It may have been thus with the girl, for her face deepened as she listened. For the first time for many long days tears welled up into her eyes, and rolled between her fingers unheeded.

"I came through the streets to-night baffled in life,--a mean man that might have been n.o.ble,--all the years wasted that had gone before,--disappointed,--with nothing to hope for but time to work humbly and atone for the wrongs I had done. When I lay yonder, my soul on the coast of eternity, I resolved to atone for every selfish deed.

I had no thought of happiness; G.o.d knows I had no hope of it. I had wronged you most: I could not die with that wrong unforgiven."

"Unforgiven, Stephen?" she sobbed; "I forgave it long ago."

He looked at her a moment, then by some effort choked down the word he would have spoken, and went on with his bitter confession.

"I came through the crowded town, a homeless, solitary man, on the Christmas eve when love comes to every man. If ever I had grown sick for a word or touch from the one soul to whom alone mine was open, I thirsted for it then. The better part of my nature was crushed out, and flung away with you, Margret. I cried for it,--I wanted help to be a better, purer man. I need it now. And so," he said, with a smile that hurt her more than tears, "I came to my good angel, to tell her I had sinned and repented, that I had made humble plans for the future, and ask her---- G.o.d knows what I would have asked her then! She had forgotten me,--she had another work to do!"

She wrung her hands with a helpless cry. Holmes went to the window: the dull waste of snow looked to him as hopeless and vague as his own life.

"I have deserved it," he muttered to himself. "It is too late to amend."

Some light touch thrilled his arm.

"Is it too late, Stephen?" whispered a childish voice.

The strong man trembled, looking at the little dark figure standing near him.

"We were both wrong: I have been untrue, selfish. More than you.

Stephen, help me to be a better girl; let us be friends again."

She went back unconsciously to the old words of their quarrels long ago. He drew back.

"Do not mock me," he gasped. "I suffer, Margret. Do not mock me with more courtesy."

"I do not; let us be friends again."

She was crying like a penitent child; her face was turned away; love, pure and deep, was in her eyes.

The red fire-light grew stronger; the clock hushed its noisy ticking to hear the story. Holmes's pale lip worked: what was this coming to him?

His breast heaved, a dry heat panted in his veins, his deep eyes flashed fire.

"If my little friend comes to me," he said, in a smothered voice, "there is but one place for her,--her soul with my soul, her heart on my heart."--He opened his arms.--"She must rest her head here. My little friend must be--my wife."

She looked into the strong, haggard face,--a smile crept out on her own, arch and debonair like that of old time.

"I am tired, Stephen," she whispered, and softly laid her head down on his breast.

The red fire-light flashed into a glory of crimson through the room, about the two figures standing motionless there,--shimmered down into awe-struck shadow: who heeded it? The old clock ticked away furiously, as if rejoicing that weary days were over for the pet and darling of the house: nothing else broke the silence. Without, the deep night paused, gray, impenetrable. Did it hope that far angel-voices would break its breathless hush, as once on the fields of Judea, to usher in Christmas morn? A hush, in air, and earth, and sky, of waiting hope, of a promised joy. Down there in the farm-window two human hearts had given the joy a name; the hope throbbed into being; the hearts touching each other beat in a slow, full chord of love as pure in G.o.d's eyes as the song the angels sang, and as sure a promise of the Christ that is to come. Forever,--not even death would part them; he knew that, holding her closer, looking down into her face.

What a pale little face it was! Through the intensest heat of his pa.s.sion the sting touched him. Some instinct made her glance up at him, with a keen insight, seeing the morbid gloom that was the man's sin, in his face. She lifted her head from his breast, and when he stooped to touch her lips, shook herself free, laughing carelessly.

Alas, Stephen Holmes! you will have little time for morbid questionings in those years to come: her cheerful work has begun: no more self-devouring reveries: your very pauses of silent content and love will be rare and well-earned. No more tranced raptures for to-night,--let to-morrow bring what it would.

"You do not seem to find your purer self altogether perfect?" she demanded. "I think the pale skin hurts your artistic eye, or the frozen eyes,--which is it?"

"They have thawed into brilliant fire,--something looks at me half-yielding and half-defiant,--you know that, you vain child! But, Margret, nothing can atone"----

He stopped.

"Yes, stop. That is right, Stephen. Remorse grows maudlin when it goes into words," laughing again at his astounded look.

He took her hand,--a dewy, healthy hand,--the very touch of it meant action and life.

"What if I say, then," he said, earnestly, "that I do not find my angel perfect, be the fault mine or hers? The child Margret, with her sudden tears, and laughter, and angry heats, is gone,--I killed her, I think,--gone long ago. I will not take in place of her this worn, pale ghost, who wears clothes as chilly as if she came from the dead, and stands alone, as ghosts do."

