Angel Unawares: A Story of Christmas Eve

The face, which she liked, grew a shade redder, and then became suddenly paler than before. "Please do not say that, Madame," he pleaded, "because it would be – it would be a thing I could not do, to take money for returning to a lady her lost property. It would make me worse than a beggar."

A little, tingling thrill shot through Elinor's veins. She felt ashamed, for this outburst was genuine. Not even a cynic could mistake it, and she hated herself because she was a cynic. Still, she would not give up her point – less than ever would she give it up; for now she began earnestly to want the man to have her money.

"You shouldn't feel like that," she argued. "You didn't ask me for anything. I give of my own free will. You see, I wish to be even with you. You've done me a kindness. Let me repay it."

It seemed to her that Paul Valois looked at her almost pityingly. "Madame," he said, "will you not grant a man the happiness of giving, not of selling, the one thing in his power, on the eve of Christmas? It has made me happy that through us, in a way, you have been saved from pain at this time when the world should be glad. To pay me for that joy would kill it."

Elinor blushed. "But – but – my little girl tells me – " She stumbled on, awkwardly, and abashed by her awkwardness. "I think by accident she overheard that – that – you had some trouble. Do you think you're right to refuse? Wouldn't your wife feel – "

"She would feel as I do. I can always be sure of her." Paul Valois lifted his head with a radiant look; and Elinor Odell, gazing at him, fascinated, suddenly realized something Christ-like in his type. With that light in his eyes he might have stood as a model to an artist for a portrait of Christ. Elinor wondered how she had dared to offer such a man money. She felt humble before him, and asked herself how, since he would accept no payment, she could atone for the mean way in which she had misjudged him.

"We didn't know that the fairy heard what we said to each other," he went on. "My children call the palm under which she sat their 'summer-house,' because the long fronds fall down and touch the ground. It is like a green tent. But I am sorry if she felt sad for us. Tell her she must not be sad. We have each other, and that is everything. Some way will open. Meanwhile, it is Christmas! Now, Madame, you understand, I have left my children's tree unfinished. I must make haste. Adieu. Bonne Nolë."

Before she could speak again, he was gone.

Five hundred francs! How mean the notes looked, how paltry seemed the spirit in which she had offered it, grudging and judging, and thinking herself generous!

Springing up on the impulse, she flung open the door between the sitting-room and Angela's bedroom. "Your man from the fairy garden has been here," she said in a strained, nervous way. "He has brought back the ring you tied to the kitten's neck."

"Oh, isn't that too bad!" exclaimed Angel, looking up from her grandfather's letter, which she had held in her own hands for Mademoiselle to read aloud. "Didn't you beg him please to keep it for the children?"

"No, I didn't do that, but – " she hesitated – "I tried to make him take some money instead."

Angel opened her eyes very wide. "I s'pose he wouldn't take it, Mummy."

"Why do you 's'pose' that?" Elinor wanted to know.

"O-oh – just because. He isn't – he isn't that kind of a man. Don't you remember, Mummy, you say that often to me, when I ask you in the street to give money to some one who looks poor?"

Elinor hung her head like a child. Angel knew more about character by instinct, it seemed, than she had learned through her years of experience! But then, it occurred to her, perhaps, after all, she had not gone about learning her lessons in the right way. Maybe it was just as wise, if not wiser, to believe people might be good until you found out that they were bad, instead of beginning the other way around!

"What would you have done in my place?" she asked Angel.

The child was silent for a moment. "If he wouldn't keep the ring, why, I s'pose I should have thought and thought of some other way to make him and big Suze and little Suze and Paulette – and the kitten – all happy for Christmas!" she exclaimed, on an inspiration. "Oh, mother, we must do something. I shall have a horrid Christmas if we can't. And that would be a shame because grandpa's sent me a – a —what did you call it, Mademoiselle?"

"A check," said Rose, starting out of a brown study about her Christmas, and how she was to spend a part of it with Claude.

"Yes, a big check. Mummy, how much money did you want to give the children's father?"

"A hundred dollars," Elinor replied.

"Is that much?"

"It must have seemed so to him."

"Well, it doesn't to me. Grandpa's sent me five hundred to buy myself just what I like, to make my Christmas happy."

"And what would you like?" asked Elinor, thinking that the child's mind had slid away from the Valois family.

"I'd like to make the people in the fairy garden happy."

"But, a check's the same as money," her mother explained. "You just said yourself he isn't the kind of man – "

"Oh, but I wouldn't give him the check," Angel cut in, importantly. "I – I'd lend it to him. No, I mean I'd lend him all he'd paid the nasty man who really owned the garden. And then I'd buy the garden from the nasty man myself if I had enough left, or if I hadn't I'd ask you to. And when the garden was ours, the children's father could have it rented to him, couldn't he? Wouldn't that be a good idea?"

"A splendid idea," said Elinor, "But what do you know about rents and such things?"

"I heard grown-up Suze talk about them to Paul," explained Angel, calmly.

"What a head she has! Is it not so, Madame!" cried Rose, working up to the favor she meant to beg for to-morrow.

"Grandpa is always saying I have a great business head," Angel remarked, with extreme self-satisfaction. "And, Mummy, if you think it's a splendid idea, can't we go out now and 'range it all with Paul and Suze? I should love to. It's the only thing I'd like to make my Christmas happy with grandpa's money. If we went in a carriage and made the horses run fast maybe we could see the Christmas tree."

Again the small, hard voice whispered in Elinor's ear. "Yes, you could see the Christmas tree, which Paul Valois is rich enough to decorate. Then you will know for certain if he rings true."

