“Very well,” she continued. “Take a note from me to my steward. He will pay you.”
“Let’s see’t,” was the brief reply. Hastily she wrote a few words in pencil, and he read them aloud.
“Now, miss,” he said, “it’s not safe for me to be about town much ’fore dark, and, what’s more, I won’t trust ye there neither. Here ye’ll bide the night through, if ye means what ye says.”
“O Tom!” the woman exclaimed, breaking silence for the first time since Jane spoke, “’twull be a fearful night for the like o’ she.”
“Let her feel it, then,” he retorted. “Wasn’t her Lord she talks on born in the cold and the gloom to-night, ’cording to you and she, lass? Let her try’t, say I, and see what she’ll believe come morn.”
Like a flash it passed through Jane’s mind that her last midnight Mass among her own people was taken from her; that, knowing her uncertain ways, no one would think of seeking her till it was too late, any more than her steward, well used to her impulses, would dream of questioning a note of hers, no matter who brought it. Yet with the keen pang of disappointment a thrill of sweetness mingled. Was not her Lord indeed born in the cold and the gloom that night? “I am quite willing to wait,” she said quietly.
The man went to the door. “Tide’s nigh full,” he said, “and night’s nigh here. I’ll go my ways. But mark ye, miss, I’ll be waiting t’other side, to see ye don’t follow. Trust me to wait patient, till it’s too dark for ye to come.”
Jane watched him till he had reached the further line of the cliff; then she buried her face in her hands. Space and time seemed as nothing; again, as for years she had been used to do, she strove to place herself in the stable at Bethlehem, and the child-longing rose within her to clasp the Holy Infant in her arms, and warm him at her heart, and clothe him like a prince. And then she remembered what the man had said: “It’s easy for the likes o’ ye to talk, all warm and full and comfortable.”
There are natures still among us that cannot be content unless they lavish the whole box of ointment on the Master’s feet. Jane turned to the heap of sea-weed where the half-frozen woman lay. “Can you rise for a minute?” she asked gently. “I am going to change clothes with you. Yes, I am strong, and can walk about and bear it all; but you will freeze if you lie here.” And putting down the woman’s feeble resistance with a bright, sweet will, Jane had her way.
Half exhausted, her companion sank back upon her poor couch, and soon fell asleep; and when the baby woke, Jane took it from her, lest its pitiful wailing should rouse the mother, to whom had come blessed forgetfulness of her utter inability to feed or soothe it. She wrapped the child in her rags, and walked the room with it for hours that night. It seemed to her that they must freeze to death if she stopped. For a time the wind raged furiously and the rain fell in torrents; no blessed vision came to dispel the darkness of her vigil; no ecstasy to keep the cold from biting her; she felt its sting sharply and painfully the whole night through. The first few hours were the hardest she had ever spent, yet she would not have exchanged them for the sweetest joy this world had ever given her. “My Lord was cold,” she kept saying. “My Lord was cold to-night.”