Angel Unawares: A Story of Christmas Eve

"We must do as Adam and Eve did when they were turned out of Eden. They found work, I suppose. So shall we. Though God knows it almost kills me to think of what I've brought on you and the babies."

"Don't say 'you'! You've never brought anything but happiness to us or anybody."

"I'm afraid – I've thought, sometimes – I had no right to marry you."

"Why, life wouldn't have been life for me without you, Paul!"

"Or for me without you, Suze."

"And all we've gone through has only drawn us closer together. But this last blow is different. It's too cruel!.. That Judas of a man, Siegel, making us believe he was our good friend and he doing you a great kindness selling you this garden and the business so cheap! Think, Paul, how he described it, only last August, just after I found you in Antwerp when you were getting well after your wound. Would one believe a man could make up his mind to ruin another who'd nearly given his life for his country? Plan and plan to rob him of his savings, pretending all the time to open the gates of Paradise – "

"Well, in one way this is Paradise," said Paul, lifting his eyes to the sky which showered sunset roses through silver branches of olives, gold branches of mimosas.

"Paradise with the serpent of deceit in it!" cried Suze. "The Nice lawyer says in his letter —I'm not sorry you let me open it – that Siegel drew up the deeds so cleverly it's almost impossible to convict him of swindling. Monsieur Vignal thinks no business man would lend money on the chance of what you might get back from your deposit with Siegel if you sued him for false pretenses. And yet, in the next sentence, Vignal advises you to stand up against Siegel trying to turn you out because you can't and won't and oughtn't to pay the rest. He says, 'hold on to the place if you possibly can, and make Siegel attack you in the courts, so you can have a chance of bringing out the real facts and perhaps proving that you're an injured man.' He thinks if you could stop here instead of submitting to be turned out, the courts would very likely decide that you'd paid Siegel already as much as the business is worth, and the place would be accounted ours. Isn't that a mockery, when Monsieur Vignal knows as well as we do we haven't a penny to live on – that the Riviera's empty these war days, that nobody buys our plants, and you can't fill orders from over the Swiss or Italian frontiers, even if you could get half as many as Siegel's lying books showed?"

"Vignal means well," said the man. "It's good of him to advise me without asking for pay."

"No more than a Frenchman ought to do for a Belgian!" the woman retorted. "The refugees who ask for charity get all the sympathy. We, who ask only for work – "

"We have received kindness, too. Don't let's doubt God's goodness on the eve of Christmas – the day when He gave His only Son for us all, my Suze!.. 'Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.' Well, there's no evil in this day – or to-morrow. There sha'n't be. Let's trust; let's not stop hoping, for not to hope is death. You go to the children, dearest, now, and I'll slip around the back way with this tree, so they sha'n't see it till it's lighted and decorated to-night – "

"Lighted and decorated!" Suze echoed, with a laugh that came trembling out of tears.

"Yes," insisted Paul, "trust me. Your husband isn't an artist for nothing! Come along. No more time for repining if the tree's to be ready before the children's bedtime. I tell you, it will be a great work!"

"You're the most wonderful man in the world!" breathed Suze senior. "And we adore you– our soldier who fights for us always. Oh, but listen! There's Paulette calling me. I told the two I'd be back before they finished their Christmas present for father. Guess what it is – but no, it wouldn't be fair to the poor little things. They're coming to look for me. If you go by the mimosa path you can get away before they see you."

Without a word, the man picked up the miniature pine-tree and, shouldering it, limped off almost at a run. At the same instant the woman went down on her knees and began once more to drape the gray bagging over the flower-bed, as if nothing had happened to interrupt her task.

"Here I am, by the palm-grove. Come and help me cover the flowers!" she cried, almost cheerily, in answer to a child shouting "Maman! Maman!"

At the silver sound of the little voice, the kitten in Angel Odel's lap stiffened itself for a spring. Mechanically her hands tightened on the ball of fluff, but it wriggled free, and, with a jump, landed clear of the palm, on the grass beyond. Small as it was, the little animal left the fronds rustling in its wake, and the woman on her knees, looking up with a start, caught a glimpse of something gray under the tree. Two pinafored children, emerging from a side-path, caught the same glimpse, and as the younger snatched up the kitten the elder took a step forward and parted the long green plumes of the agitated palm.

"Why, mother!" she exclaimed in French, "there's a strange child under our tree, sitting seat! Oh, but a beautiful child in on our splendid clothes. Can she be real, or – oh, mother! Is she the Christmas fairy father says God sends to bless those who love one another?"

