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CHAPTER
XVII
WHEN
Livingstone walked into Mrs. Wright’s drawing-room that evening he had never
had such a greeting, and he had never been in such spirits. His own Christmas
dinner had been the success of his life. He could still see those happy faces
about his board, and hear those joyous voices echoing through his house.
The day
seemed to have been one long dream of delight. From the moment when he had
turned to go after the little child to ask her to show him the way to help
others, he had walked in a new land; lived in a new world; breathed a new air;
been warmed by a new sun!
Wright
himself met him with a cordiality so new to Livingstone and yet so natural and
unforced that Livingstone wondered whether he could have been living in a dream
all these years or whether he was in a dream to-night.
Among the
guests he suddenly came on one who made him think to-night must be the dream.
Mrs.
Wright, with glowing eyes, presented him to a lady dressed in black, as “an old
friend, she believed:” a fair, sweet-looking woman with soft eyes and a calm
mouth.
The name
Mrs. Wright mentioned was “Mrs. Shepherd,” but as Livingstone looked the face
was that of Catherine Trelane.
The
evening was a fitting ending to a happy day — the first Livingstone had had in
many a year. Even Mrs. Shepherd’s failure to give him the opportunity he sought
to talk with her could not wholly mar it.
Later,
Livingstone heard Mrs. Wright begin to tell some one of his act of the night
before, in buying up a toy-shop for the children at the hospital.
“I always
believed in him,” she asserted warmly.
Livingstone
caught his name and, turning to Mrs. Wright, with some embarrassment and much
warmth, declared that she was mistaken, that he had not done it.
Mrs.
Wright laughed incredulously.
“I
suspected it this morning when I first heard of it; but now I have the
indisputable proof.”
She held
up a note.
“I’ll
think I’ve heard of you before,” she laughed, with a capital imitation of Mr.
Brown’s manner.
“I still
deny it,” insisted Livingstone, blushing, and as Mrs. Wright still affirmed her
belief, he told her the story of Santa Claus’s partner.
Insensibly,
as he told it, the other voices hushed down.
He told
it well; for his heart was full of the little girl who had led him from the
frozen land back to the land of light.
As he
ended, from another room somewhere up-stairs, came a child’s clear voice singing,
God west
you, mer-wy gentle-men,
Let
nossing you dismay;
For Jesus
Chruist our Sa-rviour
Was born
this ve-ruy day.
Livingstone
looked at Mrs. Shepherd.
She was
standing under the long evergreen festoons just where they met and formed a
sort of verdant archway. Two of the children of the house, attracted by
Livingstone’s story, had come and pressed against her as they listened with
interested faces, and she had put her arms about them and drawn their curly
heads close to her side. A spray of holly with scarlet berries was at her
throat and one of the children had mischievously stuck a sprig of mistletoe in
her hair. Her face was turned aside, her eyes were downcast, the long, dark
lashes drooping against her cheek, and on her face rested a divine compassion;
and as Livingstone gazed on her he saw the same gracious figure and fine
profile that he had seen the night before outlined against the light in the
archway of the gate of the Children’s Hospital. It was the reflective face of
one who has felt; but when she raised her eyes they were the eyes of Catherine
Trelane. And suddenly, as Livingstone looked into them, they had softened, and
she seemed to be standing, as she had stood so long ago, in the Christmas
evening light in a long avenue under swaying boughs, in the heart of the land
of his youth.
While
still, somewhere above, the child’s voice carolled,
— Let
nossing you dismay;
For Jesus
Chruist our Sa-rviour
Was born
this ve-ruy day.
STANDING, IN THE CHRISTMAS EVENING LIGHT, IN A LONG AVENUE UNDER SWAYING BOUGHS.
FINIS