"Oh, it has come true!" she cried, clasping her hands together, "The gates are really opening at last!"
Yes, the Ogre, whatever may have been its name, no longer lived. Its spell was broken, for now the giant scissors no longer barred the way.
Slowly the great gate swung open, and the carriage pa.s.sed through. Joyce sprang out and ran on ahead to open the door. Hand in hand, just as when they were little children, Martin and Desire, this white-haired brother and sister went back to the old home together; and it was Christmas Day, in the morning.
At five o"clock that evening the sound of Gabriel"s accordeon went echoing up and down the garden, and thirty little children were marching to its music along the paths, between the rows of blooming laurel. Joyce understood, now, why the room where the Christmas tree stood had been kept so carefully locked. For two days that room had been empty and the tree had been standing in Monsieur Ciseaux"s parlor.
Cousin Kate and madame and Berthe and Marie and Gabriel had all been over there, busily at work, and neither she nor Jules had suspected what was going on down-stairs.
Now she marched with the others, out of the garden and across the road, keeping time to the music of the wheezy old accordion that Gabriel played so proudly. Surely every soul, in all that long procession filing through the gate of the giant scissors, belonged to the kingdom of loving hearts and gentle hands; for they were all children who pa.s.sed through, or else mothers who carried in their arms the little ones who, but for these faithful arms, must have missed this Noel fete.
Jules had been carried down-stairs and laid on a couch in the corner of the room where he could see the tree to its best advantage. Beside him sat his great-aunt, Desire, dressed in a satin gown of silvery gray that had been her mother"s, and looking as if she had just stepped out from the frame of the portrait up-stairs. She held Jules"s hand in hers, as if with it she grasped the other Jules, the little brother of the olden days for whom this child had been named. And she told him stories of his grandfather and his father. Then Jules found that this Aunt Desire had known his mother; had once sat on the vine-covered porch while he ran after fireflies on the lawn in his little white dress; had heard the song the voice still sang to him in his dreams:
"Till the stars and the angels come to keep Their watch where my baby lies fast asleep."
When she told him this, with her hand stroking his and folding it tight with many tender little claspings, he felt that he had found a part of his old home, too, as well as Aunt Desire.
One by one the tapers began to glow on the great tree, and when it was all ablaze the doors were opened for the children to flock in. They stood about the room, bewildered at first, for not one of them had ever seen such a sight before; a tree that glittered and sparkled and shone, that bore stars and rainbows and snow wreaths and gay toys. At first they only drew deep, wondering breaths, and looked at each other with shining eyes. It was all so beautiful and so strange.
Joyce flew here and there, helping to distribute the gifts, feeling her heart grow warmer and warmer as she watched the happy children. "My little daughter never had anything like that in all her life," said one grateful mother as Joyce laid a doll in the child"s outstretched arms.
"She"ll never forget this to her dying day, nor will any of us, dear mademoiselle! We knew not what it was to have so beautiful a Noel!"
When the last toy had been stripped from the branches, it was Cousin Kate"s turn to be surprised. At a signal from madame, the children began circling around the tree, singing a song that the sisters at the village school had taught them for the occasion. It was a happy little song about the green pine-tree, king of all trees and monarch of the woods, because of the crown he yearly wears at Noel. At the close every child came up to madame and Cousin Kate and Joyce, to say "Thank you, madame,"
and "Good night," in the politest way possible.
Gabriel"s accordion led them out again, and the music, growing fainter and fainter, died away in the distance; but in every heart that heard it had been born a memory whose music could never be lost,--the memory of one happy Christmas.
Joyce drew a long breath when it was all over, and, with her arm around Madame Desire"s shoulder, smiled down at Jules.
"How beautifully it has all ended!" she exclaimed. "I am sorry that we have come to the place to say "and they all lived happily ever after,"
for that means that it is time to shut the book."
"Dear heart," murmured Madame Desire, drawing the child closer to her, "it means that a far sweeter story is just beginning, and it is you who have opened the book for me."
Joyce flushed with pleasure, saying, "I thought this Christmas would be so lonely; but it has been the happiest of my life."
[Ill.u.s.tration: "HE TOOK THE LITTLE FELLOW"S HAND IN HIS."]
"And mine, too," said Monsieur Ciseaux from the other side of Jules"s couch. He took the little fellow"s hand in his. "They told me about the tree that you prepared for me. I have been up to look at it, and now I have come to thank you." To the surprise of every one in the room, monsieur bent over and kissed the flushed little face on the pillow.
Jules reached up, and, putting his arms around his uncle"s neck, laid his cheek a moment against the face of his stern old kinsman. Not a word was said, but in that silent caress every barrier of coldness and reserve was forever broken down between them. So the little Prince came into his kingdom,--the kingdom of love and real home happiness.
It is summer now, and far away in the little brown house across the seas Joyce thinks of her happy winter in France and the friends that she found through the gate of the giant scissors. And still those scissors hang over the gate, and may be seen to this day, by any one who takes the trouble to walk up the hill from the little village that lies just across the river Loire, from the old town of Tours.
THE END.