Without answering, the woman got up from her knees. Flushed with embarrassment, she peeped over her daughter's golden head. The younger girl peeped, also, hanging shyly to her mother's dress. It was a horrid moment for Angel Odell.

The children were smaller than she – not more than six and four years old at most – and they were, Angel saw at a glance, pretty as life-size dolls, with their yellow curls, rose-red cheeks, and pink pinafores. Their great blue eyes stared at her, not with anger, but bewildered admiration. Even their mother did not look as if she meant to scold or sweep the intruder angrily out of her hiding-place. But, child as she was, Angel realized that she had been doing a forbidden thing, a shameful thing. She had been eavesdropping. She had seen the woman crying; she had heard her talking over family secrets with her husband; she had come to know what she had no right to know, and what those two had meant for each other's hearts alone. Ever since she was old enough to learn anything, she had been taught that "eavesdropping" was one of those disgusting sins no honorable girl or boy could possibly commit. Her father himself had said those very words; unforgettable words, because father was Angel's hero. What would he think if he could see her now? Somehow, she must atone!

"I – I didn't mean to hide," she stammered. "I looked in – the gate was open. I thought – maybe it was a fairy garden – "

"Oh, mother, you see she is a fairy," gasped Suze junior, the elder of the children.

"Perhaps," agreed Suze senior, doubtfully. And her eyes challenged the stranger. "Who are you, really? Where do you come from?"

"I – I often play I'm a fairy." The culprit seized the straw held out to her. "I – expect I am one. I know the me in the looking-glass is, and sometimes I can't tell which is which Mademoiselle plays she can't, either. She says when I come in, 'Which is this, today, the angel or the fairy?' My name's Angela."

"Oh mother!" breathed both children together, their eyes round with awe. "An angel and a fairy."

"And I'm lost," the wonderful visitor hurried on, heading off an answer from mother. "I don't know where I live."

"She doesn't know where she lives," murmured Suze and Paulette, in chorus. "Then she can stay always and live with us, can't she?"

"Perhaps she wouldn't want to do that," said Suze senior. "Perhaps she has a mother waiting for her somewhere."

"But do fairies have mothers?" Paulette wanted to know.

"Or angels?" added Suze. "I always thought they hadn't."

"I have," the visitor announced, hastily. "Some kinds of angels do – the kind like me. My name's Angel Odell."

"Well, I never supposed angels had last names," Paulette reflected, aloud. "I thought they were just called Gabriel or something like that, and that they were generally boys."

"Oh no!" Angel Odell announced, with decision. "Boys are never angels, anyhow, not in America where I live when I'm home."

"She lives in America," the two children repeated to their mother. "That's not fairyland or heaven, is it?"

"Fairyland can be anywhere, your father says," Suze senior answered. "But see, it's going to be twilight soon! I think we must try to find out where Angel Odell lives, and take her home. She says she's lost – so her mother will be anxious."

"She thinks I'm with my governess," said Angel.

"Oh, fairy angels have governesses," the elder sister mourned, another illusion gone. "That's as bad as being a real child and going to school." The two spoke English or French indiscriminately, seeming hardly to know which language they used, but luckily Angel understood French very well, thanks to Paris and Mademoiselle Rose.

"I like my governess," she explained. "She's very pretty and she's engaged to a soldier. That's why I'm lost. Because she met him by the sea, instead of his being dead as she thought, so she forgot to watch me. I was going home alone when I saw your garden gate open, and it looked just like fairyland. If you please, I wish you would find where I live. It's a – hotel, and it has a garden, too, but not like this."

Suze senior set her wits to work. She knew that, in those days of war, not many hotels were open in Mentone. She questioned Angel, and, learning that the hotel garden was high above the sea, with glass screens to keep off the wind and a view where you saw the town all piled together on the side of a hill with dark, tall trees on top, she guessed the Bellevue.

"We'll all three put on our hats and cloaks, and take you back to your mother," she said, with the thought in her mind, perhaps, that Paul would be glad of the children's absence while he did his part of the tree-dressing. "Suze and Paulette will leave you the kitten to play with, and you won't mind being alone here again for a few minutes, while we get ready?"

