THE WEAVING
Cis stayed on, living on the surface of her little native city. Miss
Braithwaite was still in California; she wrote that she could not tell
how long she might be detained; it seemed probable that it would be for
all of the winter, or its greater part. Her friend was dying slowly in
the lingering agonies of the most agonizing of all diseases; she clung
to Miss Braithwaite, praying her not to leave her, and Miss Braithwaite
had promised to stay to help her to die. Cis suspected it was also to
teach her how to die; that she was less versed than Miss Braithwaite in
the science of the saints.
With Miss Braithwaite gone, Cis had no desire to return to Beaconhite;
it was not the place, it was that home and its mistress for which Cis
longed, for the lack of which she felt lost.
Mr. Singer had found out that Cicely Adair had returned, and he hunted
her up, imploring her to take up his work with his telephone girls,
help to organize the measures which he was trying to put on foot
for their welfare. Cis agreed to undertake this work, but only with
the understanding that she was free to lay it down at any time. Her
experience under Miss Braithwaite, in Father Morley’s Girls’ Club,
in the many good works which occupied her Beaconhite friends, stood
Cis in good stead now; she did well with Mr. Singer’s girls, and was
interested in them. It was strange and amusing to have gone away,
dismissed by the Telephone Company for a breach of law, and return to
be placed over their employees’ pretty rooms for recreation and rest,
installed as the hostess, friend and guide of these girls.
Cis visited Jeanette Lucas often; the two girls were strongly drawn to
each other; their friendship deepened and grew. Jeanette had come out
of her trial with a darkened outlook upon life. Cis had come out of
her struggle and loss undismayed, strengthened, in a sense refreshed,
reaping the reward of her choice. Although there were moments when
a simple tune whistled by a boy in the street, a phrase, a half
resemblance stabbed her with pain, yet Cis was able truthfully to tell
Nan that she was happy. By temperament and will she was framed to look
forward, not back. Her optimistic courage was inspiring to Jeanette;
she grew fond of Cis and turned to her as to a tonic, a summons to do
her best also.
Nan was submerged in her house, in its master and little Matt. She paid
Cis her old loving worship, raised to an incalculable degree by her
reverence for Cis as for one who had given her proofs, but there was
no time in any day to spare for anyone but Joe and Matt. Nan and Cis
met in the baby more intimately, more frequently than in each other,
outside this powerful little downy link.
To her amazement, Cis discovered herself a baby worshiper; she had
not known that she was a member of that order, in one of its highest
degrees.
Her godson was to her hardly less adorable than to his mother. She hung
over him, absorbing his violet-scented, milky sweetness as the odor
of a flower; brooding over the miracle of his tiny features, their
curious twistings, the crooked smile of his sucked-in lips; the funny
thrusts of his absurdities of hands, doubled into fists and taking her
in the eye, or letting her mumble them with kisses that inclosed the
wrinkles of his wrists, the blue-blue veins traced below the whiteness
of the backs of those belligerent little hands. When he looked into her
eyes and laughed aloud, clutching her wealth of hair, Cis was elated,
humbled, flattered. In baby Matt she found a new joy that revealed her
to herself; she knew now what she had renounced when she had gone out
of that pretty apartment, leaving Rodney there amid the ruins of his
hopes and hers. Not for an instant did she regret, turn back in thought
upon her right course, but she understood the void which ached in her,
and often the baby’s fine white tiny yoke was damp when his godmother
raised her face from it, while he was gurgling with laughter because
she had burrowed into his neck, tickling him.
Cis boarded with Nan. “Of course you couldn’t so much as think of
living anywhere else, as long as I have room for you and want you so
dreadfully! Besides, there’s baby!” Nan had said, and there was nothing
to bring against her brief, convincing arguments.
“It isn’t as though I were going to be here permanently,” Cis said. “I
think no one ought permanently to live with a married friend, but just
till I go back to Beaconhite--or whatever I do next--I suppose it won’t
be too hard on you, Mrs. Nan!”
Tom Dowling was a model of fraternal devotion after Cis was installed
under Nan’s roof; he made opportunities to visit his sister to an
incredible degree.
“Good old Tommy is a dear boy, but I wonder if he really thinks I don’t
see through him!” Nan cried.
“Paraffine paper is thick beside his transparency; you’d be more than
blind to miss seeing through him,” Joe answered.
Tom brought extraordinary things to the baby, toys which would require
two more years of life for him to handle--a whipping top is not adapted
to a boy two months old, nor is a tin locomotive run by sand that flows
upon its wheels from a revolving sieve, hidden in its smokestack.
“Oh, Tommy, why, _why_!” Nan sighed one day when Tom produced a large
cow, with a realistic moo when its head was moved, from a large package
beneath his arm.
“He’ll grow to it; something to cut his ambition on, same’s you give
him that bone thing to chew on for his teeth,” explained Tom, unabashed.