She stood a little way off, her great brown eyes flashing with tears.

It was so strange a joy to find herself cared for, when she had believed she was old and hard: the very idle jesting made her youth and happiness real to her. Holmes saw that with his quick tact. He flung playfully a crimson shawl that lay there about her white neck.

"My wife must suffer her life to flush out in gleams of colour and light: her cheeks must hint at a glow within, as yours do now. I will have no hard angles, no pallor, no uncertain memory of pain in her life: it shall be perpetual summer."

He loosened her hair, and it rolled down about the bright, tearful face, shining in the red fire-light like a mist of tawny gold.

"I need warmth and freshness and light: my wife shall bring them to me.

She shall be no strong-willed reformer, standing alone: a sovereign lady with kind words for the world, who gives her hand only to that man whom she trusts, and keeps her heart and its secrets for me alone."

She paid no heed to him other than by a deepening colour; the clock, however, grew tired of the long soliloquy, and broke in with an asthmatic warning as to the time of night.

"There is midnight," she said. "You shall go, now, Stephen Holmes,--quick! before your sovereign lady fades, like Cinderella, into grayness and frozen eyes!"

When he was gone, she knelt down by her window, remembering that night long ago,--free to sob and weep out her joy,--very sure that her Master had not forgotten to hear even a woman's prayer, and to give her her true work,--very sure,--never to doubt again. There was a dark, st.u.r.dy figure pacing up and down the road, that she did not see. It was there when the night was over, and morning began to dawn. Christmas morning!

he remembered,--it was something to him now! Never again a homeless, solitary man! You would think the man weak, if I were to tell yon how this word "home" had taken possession of him,--how he had planned out work through the long night: success to come, but with his wife nearest his heart, and the homely farm-house, and the old school-master in the centre of the picture. Such an humble castle in the air! Christmas morning was surely something to him. Yet, as the night pa.s.sed, he went back to the years that had been wasted, with an unavailing bitterness.

He would not turn from the truth, that, with his strength of body and brain to command happiness and growth, his life had been a failure. I think it was first on that night that the story of the despised Nazarene came to him with a new meaning,--One who came to gather up these broken fragments of lives and save them with His own. But vaguely, though: Christmas-day as yet was to him the day when love came into the world. He knew the meaning of that. So he watched with an eagerness new to him the day-breaking. He could see Margret's window, and a dim light in it: she would be awake, praying for him, no doubt.

He pondered on that. Would you think Holmes weak, if he forsook the faith of Fichte, sometime, led by a woman's hand? Think of the apostle of the positive philosophers, and say no more. He could see a flickering light at dawn crossing the hall: he remembered the old school-master's habit well,--calling "Happy Christmas" at every door: he meant to go down there for breakfast, as he used to do, imagining how the old man would wring his hands, with a "Holloa! you're welcome home, Stephen, boy!" and Mrs. Howth would bring out the jars of pine-apple preserve which her sister sent her every year from the West Indies. And then---- Never mind what then. Stephen Holmes was very much in love, and this Christmas-day had much to bring him. Yet it was with a solemn shadow on his face that he watched the dawn, showing that he grasped the awful meaning of this day that "brought love into the world." Through the clear, frosty night he could hear a low chime of distant bells shiver the air, hurrying faint and far to tell the glad tidings. He fancied that the dawn flushed warm to hear the story,--that the very earth should rejoice in its frozen depths, if it were true. If it were true!--if this pa.s.sion in his heart were but a part of an all-embracing power, in whose clear depths the world struggled vainly!--if it were true that this Christ did come to make that love clear to us! There would be some meaning then in the old school-master's joy, in the bells wakening the city yonder, in even poor Lois's thorough content in this day,--for it would be, he knew, a thrice happy day to her. A strange story that of the Child coming into the world,--simple! He thought of it, watching, through his cold, gray eyes, how all the fresh morning told it,--it was in the very air; thinking how its echo stole through the whole world,--how innumerable children's voices told it in eager laughter,--how even the lowest slave half-smiled, on waking, to think it was Christmas-day, the day that Christ was born. He could hear from the church on the hill that they were singing again the old song of the angels. Did this matter to him?

Did not he care, with the new throb in his heart, who was born this day? There is no smile on his face as he listens to the words, "Glory to G.o.d in the highest, and on earth peace, good-will toward men;" it bends lower,--lower only. But in his soul-lit eyes there are warm tears, and on his worn face a sad and solemn joy.

CHAPTER XI.

