Christmas gold, p.184
Christmas Gold, page 184
Miss Terry held her breath. A man was staggering along the street toward her. He whistled noisily a vulgar song, as he reeled from curb to railing, threatening to fall at every step. A drunken man on Christmas Eve! Miss Terry felt a great loathing for him. He was at the foot of the steps now. He was close upon the Angel. Would he see it, or would he tread upon it in his disgusting blindness?
Yes—no! He saw the little pink image lying on the bricks, and with a lurch forward bent to examine it. Miss Terry flattened her nose against the pane eagerly. She expected to see him fall upon the Angel bodily. But no; he righted himself with a whoop of drunken mirth.
"Angel!" she heard him croak with maudlin accent. "Pink Angel, begorrah! What doin' 'ere, eh? Whoop! Go back to sky, Angel!" and lifting a brutal foot he kicked the image into the street. Then with a shriek of laughter he staggered away out of sight.
Miss Terry found herself trembling with indignation. The idea! He had kicked the Christmas Angel,—the very Angel that Tom had hung on their tree! It was sacrilege, or at least—Fiddlestick! Miss Terry's mind was growing confused. She had a sudden impulse to rescue the toy from being trampled into filthiness. The fire was better than that.
She hurried down the steps into the street, forgetting her shawl. She sought in the snow and snatched the pink morsel to safety. Straight to the fire she carried it, and once more held it to the flames. But again she found it impossible to burn the thing. Once, twice, she tried. But each time something seemed to clutch back her wrist. At last she shrugged impatiently and laid the Angel on the mantelpiece beside the square old marble clock, which marked the hour of half-past eight.
"Well, I won't burn it to-night," she reflected. "Somehow, I can't do it just now. I don't see what has got into me! But to-morrow I will. Yes, to-morrow I will."
She sat down in the armchair and fumbled in the old play box for the remaining scraps. There were but a few meaningless bits of ribbon and gauze, with the end of a Christmas candle, the survivor of some past festival, burned on some tree in the past. All these but the last she tossed into the fire, where they made a final protesting blaze. The candle-end fell to the floor unnoticed.
"There! That is the last of the stuff," she exclaimed with grim satisfaction, shaking the dust from her black silk skirt. "It is all gone now, thank Heaven, and I can go to bed in peace. No, I forgot Norah. I suppose I must sit up and wait for her. Bother the girl! She ought to be in by now. What can she find to amuse her all this time? Christmas Eve! Fiddlestick! But I have got rid of a lot of rubbish to-night, and that is worth something."
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
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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 passed 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 hoarse 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
Table of Contents
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 ragamuffins 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 bloody 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.
"Did!" reasserted Ike. "Just where I was comin' myself."
Sam turned to him with a grin.
"Was yer now? By—! Ain't that funny? I thought of it right off."
"Sure. Same here!"
They both burst into a guffaw and executed an impromptu double-shuffle of delight. They were at the door of a tenement house with steep stairs leading into darkness. Up three flights pounded the two pairs of heavy boots, till they reached a half-open door, whence issued the clatter of a sewing-machine and the voices of children. Sam stood on the threshold grinning debonairly, with hands thrust into his pockets. Ike peered over his shoulder, also grinning.
It was a meagre room into which they gazed, a room the chief furniture of which seemed to be babies. Two little ones sprawled on the floor. A third tiny tot lay in a broken-down carriage beside the door. A pale, ill-looking woman was running the machine. On the cot bed was crumpled a fragile little fellow of about five, and a small pair of crutches lay across the foot of the bed.
When the two boys appeared in the doorway, the woman stopped her machine and the children set up a howl of pleasure. "Sammy! Ikey!" cried the woman, smiling a wan welcome, as the babies crept and toddled toward the newcomers. "Where ye come from?"
"Been to see the shops and the lights in the swell houses," answered Sammy with a grimace. "Gee! Ain't they wastin' candles to beat the cars!"
"Enough to last a family a whole year," muttered Ike with disgust.
The woman sighed. "Maybe they ain't wasted exactly," she said. "How I'd like to see 'em! But I got to finish this job. I told the chil'ren they mustn't expect anything this Christmas. But they are too little to know the difference anyway; all but Joe. I wish I had something for Joe."
"I got something for Joe," said Sammy unexpectedly.
The face of the pale little cripple lighted.
"What is it?" he asked eagerly. "Oh, what is it? A real Christmas present for me?"
"Naw! It ain't a Christmas present," said Sam.
"We don't care anything about Christmas," volunteered Ikey with a grin.
Sam looked at him with a frown of rebuke.
"It's just a present," he said. "And it didn't cost a cent. I didn't buy it. I—we found it!"
"Found it in the street?" Joe's eyes shone.
"Yah!" the boys nodded.
"Oh, it is a Christmas present!" cried Joe. "Santa Claus must have dropped it there for me, because he knew we hadn't any chimney in this house, and he sent you kind, kind boys to bring it to me."
