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 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!"