I am going to end my story now. There are phases more vivid in the commonplace lives of these men and women, I do not doubt: love, as poignant as pain in its joy; crime, weak and foul and foolish, like all crime; silent self-sacrifices: but I leave them for you to paint; you will find colours enough in your own house and heart.

As for Christmas-day, neither you nor I need try to do justice to that theme: how the old school-master went about, bustling, his thin face quite hot with enthusiasm, and muttering, "G.o.d bless my soul!"--hardly recovered from the sudden delight of finding his old pupil waiting for him when he went down in the morning; how he insisted on being led by him, and n.o.body else, all day, and before half an hour had confided, under solemn pledges of secrecy, the great project of the book about Bertrand de Born; how even easy Mrs. Howth found her hospitable Virginian blood in a glow at the unexpected breakfast-guest,--settling into more confident pleasure as dinner came on, for which success was surer; how cold it was, outside; how Joel piled on great fires, and went off on some mysterious errand, having "other ch.o.r.es to do than idling and duddering;" how the day rose into a climax of perfection at dinner-time, to Mrs. Howth's mind,--the turkey being done to a delicious brown, the plum-pudding quivering like luscious jelly (a Christian dinner to-day, if we starve the rest of the year!). Even Dr.

Knowles, who brought a great bouquet out for the school-master, was in an unwonted good-humour; and Mr. Holmes, of whom she stood a little in dread, enjoyed it all with such zest, and was so attentive to them all, but Margret. They hardly spoke to each other all day; it quite fretted the old lady; indeed, she gave the girl a good scolding about it out in the pantry, until she was ready to cry. She had looked that way all day, however.

Knowles was hurt deep enough when he saw Holmes, and suspected the worst, under all his good-humour. It was a bitter disappointment to give up the girl; for, beside the great work, he loved her in an uncouth fashion, and hated Holmes. He met her alone in the morning; but when he saw how pale she grew, expecting his outbreak, and how she glanced timidly in at the room where Stephen was, he relented.

Something in the wet brown eye perhaps recalled a forgotten dream of his boyhood; for he sighed sharply, and did not swear as he meant to.

All he said was, that "women will be women, and that she had a worse job on her hands than the House of Refuge,"--which she put down to the account of his ill-temper, and only laughed, and made him shake hands.

Lois and her father came out in the old cart in high state across the bleak, snowy hills, quite aglow with all they had seen at the farm-houses on the road. Margret had arranged a settle for the sick girl by the kitchen-fire, but they all came out to speak to her.

As for the dinner, it was the essence of all Christmas dinners: d.i.c.kens himself, the priest of the genial day, would have been contented. The old school-master and his wife had hearts big and warm enough to do the perpetual honours of a baronial castle; so you may know how the little room and the faces about the homely table glowed and brightened. Even Knowles began to think that Holmes might not be so bad, after all, recalling the chicken in the mill, and,--"Well, it was better to think well of all men, poor devils!"

I am sorry to say there was a short thunderstorm in the very midst of the dinner. Knowles and Mr. Howth, in their anxiety to keep off from ancient subjects of dispute, came, for a wonder, on modern politics, and of course there was a terrible collision, which made Mrs. Howth quite breathless: it was over in a minute, however, and it was hard to tell which was the most repentant. Knowles, as you know, was a disciple of Garrison, and the old school-master was a States'-rights man, as you might suppose from his antecedents,--suspected, indeed, of being a contributor to "DeBow's Review." I may as well come out with the whole truth, and acknowledge that at the present writing the old gentleman is the very hottest Secessionist I know. If it hurts the type, write it down a vice of blood, O printers of New England!

The dinner, perhaps, was fresher and heartier after that. Then Knowles went back to town; and in the middle of the afternoon, as it grew dusk, Lois started, knowing how many would come into her little shanty in the evening to wish her Happy Christmas, although it was over. They piled up comforts and blankets in the cart, and she lay on them quite snugly, her scarred child's-face looking out from a great woollen hood Mrs.

Howth gave her. Old Yare held Barney, with his hat in his hand, looking as if he deserved hanging, but very proud of the kindness they all showed his girl. Holmes gave him some money for a Christmas gift, and he took it, eagerly enough. For some unexpressed reason, they stood a long time in the snow bidding Lois good-bye; and for the same reason, it may be, she was loath to go, looking at each one earnestly as she laughed and grew red and pale answering them, kissing Mrs.

Howth's hand when she gave it to her. When the cart did drive away, she watched them standing there until she was out of sight, and waved her sc.r.a.p of a handkerchief; and when the road turned down the hill, lay down and softly cried to herself.