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!"
Miss Terry was leaning on the mantel-shelf looking into the fire, when the bell pealed furiously. She started and turned pale.
"Lord 'a' mercy!" ejaculated Norah, who was still admiring the effect of the window-decoration. "What's that? Who can be calling here to-night, making such a noise?"
"Go to the door, Norah," said Miss Terry with a strange note in her voice. "It may be some one to see me. It is not too late."
"Yes'm," said Norah, obedient but bewildered.
Presently the library door opened and a figure strode in; a tall, broad-shouldered man in a fur overcoat. For a moment he stood just inside the door, hesitating. Miss Terry took two steps forward from the fire-place.
"Tom!" she said faintly. "You came,—after all!"
"After all, Angelina," he said. "Yes, because I saw that," he waved his hand toward the window. "That gave me courage to come in. It is our Christmas Angel. I remember all about it. Does it mean anything, Angelina?"
Miss Terry held out a moment longer. Then she faltered forward. "O Tom!" she sobbed, as she felt his brotherly, strong arms about her. "O Tom! And so he has brought you back to me, and me to you!"
"He? Angelina girl, who?" He smoothed her silver hair with rough, kind fingers.
"Why, the Christmas Angel; our Guardian Angel, Tom. All these years I kept him in the play box, and I was going to burn him up. But I couldn't do it, Tom. How wonderful it is!"
They sat down before the fire and she began to tell him the whole story. But she interrupted herself to send for Norah, who came to her, mystified and half scandalized by the greeting which she had seen those two oldsters exchange.
"This is my brother Tom, Norah, who has come back," she said. "I believe it is not too late to make some preparation for Christmas Day. The stores will still be open. Run out and order things for a grand occasion, Norah. And—O Norah!" a sudden remembrance came to her. "If you have time, will you please get some toys and pretty things such as a little girl would like; a little girl of about ten, with my complexion,—I mean, with yellow hair and blue eyes. We may have a little guest to-morrow."
"Yes'm," said Norah, moving like one in a dream.
"A guest?" exclaimed Tom. And Miss Terry told him about Mary.
"I love little girls," said Tom, "especially little girls with yellow hair and blue eyes, such as you used to have, Angelina."
"You will like Mary, then," said Miss Terry, with a pretty pink flush of pleasure in her cheeks.
"I shall like her, if she comes," amended Tom, who, man-like, received with reservations the account of a vision vouchsafed not unto him.
"She will come," said Miss Terry with her old positiveness, glancing towards the window where the Christmas Angel hung.
Then arose the sound of singing outside the house. The passing choristers had spied the quaint window, now the only one in the street which remained lighted:—
"When Christ was born of Mary free,
In Bethlehem, in that fair citye,
Angels sang with mirth and glee,
In Excelsis Gloria!"
And Mary came. The brother and sister were at breakfast,—the happiest which either of them had known for years,—when there came a timid pull at the front-door bell. Miss Angelina laid down her knife and fork and looked across the table at Tom.
"She has come. Mary has come," she said. "Norah, if it is a little girl with a package under her arm, bring her in here."