular lunch.

He pulled off his coat and put on an old pair of trousers from the West that he had put in his suitcase, and chopped wood and carried up a lot of it into every bedroom in the house where there was either a fireplace or woodstove. He also filled up the wood boxes in the parlor, the dining room, and the kitchen, and stacked a lot by the woodshed door. Grandfather told him he could cut wood faster than any man he ever saw.

He went out to the barn and tidied up things for Sukey and the two hens that were left, and then he did the milking again. He enjoyed it all, too, getting back to hard work again. And while he worked, he did a lot of thinking. He had to get a place somewhere where there was some real work that would tire his muscles and make him sweat. It wasn’t good for any man just to stay in the house and use his brain. He ought to have to work physically for at least a few minutes every day. He would have to see about that just as soon as he got this book and testimony business well under way.

He thought a lot about Margaret, too, as she had been when he came back from Rutland. Her cheeks were flushed from the oven, her hair—one wavy lock had escaped from the knot at the back of her neck and kept falling down over her ear. Her eyes were starry with welcome. There was a smudge of flour on her cheek and another on her arm below her rolled up sleeves. She was wearing a dark blue calico dress that she had found in her closet, a relic of her school days, that made her look like a little girl. What a lovely girl she was!

And to think of a girl like that getting her night’s rest in a railroad rocking chair, or even a rooming house cot! To think of her sitting starving on a park bench! Proud and sweet and dear! The thought of her surged over him like a wave that would engulf him. He had to whistle to keep the tears back.

They had another lovely supper table that night, sitting long around it, telling stories, getting to know one another like old friends.

They touched on many things, including the faith of their fathers—and mothers, for Greg spoke of his mother’s faith, and of how she had always read the Bible and prayed with him every night of her life until she was stricken with illness and had not the strength to speak.

After the supper dishes were cleared away, Margaret and her grandmother tiptoeing softly around and listening to the talk, Grandfather read a psalm of praise and asked Greg if he would pray.

Greg got red to the roots of his hair and then got white again, but he answered after an instant of hesitation, “Yes sir, I’ll try.”

Greg, on his knees praying in public for the first time in his life, haltingly, but with a childlike confidence in his newfound Savior, stirred the hearts of the others and brought tears to their eyes! Margaret thrilled anew as she heard his petition. It didn’t seem real that there was a young man like this, so attractive and strong and true, who could pray that way.

Thanksgiving Day dawned bright and clear.

They had talked it over and decided to have a late breakfast and then Thanksgiving dinner about four o’clock. But Margaret and Greg took an early walk around the mountain while the frost was yet powdering the brownness of the hillside and rimming the mossy rocks. Margaret showed him all the haunts of her childhood. Here she used to play tea party on this flat rock with acorns for cups and saucers, and little pine cones for food. Here was where she brought her cornstalk dolls to play school, and there was the path down over the mountain where she used to walk to school when she was little.

They went to the lake and saw the old canoe turned over on trestles and sadly needing paint. Margaret told how she skated and swam here, and how the stars shone at night in its deep blue depths as if the sky were turned upside down on the earth.

When they got back, there were scrambled eggs and toast and hot doughnuts and coffee. Then Greg put them all in the car, Grandmother in her old, well-preserved bonnet with the grosgrain ribbon strings that she rolled up carefully and pinned every time she took it off, Grandfather in a somewhat threadbare but still dignified black overcoat, looking every inch a gentleman. Then Greg drove them to church.

“This is the first time in five years that I’ve been to Thanksgiving service,” said Grandmother happily as she took her seat on the soft cushions and touched the upholstery of the car with appreciative fingers. “And the first ride I’ve ever had in an automobile,” she added.