Astra Read online
© 2014 by Grace Livingston Hill
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All scripture quotations are taken from the King James Version of the Bible.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any similarity to actual people, organizations, and/or events is purely coincidental.
Published by Barbour Books, an imprint of Barbour Publishing, Inc., P.O. Box 719, Uhrichsville, Ohio 44683, www.barbourbooks.com
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
About the Author
Chapter 1
A few days before Christmas, 1940
It had begun to snow as Astra boarded the train just east of Chicago, but only in an erratic way. A few stray, sharp little flakes, slanting across the morning grayness, as if they were out on a walk, looking around. Not at all as if they meant anything by it. A few minutes later, after she was settled in her place in the day coach, one suitcase stowed in the rack above her, the other at her feet, she withdrew her gaze from the unattractive fellow travelers to look out of the window again, and the flakes were still wandering around, seemingly without a purpose. She watched one or two till they glanced across the warm windowpane and vanished into nothing. Only an idle little crystal drifted down from the eternal cold somewhere, and was gone. Where? Into nothing? What a lovely idle little life, thought Astra, as she settled back into her stiff, uncomfortable seat, with her head against the window frame and tried to turn her thoughts to her own perplexities. She was very tired, for she had gotten up early after a sleepless night and hurried around to get ready for the train.
And so, idly watching the aimless flakes of snow snapping on her consciousness from the windowpane outside, her eyes grew weary, her eyelids drooped, and she was soon asleep.
A little later she aroused suddenly as the conductor drew her ticket out of her relaxed grasp and punched it sharply, passing on to the next seat briskly. It came to her to wonder vaguely why he ever selected the job of conductor. To go through life in a dull train, far from home, if he had a home, and doing nothing but punching tickets. What a life! Only dull strangers, uninteresting people he didn’t know, to vary the monotony.
Idly she drifted away into sleep again, putting aside her own disturbed thoughts about personal matters, for she really was very weary. When she awoke again the snow was still coming down. The flakes were larger now, and more purposeful, as if they meant business.
She sat up and looked out. They were going through small towns and villages. People were passing along the streets with brisk steps, bundles in their arms. In marketplaces there were rows of tall pines and hemlocks displayed for sale, and a bright cluster of red and silver stars, holly wreaths, and Christmas trimmings.
Christmas! Yes, Christmas was almost here!
She drew a soft quivering breath of desolation. Not much joy in the thought of Christmas for her anymore! Going out alone into an unknown world, with very little money and without a job!
The train swept out of the town where it had lingered for a few brief minutes just opposite that market with its rows of Christmas trees, and then the increasing snow drew her attention. The flakes were larger now, and whiter, giving a decided whiteness to the atmosphere. The next small town that hurried into view ahead showed up a merry string of lights along the business street. They brought out the whirling flakes in giddy relief, as if flakes and lights were in league for the holiday season, bound to make the most of their powers.
People about her were ordering cups of coffee and eating ham sandwiches that were brought around in a basket for sale. Others were drifting by toward the diner car. But Astra wasn’t hungry. However, she bought a sandwich and stowed it in her handbag, against a time when she might feel faint and not be able to get the sandwich so easily. Then she sat back again, watching the twilight as it crept through the snowflakes. Gradually the landscape was taking on a white background from the falling snow, and soft plush flakes were melting on the windows and blurring into one another. It was becoming more and more difficult to see the landscape as it whirled by, to discern the little towns with their holiday trimmings, and more and more, Astra’s thoughts were turning inward to her own problems and her own drab life.
She had friends of other days, of course—friends of her childhood and young girlhood, friends of her mother’s and father’s, and she was hastening back to them. After all, it was only two years since she had left them and gone to live with Cousin Miriam, who had been almost like an older sister to her in the past when Miriam used to spend so much time at holidays and vacations from school and college with Astra’s mother.
But Miriam had married into wealth and fashion and was very much changed. The standards on which both she and Astra had been brought up were no longer Miriam’s standards. She laughed at Astra for continuing to uphold them. She told her that times had changed and one couldn’t continue to be dowdy and old-fashioned just because one’s mother was that way. One had to do what others did, in company, even if there were things called principles. It wasn’t done in these days, to have principles. One couldn’t “get on” and have principles. One had to smoke and drink a little. Everybody did. To “get on” was, in Miriam’s eyes, the end and aim of living.
Astra couldn’t get away from the thought of how ashamed her mother would have been of her cousin, for Astra’s mother had practically brought up Miriam from the time she was a schoolgirl of twelve, at least as much as one could do that important act within the limits of vacations and holidays.
In addition to Miriam there was Miriam’s daughter, Clytie, badly spoiled, and very determined in her own way, which was the way of a changing world that Astra did not care to adopt.