She did already know "for certain"; the best side of her reminded the other side. But Angel was clamoring, spoiled-child fashion, for her to say "yes," so she said it. Conscience and inclination and the child's pleading forced it from her, and the rest followed like a whirlwind. Angel seized her lately discarded hat and coat. Mademoiselle rang for a servant to call a cab. Elinor hurried off to get ready. And in less than ten minutes they were on their way to the fairy garden, without having so much as opened father's present from Paris.

Many months, perhaps even years, had passed since carriage-wheels rolled over the grass-grown road that led in from the big, rusty iron gates. Horses' hoofs under their windows made so strange a sound in the ears of the Valois family that they stopped singing the beautiful hymn of Noel they had begun round the Christmas tree. They stood still, listening in great surprise; and though the room was lit only by one kitchen lamp and a tallow candle (not counting the lights on the tree) Elinor Odell in the act of descending from her cab could see through an uncurtained window the man, the woman, and their two children, hand in hand, making a ring round the dark-green pyramid of pine-branches.

She and Angel had come alone. Mademoiselle Rose was staying at home to write Claude that Madame Odell had given her Christmas free – the charming, kind lady! Now "the charming, kind lady" and her little girl knocked almost timidly at the front door of the red-roofed white cottage – a queer, low-browed cottage built for peasants, in the old days when Mentone belonged to the Prince of Monaco. In a minute the door opened. Paul had answered the knock, carrying the lamp, and, lighted in that theatrical way from below, his face looked more than ever like the face in a picture. Happiness had been washed from it by the pallor of dismay for an instant, Suze having suggested the advent of Siegel; but even in the midst of his amazement he smiled a welcome for Elinor and Angel.

"This is an unexpected pleasure, Madame," he said, with the graciousness of a banished prince. "Yet it is a real pleasure. Have you brought the fairy to see our Christmas tree?"

"Yes," answered Elinor. "She wanted to come. And – to propose a plan. It's all hers. May we really see the Christmas tree?"

"Indeed we shall be glad," said Paul, and, making no excuses for the poorness of his show, he ushered the beautifully dressed woman and her child into the room.

It was a small, plain room, with white-washed walls and little furniture; but he or his wife had made it charming with trails of ivy and wreaths of mistletoe and holly. The kitchen lamp had a shade of red chiffon fashioned from some old hat trimming of Susan's. The tree (center of the picture for which all else was a frame) stood bravely up in a green-painted tub packed with earth. Over the brown sandy surface Paul had laid velvety bits of moss and ferns from the mountainside. Odds and ends of tallow candle saved from time to time had their ugliness hidden in orange-red globes of mandarins, cleverly emptied of their pulp, and hung from the branches by handles of thin wire. Through the semi-transparent skins the light filtered with a soft, warm glow. Susan had threaded red berries and scarlet geraniums from the garden into long chains, which Paul had looped intricately over the tree. He had collected silver paper from tobacco-smoking friends, and cut out stars and crescents to sprinkle here and there. Tufts of cotton stolen from an old quilt gave an effect of scattered snowflakes, and a quantity of powdered isinglass which had once formed a stove window glittered on the green pine-needles like diamonds. As for presents, Santa Claus seemed to have thought that with so beautiful a tree they would scarcely be needed. He had provided two dolls, brightly painted and cut out of cardboard. They were dressed in accordion-pleated, pink tissue-paper and had hats to match. One hung on the right side of the tree, and one on the left, and midway between each a gingerbread elephant was suspended.

There were the "decorations" which Elinor had sagely told herself no poor man could afford.

"Oh, mother!" gasped Angel, "did you ever, ever see such a lov-elly Christmas tree in all your life?"

Elinor's eyes saw the mandarin lanterns shine through tears. "Never one so sweet," she said. And sensitive Susan Valois knew that she was not "making fun."

The woman of experience found herself stammering like a school-girl as she tried to explain Angel's plan without hurting the dear creatures' feelings. But the child, with no such fear in her heart, made it quite clear, without embarrassment. "You see," she said, "the fairy garden will belong to all of us together. And I shall be like a grown-up person because you will have to pay me the rent, the way people do to grandpa's agent, such a nice man with a bald head and a wart on his nose. Perhaps if you take care of the garden well, and plant lots of flowers, we shall all get rich from it like grandpa is. You will say yes, won't you? And it'll be the very happiest night of my life."

"Of mine, too," vowed Elinor, and meant it. So what could Paul and Suze do but say "yes," and add that it was the happiest night of their lives also.

"Then it's settled, isn't it, mother?" breathed Angel. "Is that all, or have I forgotten anything?"

Elinor bent over her, on a sudden impulse. "Father has sent you a wonderful doll from Paris, dear," she whispered. "I haven't opened the box, but I know what's in it, for a letter came in the post: a doll that talks and walks and has real hair and eyelashes. So, would you like to spare a family of dolls I bought for you before I had the letter? Would you like to spare them to these little girls?"

"I know what I forgot!" exclaimed Angel. "I forgot to tell Paulette and Suze that Santa Clause left something with me for them. I 'spect he hadn't time to come back himself. He has so much to do for all the children 'most everywhere in the world, whose fathers are in the war. I shouldn't wonder if what he left is dolls – lots of dolls. Maybe quite big dolls."

Paulette rushed to her mother and whispered, as Angel's mother had whispered.

"She says, now she knows your little girl is a fairy," Susan explained aloud.

"I think," said Elinor, "this house is full of fairies to-night. And they've brought me a better Christmas present than was ever brought by Santa Claus – a present of something I lost a long time ago: a warm spot that had fallen out of my heart."

THE END