"To-morrow morning you will see," he said. "It will prove that all I have shown you is really true."
"A pretty child," said Miss Terry musingly. "A very nice child indeed. I believe she looks very much as I used to be myself."
"You see, she is not a thief, after all; not _yet_," said the Angel. "What a pity that she must live in that sad home, with such terrible people! A sensitive child like her, craving sympathy and affection,--what chance has she for happiness? What would you yourself have been in surroundings like hers?"
"Yes, she is very like what I was. Of course I shall let her keep the doll."
Miss Terry hesitated. The Angel looked at her steadily and his glance seemed to read her half-formed thoughts.
"Surely," he said. "It seems to belong to her, does it not? But is this all? I wonder if something more does not belong to her."
"What more?" asked Miss Terry shortly.
"A home!" cried the Angel.
Miss Terry groped in her memory for a scornful e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n which she had once been fond of using, but there was no such word to be found. Instead there came to her lips the name, "Mary."
The Angel repeated it softly. "_Mary._ It is a blessed name," he said.
"Blessed the roof that shelters a Mary in her need."
There was a long silence, in which Miss Terry felt new impulses stirring within her; impulses drawing her to the child whose looks recalled her own childhood. The Angel regarded her with beaming eyes. After some time he said quietly, "Now let us see what became of your last experiment."
Miss Terry started. It seemed as if she had been interrupted in pleasant dreaming. "_You_ were the last experiment," she said. "I know what became of you. Here you are!"
"Yet more may have happened than you guessed," replied the Angel meaningly.
"I have tried to show you how often that is the case. Look again."
Without moving from her chair Miss Terry seemed to be looking out on her sidewalk, where, so it seemed, she had just laid the pink figure of the Angel. She saw the drunken man approach. She heard his coa.r.s.e laugh; saw his brutal movement as he kicked the Christmas token into the street. In sick disgust she saw him reel away out of sight. She saw herself run down the steps, rescue the image, and bring it into the house. Surely the story was finished. What more could there be?
But something bade her vision follow the steps of the wretched man. Down the street he reeled, singing a blasphemous song. With a whoop he rounded a corner and ran into a happy party which filled sidewalk and street, as it hurried in the direction from which he came. Good-naturedly they jostled him against the wall, and he grasped a railing to steady himself as they swept by. It was the choir on their way to carol in the next street. Before them went the cross-bearer, lifting high his simple wooden emblem.
[Ill.u.s.tration: HE GRASPED A RAILING TO STEADY HIMSELF]
The eyes of the drunken man caught sight of this, and wavered. The presence of the crowd conveyed no meaning to his dazed brains. But there was something in the familiar symbol which held his vision. He looked, and crossed himself, remembering the traditions of his childhood. Some of the boys were humming as they went the stirring strains of an ancient Christmas march known to all nations; a carol which began, some say, as a rousing drinking chorus.
The familiar strain touched some chord in the sodden brain. The man gave a feeble whinny, trying to follow the melody. He pulled himself together and lurched forward in a sudden impulse to join the band of pilgrims. But by the time he had taken three steps they had vanished, miraculously, as it seemed to him.
"Begorra, they"re gone!" he cried. "Who were they? Were they rale folks?
What was it they was singin"?"
He sank back helplessly on a flight of steps. "_Ve-ni-te a-do-re-mus!_" he croaked in a quavering ba.s.so. And his tangled mind went through strange processes. Suddenly, there came to him in a flash of exaggerated memory the figure of the Christmas Angel which not ten minutes earlier he had kicked into the street. A pious horror fell upon him.
"Mither o" mercy!" he cried, again crossing himself. "What have I been an"
done? It was a howly image; an" what did I do to ut? Lemme go back an" find ut, an" take ut up out av the street."
Greatly sobered by his fear, he staggered down the block and around the corner to the steps of Miss Terry"s house.
"This is the place," he mused. "I know ut; here"s where the frindly lam"post hild me in its arrums. I rimimber there was a dark house forninst me. Here"s where ut lay on the sidewalk, all pink an" pretty. An" I kicked ut into the street! Where is ut now? Where gone? Howly Mither! Here"s the spot where ut fell, look now! The shape of uts little body and the wings of ut in the snow. But "tis gone intirely!" He rubbed his eyes and crossed himself again. ""Tis flown away," he muttered. ""Tis gone back to Hiven to tell Mary Mither o" the wicked thing I done this night. Oh, "tis a miracle that"s happened! An" oh! The wicked man I am, drunk and disorderly on the Howly Eve!"
"O come, all ye faithful, Joyful and triumphant!"
Once more he heard the familiar strain taken up l.u.s.tily by many voices.
"Hear all the world singin" on the way to Bethlehem!" he said, and the stupor seemed to leave his brain. He no longer staggered.
"I"ll run an" join "em, an" I won"t drink another drop this night." He looked up at the starry sky. "Maybe the Angel hears me. Maybe he"ll help me to keep straight to-morrow. It might be my Guardian Angel himsilf that I treated so! Saints forgive me!"
With head bowed humbly, but no longer reeling, he moved away towards the sound of music.
"You were his Guardian Angel," said Miss Terry, when once more she saw the figure on the mantel-shelf. And she spoke with reverent gentleness.
The Angel smiled brightly. "The Christmas Spirit is a guardian angel to many," he said. "Never again despise me, Angelina. Never again make light of my influence."
"Never again," murmured Miss Terry half unconsciously. "I wish it were not too late--"
"It is never too late," said the Christmas Angel eagerly, as if he read her unspoken thought. "Oh, never too late, Angelina."
CHAPTER XIII
THE CHRISTMAS CANDLE
Suddenly there was a sound,--a dull reverberating sound. It seemed to Miss Terry to come from neither north, south, east, nor west, but from a different world. Ah! She recognized it now. It was somebody knocking on the library door.
Miss Terry gave a long sigh and drew herself up in her chair. "It must be Norah just come back," she said to herself. "I had forgotten Norah completely. It must be shockingly late. Come in," she called, as she glanced at the clock.
She rubbed her eyes and looked again. A few minutes after nine! She had thought it must be midnight!
Norah entered to find her mistress staring at the mantel where the clock stood. She saw lying beside the clock the pink Angel which had fallen from the box as she brought it in,--the box now empty by the fire.
"Law, Miss," she said, "have you burned them all up but him? I"m glad you saved him, he"s so pretty."
"Norah," said Miss Terry with an effort, "is that clock right?"
"Yes"m," said Norah. "I set it this morning. I came back as soon as I could, Miss," she added apologetically.
"It isn"t that," answered Miss Terry, drawing her hand across her forehead dazedly. "I did not mind your absence. But I thought it must be later."
"Oh, no, I wouldn"t stay out any later when you was alone here, Miss," said Norah penitently. "I felt ashamed after I had gone. I ought not to have left you so,--on Christmas Eve. But oh, Miss! The singing was so beautiful, and the houses looked so grand with the candles in the windows. It is like a holy night indeed!"
Miss Terry stooped and picked up something from the floor. It was the bit of candle-end which had escaped the holocaust.
"Are the candles still lighted, Norah?" she asked, eyeing the bit of wax in her hand.