“Tom’s really a dear, Cis,” Nan said that night after Tom had gone
home. “Mother is perfectly delighted that he has stuck to you so; she
used to hope he’d see Louise Müller, a neighbor’s daughter, but he
never did. Now mother is worrying for fear you won’t care about him. Do
you think that you ever could, Cis darling? Of course all these cows,
and tops and engines are not for baby; they’re for you, same as the
candy is.”
“I don’t seem to enjoy the cow any more than Matt does; must I play
with it, Nan? Tom didn’t offer it to me,” Cis sighed.
“Not directly. I mean they’re all intended to make you notice him. I’d
almost die of joy, Cis, if you were my sister!” cried Nan.
“Adopt me, Nannie. We can make it as effectual, and I’m afraid it’s
the only way,” Cis suggested. “Don’t look cast-down; Tom will be all
right, and it’s better to have him imagine he cares about me than to be
growing up without an object. He’ll find the right girl later, and in
the mean time it keeps him safe for her.”
“Growing up! He’s as old as you are, or so nearly it comes to the
same thing!” cried Nan. “You don’t take Tom seriously, but he takes
himself--and you--seriously enough.”
“Boys do,” said Cis. “Don’t fuss, little grandmother; it’s enough to be
a mother and bring up Matt. He’s learning to love me, too, by the way!”
As the days passed, however, Cis began to take Tom more seriously; he
began to be a burden on her mind. He dogged her footsteps; wherever she
went Tom turned up. He watched for chances to do her small services,
carried out her least suggestions, modelled himself upon the advice
which she had given him when she had first come back, before she
realized that she must not let him conform himself to her ideas, before
she began to look upon him as anything more than Tommy Dowling, Nan’s
honest and likable boy-brother.
“If only Miss Braithwaite would come back!” thought Cis. “I’d go away
and he’d do something sensible with himself! All I can do now is to
hold him down, and hold him off, but I’m really beginning to be afraid
it’s bad for him.”
One bright, frosty afternoon, when the earth was white and the sky
brilliantly blue, Cis went off alone to walk in the park. A homesick
spell was upon her; she was homesick for Miss Braithwaite, for the
shadowy library and its glowing hearth; for Mr. Lucas’ office and
its interests, the clever, keen men who came there talking of great
matters; her sense of being part of a world moved by levers hidden
in that office. And she wondered why it was that for some time she
had heard no word of Anselm Lancaster. He had written her several
pleasant letters, had sent her a book at Christmas that was a delight
to brain and eye. He had wished her a Happy New Year with a graceful
note and a lovely little Florentine print in colors, framed in dull,
dark, carved wood; a Botticelli Madonna surrounded by square-chinned,
deep-eyed angels in tunics, upon which their square-trimmed locks fell
at shoulder length, while their long fingers clasped tall candles that
revealed to the world a Babe upon His Mother’s knee.
There was growing in Cicely a discontent that she could not down; she
grappled with it, hating it, for no mood had ever mastered her, nor
greatly annoyed her heretofore, and this restlessness was annoying;
it got between her and her daily life; her prayers; between her and
herself, her true self, brave and blithe and courageous. She wanted to
walk briskly in the pretty park and think out what was wrong with her,
take herself to task, and scotch the head of this miserable little asp
gnawing at her. But hardly had she gone half the width of the park, its
longest way, than there was Tom Dowling, coming rapidly toward her, his
face illumined, his right arm saluting her.
“Oh, me!” sighed Cis inwardly. “Who wants a human being omnipresent?
Hello, Tom!” she said aloud. “How do you happen to be here at a time
when all honest folk are at work?”
“Nothing dishonest about me, Cis,” said Tom, joining her and turning to
walk beside her as a matter of course. “Why, I got the afternoon, and I
went to the house. Nan said you’d gone to the park. I went around the
other way; thought you’d take the north gate. Anyhow, I’ve found you!”
The satisfaction in Tom’s voice was complete.
“Yes, Tom, but--” Cis hesitated.
“You’d rather be by yourself?” cried poor Tom. “Oh, Cis, you’ve played
fair with me! You’re nice to me, but you’re nothing more. I won’t be
able to blame you, but if you won’t love me, what under the heavens
shall I do? Say, Cis, love me, can’t you? I’m not such a much, but I
ain’t so bad, honest! I don’t care how far you hunt, you won’t find
anything I’ve done to be ashamed of. I ain’t fit for you lots of ways;
you’ve got kind of fine ladified, though I don’t mean you put on.
You’re it, that’s all! But I’m not a bad chap, that’s straight, and
if I was I’d tell you; I wouldn’t fool you for a kingdom. I’m getting
on; I make thirty now, and two people could live on fifteen hundred,
easy--and the sixty dollars would buy us each some clothes, and theatre
tickets, or something! And I’ll have more soon. My boss makes a point
of boosting married men--oh, gosh! A married man! Married to _you_,
Cis! Say, Cis, don’t you think you could see it, if you looked hard
enough? Love me, I mean?”
