The Greatest Christmas Stories & Poems (Illustrated Edition). Лаймен Фрэнк БаумЧитать онлайн книгу.
"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!"
Chapter VIII.
Jack Again
The Christmas Angel gently waved his hand to and fro. Gradually, as Miss Terry sat back in her chair, the library grew dark; or rather, things faded into an indistinguishable blur. Then it seemed as if she were sitting at a theatre gazing at a great stage. But at this theatre there was nothing about her, nothing between her and the place where things were happening.
First she saw two little ragamuffins quarreling over something in the snow. She recognized them. They were the two Jewish boys who had picked up the Jack-in-the-box. An officer appeared, and they ran away, the bigger boy having possession of the toy; the smaller one with fists in his eyes, bawling with disappointment.
Miss Terry's lips curled with the cynical disgust which she had felt when first witnessing this scene. But a sweet voice—and she knew it was the Angel's—whispered in her ear, "Wait and see!"
She watched the two boys run through the streets until they came to a dark corner. There the little fellow caught up with the other, and once more the struggle began. It was a hard and bloody fight. But this time the victory was with the smaller lad, who used his fists and feet like an enraged animal, until the other howled for mercy and handed over the disputed toy.
"Whatcher want it fer, Sam?" he blubbered as he saw it go into the little fellow's pocket.
"Mind yer own business! I just want it," answered Sam surlily.
"Betcher I know," taunted the bigger boy.
"Betcher yer don't."
"Do!"
"Don't!"
Another fight seemed imminent. But wisdom prevailed with Sammy. He would not challenge fate a third time. "Come on, then, and see," he grunted.
And Ike followed. Off the two trudged, through the brilliantly lighted streets, until they came to a part of the city where the ways were narrower and dark.
"Huh! Knowed you was comin' here," commented Ike as they turned into a grim, dirty alley.
Little Sam growled, "Didn't!" apparently as a matter of habit.
"Did!" reasserted Ike. "Just where I was comin' myself."
Sam turned to him with a grin.
"Was yer now? By—! Ain't that funny? I thought of it right off."
"Sure. Same here!"
They both burst into a guffaw and executed an impromptu double-shuffle of delight. They were at the door of a tenement house with steep stairs leading into darkness. Up three flights pounded the two pairs of heavy boots, till they reached a half-open door, whence issued the clatter of a sewing-machine and the voices of children. Sam stood on the threshold grinning debonairly, with hands thrust into his pockets. Ike peered over his shoulder, also grinning.
It was a meagre room into which they gazed, a room the chief furniture of which seemed to be babies. Two little ones sprawled on the floor. A third tiny tot lay in a broken-down carriage beside the door. A pale, ill-looking woman was running the machine. On the cot bed was crumpled a fragile little fellow of about five, and a small pair of crutches lay across the foot of the bed.
When the two boys appeared in the doorway, the woman stopped her machine and the children set up a howl of pleasure. "Sammy! Ikey!" cried the woman, smiling a wan welcome, as the babies crept and toddled toward the newcomers. "Where ye come from?"
"Been to see the shops and the lights in the swell houses," answered Sammy with a grimace. "Gee! Ain't they wastin' candles to beat the cars!"
"Enough to last a family a whole year," muttered Ike with disgust.
The woman sighed. "Maybe they ain't wasted exactly," she said. "How I'd like to see 'em! But I got to finish this job. I told the chil'ren they mustn't expect anything this Christmas. But they are too little to know the difference anyway; all but Joe. I wish I had something for Joe."
"I got something for Joe," said Sammy unexpectedly.
The face of the pale little cripple lighted.
"What is it?" he asked eagerly. "Oh, what is it? A real Christmas present for me?"
"Naw! It ain't a Christmas present," said Sam.
"We don't care anything about Christmas," volunteered Ikey with a grin.
Sam looked at him with a frown of rebuke.
"It's just a present," he said. "And it didn't cost a cent. I didn't buy it. I—we found it!"
"Found it in the street?"