Astra had stood the differences as long as she could, and then during the absence of the cousins on a western trip in which she was not included, she had written a sweet little note of farewell and departed.
And now that she was on her way, she was tormented continually by the fear that perhaps she had been wrong to go. Perhaps she should have endured a little longer. But in a few days now she would be of age and would have a little more money to carry on quietly. To secure one of her mother’s old servants perhaps to stay with her, or something of that sort. It had seemed so reasonable and easy to make the transfer now when she was about to come of age. And when she considered returning before her cousins got back, or trying to live the life from which she had just fled, the latter seemed utterly impossible.
The twilight was deepening, and the snow outside the window was gathering thick and soft on the glass, obscuring the view. Suddenly the lights sprang up in the car and banished the gloom of the winter world, bringing out the faces of the tired, discouraged people, the grimy car, and the sharp outlines of the hard seats. All at once the
world that Astra was starting out to conquer for herself loomed ahead unhappily, menacingly, with appalling unfriendliness. Suppose she shouldn’t be able to get a position anywhere? Suppose her small allowance should run out and she have nowhere to go? Suppose her father’s friends were dead or moved away? A lot of things could happen disastrously during a two years’ absence. Whatever could she do? Not go back to her cousin’s house! Never! She must find something to do. She could not go back to the cousins who would jeer at her and treat her with all the more condescension and find more and more fault with her.
“Oh God,” she breathed, “please, please find me a job! You have places for other people to work, couldn’t You find a little place for me? Couldn’t You please do something about it for me, for I don’t know how to do it myself. I haven’t money enough for very long. You know. Show me what to do.”
Her head was back against the seat, her forehead resting against the coolness of the window frame, her eyes closed. She could hear the soft splashing of the big flakes that were falling now, as she rode on into the whiteness of the winter night and prayed her despairing young prayer in her heart.
Then suddenly the door at the front of the car was flung open and a man’s voice spoke clearly with a young ring to it that must have appealed to all who heard it.
“Is there a stenographer here who will volunteer to take dictation of a very important document from a man who is dying?”
Astra sat up at once, stirred to instant attention, filled with a kind of awe at this strange, swift call from a man in distress. She was the kind of girl who was always ready to help anyone who needed it.
There were also two other girls standing, hesitantly, prompt and alert to answer a call from a good-looking young man anywhere. Yet they stood only an instant listening to his explanation, calmly chewing their hunks of gum. Then they slumped slowly back in their seats.
“Oh! Dying? Not me!” said one of them, pushing out her chin as if he had offered her an insult. “I don’t like dying people. Excuse me!”
The other of the two girls shook her head decidedly. “Nothing doing!” she said with a shrug. “I’m on a vacation, and I wouldn’t care ta handle a job fer a dead man!” Then they both giggled for the edification of the other travelers. But Astra walked steadily down the aisle to the young man.
“I am a stenographer,” she said quietly.
She had taken reams of dictation, the notes of her father’s lectures and articles; she knew she was master of the requirements.
The young man’s eyes appraised her with approval, and he said, “Thank you! This way please!” Then he turned and pointed the way through the next car, courteously helping her across the platform.
“The second car ahead,” he said. “He was taken with a sudden heart attack. Fortunately, there was a doctor at hand, and he is doing all he can for him, but the sick man is much distressed because he knows he may go at any minute and there are important matters that must be recorded before he dies. You—are not afraid?”
Astra looked at the young man gravely.
“Of course not,” she said quietly. “I’ll be glad to help.”
He looked his approval as they moved swiftly down the aisle and came to the small stateroom in the next car where the sick man had been laid.
He was lying in the narrow berth grasping for breath, the doctor by his side and a nurse preparing something under the doctor’s direction. The sick man looked at Astra with pleading eyes.
“Quick!” he gasped. “Get this!”
The young man who had brought her handed Astra a pencil and pad, and she dropped down on a chair by the bed and began to work swiftly, the young man watching her for an instant, relieved that she seemed to understand her job.
The sick man spoke very slowly, deliberately, his voice sometimes so low that the girl could scarcely hear him.
There were a couple of telegrams on business matters addressed to business firms, putting on record definite arrangements the sick man had completed during his journey. Then there was a briefly worded codicil to his will, concerning certain large properties the man had acquired recently which were to be left to his son by his first wife. This codicil was to be sent to his lawyer at once, observing all the formalities of the law. All this was spoken with the utmost difficulty, gasped slowly, detachedly, as his breath grew faint or his drifting intelligence faded and then flashed back again. It was heartbreaking, and Astra forgot her own perplexities in making sure she caught every syllable the troubled soul uttered.
When the dictation was completed the sick man sank limply into his pillow, relaxed for an instant as if he had reached the end. Then he roused again and feebly pointed at the papers in the girl’s lap.