Even if Angel had minded, now that a blue veil of twilight was dropping over the garden, she would have said "No," bravely, to wipe off ever so little, if she could, of the stain of eavesdropping. But suddenly, when the children's mother asked that question, and she realized that she would have the place to herself, the most wonderful idea came into her head, straight and direct as a bee flies into an open flower. She happened at the moment to be putting on her mittens preparatory to a start, when a glint of her mother's diamond flashed up from her plump little thumb to her eyes. The flash was an inspiration. When the children and their mother were out of the way she would pull off her hair-ribbon and tie the ring to the kitten's neck. Then, when they had taken her home and come back, Suze and Paulette would find the ring and think it the magic gift of a fairy, because (they would say to each other) no ordinary little girl could have a gorgeous diamond like that to give away.

Oh, it was a splendid idea! Angel was sure her mother would approve when she had thoroughly explained, for mother was rich. Angel had often heard servants at home and in hotels, away over across the sea in America, telling one another that Mrs. Odell's father was Cyrus P. Holroyd, one of the big millionaires. Mother herself had heaps and heaps of money, too much to please father; and grandpa – that very Cyrus P. Holroyd – was always sending presents of jewelry and things. He sent beautiful presents to Angel, as well. Probably she would find some from him when she went home, for when you visited at grandpa's house in New York, it was the rule to begin Christmas on Christmas Eve, and have still more things on Christmas morning, too, when you thought you had got all there were.

No sooner had Suze senior and her two children turned their backs than Angel proceeded hurriedly to carry out her idea. The kitten, unused to being personally decorated at Christmas or any other time, resisted the ribbon with some determination. But Angel was even more determined, and, as in war, size counted. Before the trio returned, ready for their walk, the bow had been tied and the victim had dashed angrily away. This vanishing act suited Angel precisely, for the bright blue of the ribbon was conspicuous on the white fur, even in twilight, and to have the fairy's legacy discovered in the fairy's presence would have been premature. In fact, it would have spoiled everything, and Angel encouraged the animal's exit with a suppressed "Scat!"

The first hotel they tried was the right one. Angel knew it by the gate. But it was rather a long walk to get there, and Suze senior – who told Angel that she was "Madame Valois" – shyly refused the little girl's insistent plea to "come in and meet mother."

"I must take the children back to their supper," she explained. "Already it's getting dark, and – it's Christmas Eve, you know. I hope your mother won't have had time to worry. Tell her we brought you home as soon as – as you were found."

A faint fear that some gentle hint of reproach lurked in the kind words (as she had hidden under the palm) stirred in Angel's mind, making her wish all the more to benefit the Valois family, and so justify her eavesdropping. She pictured, with joy, the sensational discovery of the diamond ring, perhaps while the children were receiving their presents from the Christmas tree. She did hope it might happen then! So anxious was she to tell her mother the story of the fairy garden that, after the good-bys, she bounded into the hotel like a bomb. Her mother's suite was on the first floor, and in her haste to get to it Angel would have dashed past a group in the hall, had not the concierge headed her off.

"Here she is, Mademoiselle! Now everything is all right!" he exclaimed, as joyously as though great news had come from the front. And out from the group tottered Mademoiselle Rose, to precipitate herself upon the child and drench her velvet hood with a waterspout of tears.

Angel had not been left in ignorance by her relatives that she was a young person of some charm and importance, but never in her life had she been so overwhelmed with adjectives, in any language. Mademoiselle Rose, shedding tears which looked to Angel's astonished gaze the size of pebbles, called her a lamb, a saint, an adored cherub, and many other things which Angel determined to bring up in future if ever she were scolded. It appeared that the distracted governess, on waking from her dream of love with Claude, had nearly fainted on finding Angel gone. She had left her soldier on his crutches, to rush here and there, searching wildly for her charge. She had described the child to every one she met, and asked in vain for news of her. She had dashed into shops and houses, she had been led to the gendarmerie and had sobbed out her story of loss, reluctantly pausing to see details industriously written down; and at last she had run all the way to the hotel, hoping against hope that the lost one had returned.

Her state of mind, as described by herself, was tragic when she had ransacked the rooms and asked questions of servants and visitors, only to be assured that her charge had not come home. She blamed herself entirely, not Angel in the least; therefore Angel felt kindly toward Mademoiselle, and attempted to comfort her by saying how glad she ought to be, anyhow, that Claude was alive. The young Frenchwoman hysterically admitted this, and was in the act of expressing also her thankfulness that Madame had not yet returned, to suffer, when Madame herself walked in, followed by a commissionaire bearing many bundles. She looked rosy and girlish, but at sight of Mademoiselle on her knees in the hall, bathing Angel with tears, her bright color ebbed.

"What has happened?" she stammered, her big, dark eyes appealing to concierge, governess, and all Angel's other satellites.