Christmas Angel — 04 - Chapters 11 - 12
CHAPTER XI MIRANDA AGAIN
Once more, on the wings of vision, Miss Terry was out in the snowy street.
She was following the fleet steps of a little girl who carried a white-paper package under her arm.
Miss Terry knew that she was learning the fate of her old doll, Miranda, whom her own hands had thrust out into a cold world.
Poor Miranda!
After all these years to become the property of a thief!
Mary was the little thief's name.
Hugging the tempting package close, Mary ran and ran until she was out of breath.
Her one thought was to get as far as possible from the place where the bundle had lain.
For she suspected that the steps where she had found it led up to the doll's home.
That was why in her own eyes also she was a little thief.
But now she had run so far and had turned so many corners that she could not find her way back if she would.
There was triumph in the thought.
Mary chuckled to herself as she stopped running and began to walk leisurely in the neighborhood with which she was more familiar.
She pinched the package gently.
Yes, there could be no doubt about it.
It was a doll,--not a very large doll; but Mary reflected that she had never thought she should care for a large doll.
Undoubtedly it was a very nice one.
Had she not found it in a swell part of the city, on the steps of a swell-looking house?
Mary gloated over the doll as she fancied it; with real hair, and eyes that opened and shut; with four little white teeth, and hands with dimples in the knuckles.
She had seen such dolls in the windows of the big shops.
But she had never hoped to have one for her very own.
"Maybe it will have on a blue silk dress and white kid shoes, like that one I saw this morning!"
she mused rapturously.
She pinched the spot where she fancied the doll's feet ought to be.
"Yes, she's got shoes, sure enough!
I bet they're white, too.
They _feel_ white.
Oh, what fun I shall have with her,"--she hugged the doll fondly,--"if Uncle and Aunt don't take her away!"
The sudden thought made her stand still in horror.
"They sold Mother's little clock for rum," she said bitterly.
"They sold the ring with the red stone that Father gave me on my birthday when I was seven.
They sold the presents that I got at Sunday School last year.
Oh, wouldn't it be dreadful if they should sell my new doll!
And I know they will want to if they see her."
She squeezed the bundle closer with the prescient pang of parting.
"Maybe they'll be out somewhere."
With this faint hope she reached the tenement and crept up the dingy stairs.
She peeped in at the door.
Alas!
Her uncle and aunt were in the kitchen, through which she had to pass.
They had company; some dirty-looking men and women, and there were a jug and glasses on the table before them.
Mary's heart sank, but she nodded bravely to the company and tried to slip through the crowd to the other room.
But her aunt was quick to see that she carried something under her coat.
"What you got there?
A Christmas present?"
she sneered.
Mary flushed.
"No," she said slowly, "just something I found."
"Found?
Hello, what is it?
A package!"
Her uncle advanced and snatched it from her.
"Please," pleaded Mary, "please, I found it.
It is mine.
I think it is only a doll."
"A doll!
Huh!
Who needs a doll?"
hiccoughed her uncle.
"We want something more to drink.
We'll sell it--" A bellow of laughter resounded through the room.
The paper being torn roughly away, poor Miranda stood revealed in all her faded beauty.
The pallid waxen face, straggling hair, and old-fashioned dress presented a sorry sight to the greedy eyes which had expected to find something exchangeable for drink.
A sorry sight she was to Mary, who had hoped for something so much lovelier.
A flush of disappointment came into her cheek, and tears to her eyes.
"Here, take your old doll," said her uncle roughly, thrusting it into her arms.
"Take your old doll and get away with her.
If that's the best you can find you'd better _steal_ something next time."
Steal something!
Had she not in fact stolen it?
Mary knew very well that she had, and she flushed pinker yet to think what a fool she had made of herself for nothing.
She took the despised doll and retreated into the other room, followed by a chorus of jeers and comments.
She banged the door behind her and sat down with poor Miranda on her knees, crying as if her heart would break.
She had so longed for a beautiful doll!
It did seem too cruel that when she found one it should turn out to be so ugly.
She seized poor Miranda and shook her fiercely.
"You horrid old thing!"
she said.
"Ain't you ashamed to fool me so?
Ain't you ashamed to make me think you was a lovely doll with pretty clo'es and _white kid shoes?
_ Ain't you?"
She shook Miranda again until her eyeballs rattled in her head.
The doll fell to the floor and lay there with closed eyes.
Her face was pallid and ghastly.
Her bonnet had fallen off, and her hair stuck out wildly in every direction.
Her legs were doubled under her in the most helpless fashion.
She was the forlornest figure of a doll imaginable.
Presently Mary drew her hands away from her eyes and looked down at Miranda.
There was something in the doll's attitude as she lay there which touched the little girl's heart.
Once she had seen a woman who had been injured in the street,--she would never forget it.
The poor creature's eyes had been closed, and her face, under the fallen bonnet, was of this same pasty color.
Mary shuddered.
Suddenly she felt a warm rush of pity for the doll.