“Copy! Quick! I—must—sign—”
Astra gathered her papers together and stood up with an understanding look in her eyes.
“Yes of course,” she said in a clear, businesslike voice. “If I only had a typewriter, it would take almost no time at all,” she added.
The young man stood at the door.
“Come right this way. I have a machine ready for you,” he said, and led her down the aisle to another car and into a small compartment where was a typewriter and plenty of paper.
“It will be necessary to have two copies,” said the young man. “Here is carbon paper.”
Astra sat down and went expertly to work, and in a very short time she had a sheaf of neatly typed papers ready.
The young man was back at the door as she finished.
“Fine! That was quick work. I didn’t expect you’d be quite done yet,” he said. “We’ll go right back. The doctor has given him a stimulant, hoping to make those signatures possible. We’ll have to be witnesses, of course.”
The patient lay with bright, restless eyes on the door as they entered, and a relieved look came into his face as he saw them.
The doctor and nurse arranged a bedside table, tilted so that the patient could see what he was writing, and they placed the papers one by one upon it and watched the trembling hand trace feebly the name that had been a power in the business world for many years.
It was very still in the little stateroom. Only the noise of the rushing train could be heard. Astra glanced at the windows, covered thickly now with snow, shutting out the darkness of the outside world, with only now and then a faint, fleeting splash of color—red or yellow or green—as the train flashed through a lighted town.
And now the signatures were finished, the last few strokes evidently a tremendous effort as the lagging heart sought to keep the muscles doing their duty to the end, and then the poor brain fagged as the last stroke was made, and the man slumped back to the pillow, the limp hand dropped to his side, the grasp on the pen relaxed, and the pen snapped away to the floor, its duty done.
The young man recovered the pen. Astra dropped down in her chair where she had sat for dictation and began to get the papers in shape for the witnesses.
The doctor, with his finger on the sick man’s pulse, was giving attention to his patient, the nurse removing the bed table, straightening the covers.
Then the sick man’s eyes opened anxiously, as if there were one more command he must give. His lips were stiff, but he murmured with a wry twist one word. “Witnesses!” He tried to motion toward the papers, but his hand dropped uselessly on the bed. He looked at the doctor pleadingly and the doctor bowed.
“Yes sir! I’ll sign as a witness!” Turning, he stooped over the little table that had been placed beside Astra and wrote his name clearly, hastily, on each paper. The sick man’s glance went to the others, and one by one they all signed their names: Astra, the young man, and the nurse. Then the sick man drew a deep sigh and closed his eyes with finality, as if he felt he had done everything and was content.
The doctor and nurse did their best, but a gray shadow was stealing over the man’s face. He scarcely seemed to be breathing.
Astra, after signing her name as a witness, gathered the papers up carefully, lai
d them together on the table, and sat there watching that dying face, a little at a loss to know just what was expected of her next. The young man and the doctor had stepped outside in the corridor and were talking in low tones. The nurse was mixing something from a bottle in a glass. Then suddenly the sick man opened his eyes and looked up, and his face was filled with anguish.
“Pray!” he murmured, almost inaudibly.
The nurse was on the alert at once with a spoonful of medicine.
“Pray!” she said snappily. “You want someone should make a prayer? Well, I’ll ask the doctor to get a preacher.”
She stepped to the door and murmured something to the doctor, but the sick man cast an anguished glance toward Astra.
“Can’t you—pray?” he gasped. “I can’t—wait!”
His breath was almost gone, and the girl sensed his desperation. Swiftly, she dropped back to the chair again and bent her head, her lips not far from the dying man’s ear, and began to pray in a clear young voice.
“Oh heavenly Father, Thou didst so love the whole world that though all of us were sinners, Thou didst send Thine own dear Son to take our sins upon Himself and die on the cross to pay our penalty, so that all who would believe on Him might be saved. Hear us now as we cry to Thee for this soul in need. Give him faith to believe in what Thou hast done for him. May he rest in Thy strength and know that Thou wilt put Thine arms around him and guide him into the Light. Give him Thy peace in his soul as he trusts in what the precious blood of Jesus has done for him. Make him know that he has nothing to do but trust Thee. We ask it in the name of Jesus our Savior, Amen.”
“Amen!” came a soft murmur from the dying lips.
Then suddenly a loud, disagreeable voice boomed into the solemnity of the little room, where the voice of prayer still lingered.
“Well, really! What’s the meaning of all this? George Faber, what are you doing in here, I’d like to know?”
Astra looked up and saw a tall, imposing woman, smartly turned out and groomed to the last hair. Lipstick and rouge and expensive powder combined to give her a lovely baby complexion that somehow only made her look older and very hard. She was looking straight at Astra with cold, hostile eyes.