The two urchins looked sideways at each other, but said nothing. Presently Sam drew out the box from his pocket and tried to thrust it into Ike's hand. "You give it to 'um," he said. "You're the biggest."
"Naw! You give it. You found it," protested Ike.
"Ah, g'wan!"
"Big fool!"
There was a tussle, and it almost seemed as if the past unpleasantness was to be repeated from an opposite cause. But Joe's voice settled the dispute.
"Oh, Sammy, please!" he cried. "I can't wait another minute. Do please give it to me now!"
At these words Sam stepped forward without further argument and laid the box on the bed in front of the little cripple. The babies crowded about. The mother left her machine and stood smiling faintly at the foot of the bed.
Joe pressed the spring. Ping! Out sprang the Jack-in-the-box, with the same red nose, the same leer, the same roguish eyes which had surprised the children of fifty years ago.
PING! OUT SPRANG THE JACK-IN-THE-BOX
Jack was always sure of his audience. My! How they screamed and begged Joe to "do it again." And as for Joe, he lay back on his pillow and laughed and laughed as though he would never stop. It was the first Jack any of them had seen.
Tears stood in the mother's eyes. "Well," she said, "it's as good as a play to see him. Joe hasn't laughed like that for months. You boys have done him lots of good. I wouldn't wonder if it helped him get well! If you was Christians I'd say you showed the real Christmas spirit. But Lord—perhaps ye do, all the same! I dunno!"
Sam and Ike were so busy playing with the children that they did not hear.
* * *
Gradually the tenement house faded and became a blur before Miss Terry's eyes. Once more she saw the mantel-shelf before her and the Christmas Angel with outstretched arms waving to and fro. "You see!" he said. "You did not guess all the pleasure that was shut up in that box with old Jack, did you?"
Miss Terry shook her head.
"And you see how different it all was from what you thought. Now let us see what became of the Canton-flannel dog."
"The Flanton Dog." Miss Terry amended the phrase under her breath. It seemed so natural to use Tom's word.
"Yes, the Flanton Dog," the Angel smiled. "What do you think became of him?"
"I saw what became of him," said Miss Terry. "Bob Cooper threw him under an automobile, and he was crushed flatter than a pancake."
"Then you left the window," said the Angel. "In your human way you assumed that this was the end. But wait and see."
Once more the room darkened and blurred, and Miss Terry looked out upon past events as upon a busy, ever-shifting stage.
CHAPTER IX
THE DOG AGAIN
Table of Contents
She saw the snowy street, into which, from the tip of his stick, Bob Cooper had just tossed the Flanton Dog. She saw, what she had not seen before, the woman and child on the opposite side of the street. She saw the baby stretch out wistful hands after the dog lying in the snow. Then an automobile honked past, and she felt again the thrill of horror as it ran over the poor old toy. At the same moment the child screamed, and she saw it point tearfully at the Flanton tragedy. The mother, who had seen nothing of all this, stooped and spoke to him reprovingly.
"What's the matter, Johnnie?" she said. "Sh! Don't make such a noise. Here we are at Mrs. Wales's gate, and you mustn't make a fuss. Now be a good boy and wait here till Mother comes out."
She rang the area bell and stood basket in hand, waiting to be admitted. But Johnnie gazed at one spot in the street, with eyes full of tears, and with now and then a sob gurgling from his throat. He could not forget what he had seen.
The door opened for the mother, who disappeared inside the house, with one last command to the child: "Now be a good boy, Johnnie. I'll be back in half a minute."
Hardly was she out of sight when Johnnie started through the snowdrift toward the middle of the street. With difficulty he lifted his little legs out of the deep snow; now and then he stumbled and fell into the soft mass. But he rose only the more determined upon his errand, and kept his eyes fixed on the wreck of the Flanton Dog.
Bob Cooper, who was idly strolling up and down the block, smoking a cigarette, as he watched the flitting girlish shadows in a certain window opposite, saw the child's frantic struggles in the snow and was intensely amused. "Bah Jove!" he chuckled. "I believe he's after the wretched dawg that I tossed over there with my stick. Fahncy it!" And carelessly he puffed a whiff of smoke.
At last the baby reached the middle of the street and stooped to pick up the battered toy. It was flattened and shapeless, but the child clasped it tenderly and began to coo softly to it.
"Bah Jove!" repeated Cooper. "Fahncy caring so much about anything! Poor kid! Perhaps that is all the Christmas he will have." He blew a thoughtful puff through his nose. "Christmas Eve!" The thought flashed through his mind with a new appeal.
Just then came a sudden "Honk, honk!" An automobile had turned the corner and was coming up at full speed. It was the same machine which had passed a few minutes earlier in the opposite direction.
"Hi there!" Cooper yelled to the child. But the latter was sitting in the snow in the middle of the street, rocking back and forth, with the Flanton Dog in his arms. There was scarcely time for action. Bob dropped his cigarette and his cane, made one leap into the street and another to the child, and by the impact of his body threw the baby into the drift at the curb. With a horrified honk the automobile passed over the young man, who lay senseless in the snow.
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