"You poor old thing!"
she exclaimed, looking at Miranda almost tenderly.
"I'm sorry I shook you.
You look so tired and sad and homesick!
I wonder if somebody is worrying about you this minute.
It was very wicked of me to take you away--on Christmas Eve, too!
I wish I had left you where I found you.
Maybe some little girl is crying now because you are lost."
Mary stooped and lifted the doll gently upon her knees.
As she took Miranda up, the blue eyes opened and seemed to look full at her.
Miranda's one beauty was her eyes.
Mary felt her heart grow warmer and warmer toward the quaint stranger.
"You have lovely eyes," she murmured.
"I think after all you are almost pretty.
Perhaps I should grow to like you awfully.
You are not a bit like the doll I hoped to have; but that is not your fault."
A thought made her face brighten.
"Why, if you had been a beautiful doll they would have taken you away and sold you for rum."
Her face expressed utter disgust.
She hugged Miranda close with a sudden outburst of affection.
"Oh, you dear old thing!"
she cried.
"I am so glad you are--just like this.
I am so glad, for now I can keep you always and always, and no one will want to take you away from me."
She rocked to and fro, holding the doll tightly to her heart.
Mary was not one to feel a half-passion about anything.
"I will make you some new dresses," she said, fingering the old-fashioned silk with a puzzled air.
"I wonder why your mother dressed you so queerly?
She was not much of a sewer if she made this bonnet!"
Scornfully she took off the primitive bonnet and smoothed out the tangled hair.
"I wonder what you have on underneath," she said.
With gentle fingers she began to undress Miranda.
Off came the green silk dress with its tight "basque" and overskirt.
Off came the ruffled petticoat and little chemise edged with fine lace.
And Miranda stood in shapeless, kid-bodied ugliness, which stage of evolution the doll of her day had reached.
But there was something more.
Around her neck she wore a ribbon; on the ribbon was a cardboard medal; and on the medal a childish hand had scratched the legend,-- _Miranda Terry.
_ If lost, please return her to her mother, _Angelina Terry_, 87 Overlook Terrace.
It was such a card as Miss Terry herself had worn in the days when her mother had first let her and Tom go out on the street without a nurse.
Mary stared hard at the bit of cardboard.
87 Overlook Terrace!
Yes, that was where she had found the doll.
She remembered now seeing the name on a street corner.
_Miranda;_ what a pretty name for a doll!
_Angelina Terry;_ so that was the name of the little girl who had lost Miranda.
Angelina must be feeling very sorry now.
Perhaps she was crying herself to sleep, for it was growing late.
Her two girl cousins came romping into the bedroom.
They had been having a hilarious evening.
"Hello, Mary!"
they cried.
"We heard about your great find!"
--"Playing with your old doll, are you?
Goin' to hang up her stockin' and see if Santa Claus will fill it?"
--"Huh!
Santa Claus won't come to _this_ house, I guess!"
Mary had almost forgotten that it was Christmas Eve.
There had been nothing in the house to remind her.
Perhaps Angelina Terry had hung up a stocking for Miranda at 87 Overlook Terrace.
But there would be no Miranda to see it the next morning.
Her cousins teased her for some time, while they undressed, and Mary grew sulky.
She sat in her corner and answered them shortly.
But presently the room was quiet, for the girls slept easily.
Then Mary crept into her little cot with the doll in her arms.
She loved Miranda so much that she would never part with her, no indeed; not even though she now knew where Miranda belonged.
87 Overlook Terrace!
The figures danced before her eyes maliciously.
She wished she could forget them.
And the thought of Angelina Terry kept coming to her.
Poor Angelina!
"She ain't 'poor Angelina,'" argued Mary to herself.
"She's _rich_ Angelina.
Doesn't she live in a big house in the swell part of the city?
I
s'pose she has hundreds of dolls, much handsomer than Miranda, and lots of other toys.
I guess she won't miss this one queer old doll.
I guess she'd let me keep it if she knew I hadn't any of my own.
I guess it ought to be my doll.
Anyway, I'm going to keep her.
I don't believe Angelina loves Miranda so much as I do."
She laid her cheek against the doll's cold waxen one and presently fell asleep.
But she slept uneasily.
In the middle of the night she awoke and lay for hours tossing and unhappy in the stuffy little room.
The clock struck one, two, three.
At last she gave a great sigh, and cuddling Miranda in her arms turned over, with peace in her heart.
"I will play you are mine, my very own dollie, for just this one night," she whispered in Miranda's ear.
"To-morrow will be Christmas Day, and I will take you back to your little mother, Angelina Terry.
I can't do a mean thing at Christmas time,--not even for you, dear Miranda."
Thereupon she fell into a peaceful sleep.
CHAPTER XII THE ANGEL AGAIN
"Will she bring it back?"
asked Miss Terry eagerly, when once more she found herself under the gaze of the Christmas Angel.
He nodded brightly.
"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 ejaculation 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 coarse 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.
[Illustration: 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 basso.
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 lustily 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.
