The Christmas Angel Part 3

She sank back in her chair and clasped her hands over her breast with a sigh. She felt strangely weary. Her eyes sought the clock once more, and doing so rested upon the Christmas Angel lying beside it. She frowned and closed her eyes to shut out the sight with its haunting memories and suggestions----

CHAPTER VII

BEFORE THE FIRE

Suddenly there was a volume of sound outside, and a great brightness filled the room. Miss Terry opened her eyes. The fire was burning red; but a yellow light, as from thousands of candles, shone in at the window, and there was the sound of singing,--the sweetest singing that Miss Terry had ever heard.

"An Angel of the Lord came down, And glory shone around."

The words seemed chanted by the voices of young angels. Miss Terry pa.s.sed her hands over her eyes and glanced at the clock. But what the hour was she never noticed, for her gaze was filled with something else. Beside the clock, in the spot where she had laid it a few minutes before, was the Christmas Angel. But now, instead of lying helplessly on its back, it was standing on rosy feet, with arms outstretched toward her. Over its head fluttered gauzy wings. From under the yellow hair which rippled over the shoulders two blue eyes beamed kindly upon her, and the mouth widened into the sweetest smile.

"Peace on earth to men of good-will!" cried the Angel, and the tone of his speech was music, yet quite natural and thrilling.

Miss Terry stared hard at the Angel and rubbed her eyes, saying to herself, "Fiddlestick! I am dreaming!"

But she could not rub away the vision. When she opened her eyes the Angel still stood tiptoe on the mantel-shelf, smiling at her and shaking his golden head.

"Angelina!" said the Angel softly; and Miss Terry trembled to hear her name thus spoken for the first time in years. "Angelina, you do not want to believe your own eyes, do you? But I am real; more real than the things you see every day. You must believe in me. I am the Christmas Angel."

"I know it." Miss Terry's voice was hoa.r.s.e and unmanageable, as of one in a nightmare. "I remember."

"You remember!" repeated the Angel. "Yes; you remember the day when you and Tom hung me on the Christmas tree. You were a sweet little girl then, with blue eyes and yellow curls. You believed the Christmas story and loved Santa Claus. Then you were simple and affectionate and generous and happy."

"Fiddlestick!" Miss Terry tried to say. But the word would not come.

"Now you have lost the old belief and the old love," went on the Angel.

"Now you have studied books and read wise men's sayings. You understand the higher criticism, and the higher charity, and the higher egoism. You don't believe in mere giving. You don't believe in the Christmas economics,--you know better. But are you happy, dear Angelina?"

Again Miss Terry thrilled at the sound of her name so sweetly spoken; but she answered nothing. The Angel replied for her.

"No, you are not happy because you have cut yourself off from the things that bring folk together in peace and good-will at this holy time. Where are your friends? Where is your brother to-night? You are still hard and unforgiving to Tom. You refused to see him to-day, though he wrote so boyishly, so humbly and affectionately. You have not tried to make any soul happy. You don't believe in _me_, the Christmas Spirit."

There is such a word as Fiddlestick, whatever it may mean. But Miss Terry's mind and tongue were unable to form it.

"The Christmas spirit!" continued the Angel. "What is life worth if one cannot believe in the Christmas spirit?"

With a powerful effort Miss Terry shook off her nightmare sufficiently to say, "The Christmas spirit is no real thing. I have proved it to-night. It is not real. It is a humbug!"

"Not real? A humbug?" repeated the Angel softly. "And you have proved it, Angelina, this very night?"

Miss Terry nodded.

"I know what you have done," said the Angel. "I know very well. How keen you were! How clever! You made a test of Chance, to prove your point."

Again Miss Terry nodded with complacency.

"What knowledge of the world! What grasp of human nature!" commented the Angel, smiling. "It is like you mere mortals to say, 'I will make my test in my own way. If certain things happen, I shall foresee what the result must be. If certain other things happen, I shall know that I am right.'

Events fall out as you expect, and you smile with satisfaction, feeling your wisdom justified. It ought to make you happy. But does it?"

Miss Terry regarded the Angel doubtfully.

"Look now!" he went on, holding up a rosy finger. "You are so near-sighted! You are so unimaginative! You do not dream beyond the thing you see. You judge the tale finished while the best has yet to be told. And you stake your faith, your hope, your charity upon this blind human judgment,--which is mere Chance!"

Miss Terry opened her lips to say, "I saw--" but the Angel interrupted her.

"You saw but the beginning," he said. "You saw but the first page of each history. Shall I turn over the leaves and let you read what really happened? Shall I help you to see the whole truth instead of a part? On this night holy Truth, which is of Heaven, comes for all men to see and to believe. Look!"

CHAPTER VIII

JACK AGAIN

The Christmas Angel gently waved his hand to and fro. Gradually, as Miss Terry sat back in her chair, the library grew dark; or rather, things faded into an indistinguishable blur. Then it seemed as if she were sitting at a theatre gazing at a great stage. But at this theatre there was nothing about her, nothing between her and the place where things were happening.

First she saw two little ragam.u.f.fins quarreling over something in the snow.

She recognized them. They were the two Jewish boys who had picked up the Jack-in-the-box. An officer appeared, and they ran away, the bigger boy having possession of the toy; the smaller one with fists in his eyes, bawling with disappointment.

Miss Terry's lips curled with the cynical disgust which she had felt when first witnessing this scene. But a sweet voice--and she knew it was the Angel's--whispered in her ear, "Wait and see!"

She watched the two boys run through the streets until they came to a dark corner. There the little fellow caught up with the other, and once more the struggle began. It was a hard and b.l.o.o.d.y fight. But this time the victory was with the smaller lad, who used his fists and feet like an enraged animal, until the other howled for mercy and handed over the disputed toy.

"Whatcher want it fer, Sam?" he blubbered as he saw it go into the little fellow's pocket.

"Mind yer own business! I just want it," answered Sam surlily.

"Betcher I know," taunted the bigger boy.

"Betcher yer don't."

"Do!"

"Don't!"

Another fight seemed imminent. But wisdom prevailed with Sammy. He would not challenge fate a third time. "Come on, then, and see," he grunted.

And Ike followed. Off the two trudged, through the brilliantly lighted streets, until they came to a part of the city where the ways were narrower and dark.

"Huh! Knowed you was comin' here," commented Ike as they turned into a grim, dirty alley.

Little Sam growled, "Didn't!" apparently as a matter of habit.