“Tom, dear,” said Cis a little wistfully, for the honest boy’s voice
shook, and his eyes were as imploring as a dog’s eyes. “I like you
heaps, better than before I went away. I didn’t know you so well then,
and besides you’ve come out a great deal. But I couldn’t love you,
Tommy; not that way. I’m sorry, dear. You are a fine boy, and the girl
who does marry you will be lucky. It never will be me, and it wouldn’t
be right to let you think it ever might be. Sorry, Tom! I wish you
didn’t think you wanted me. You’d be better off with someone else, and
you’ll find her--”
“Cut it out!” cried Tom hoarsely. “Cut out that line of talk, Cicely
Adair! You’re the greatest girl in the world. There’s no one can hold a
candle to you, so cut it out! If you won’t, you won’t, but cut out all
that talk. I want you, and I’ll keep on wanting you. If you don’t want
me, and don’t want me so much that you know you’ll never want me, that
settles it, but I want you. Oh, Cis, why can’t you want me? What is
wrong with me? How can you be so infernally sure you’ll never think of
it? Am I such a mess? Would you tell me why, Cis?”
Cis looked pityingly at Tom’s flushed, stormy face, listened with
tender, pitying amusement to his incoherent implorations. She tried to
explain.
“It’s not that there’s one thing wrong with you, Tom,” she said. “It’s
I. I’m not thinking of marrying. I’ve grown years older than you are,
Tom, and I’ve grown ever so far off from the old Cis whom you first
knew and liked. I suppose you knew I was going to be married? I’m glad,
thankfully glad that all that is over; I wouldn’t be happy now in the
way I thought I’d be happy then, not with the same people, interests.
But I shall never again feel as I felt then, so glad to see someone
coming, so--I’m afraid it is much the way you feel to me now, Tom
dear! Truly you will get over it. It leaves you changed, older, not so
light-hearted, but it leaves you; it has left me. I shall never so much
as think of marrying you, my nice Nan’s nice brother; yet I am fond of
you, and think you’re fine.”
“I don’t want to get over it,” groaned Tom. “If I can’t marry you I can
keep on loving you and that way you do sort of get a person.”
“I think we ought to try to get over it, Tom, because we’ve got to play
up, not go moping along,” said Cis. “Let’s forget you love me; in that
way, at least, and let’s be glad you love me, or will love me, more as
you do Nan, just as I love you. It makes the world a fine place to
live in when we know splendid people who are fond of us. Beaconhite,
living in Miss Braithwaite’s house, rather spoiled me for other places,
Tom. You’ve no idea what a library that is, and what wonderful things I
heard talked of before the fire!”
“Yes, so I’ve heard you say,” growled Tom. “The old lady herself was a
wonder, but how about that man, that Lancaster who was such a highbrow?”
There was no missing the implication in Tom’s wrathful voice. Cis felt
her blood rush to her hair in a burning blush that rivalled the hair
in brilliance, and which angered her, knowing the conclusion which Tom
would draw from it. Characteristically, she grappled with the situation.
“If you mean to hint, Tom Dowling, that Mr. Lancaster was interested
in me, any more than in a girl living under his old friend’s roof, or
I in him, more than in the most splendid man I ever saw--except Father
Morley, but priests don’t count--you’re ’way, ’way off the mark! I
never once thought of such a thing as his really liking me, and you’ve
got to take my word for it!”
“All right, Cis. I’d take your word for anything, and I’m fearfully
glad to take it on this,” said Tom. “I’ve been jealous of that chap,
but that settles it, and him. If you won’t hold out a chance to me it’s
some comfort not to think someone else has a chance. I guess you’re
right that Beaconhite has ruined you. If only you’d never gone! You ran
into the whole thing there.”
Cis knew that Tom meant that there she had met and loved Rodney, and
there had been separated from her earlier friends by the higher things
to which she had grown up. It came over her with sudden force that in
Beaconhite she had indeed found her fate.
She looked across the park with eyes that saw Beaconhite, the dignified
street on which Miss Braithwaite lived in its most dignified house;
the street where St. Francis Xavier’s church stood; the garden of
its adjoining school; Father Morley’s thin figure with its drooping
shoulders; the altar within the church, its lamp, her soul’s home.
Beaconhite was her true home. Some day, she thought, please God, she
would go back.
And then her eyes became cognizant of her present surroundings. She
saw at a little distance from her, a tawdry, shabby woman sitting upon
a park bench, although it was cold, and her silken clothes were thin.
There was no mistaking her, even afar, for anything but one of those
derelicts which sin, having floated them prosperously for a time,
throws up against the barriers of civilized society to be dashed to
pieces, or caught up by a pitying lifeguard, as the case may be.
As Cicely noted her, bringing her thoughts back to what was before her,
the woman covertly drew something out from the sleeve of her coat, and
picked at it.
A bottle! And she was pulling the cork!
Cis sprang forward and ran, not delaying for a word to Tom, flying
toward the wretched being on the bench. As she reached her the woman,
who had seen her fleeting toward her, raised the bottle to her lips.
Cis sprang; leaped the last lap of her race against suicide; threw
herself, as a ball player throws himself against the base, and struck
the woman’s elbow. The bottle fell in myriad pieces on the walk,
scenting the air with the odor of peach stones. The woman crumbled up
and slid to the ground. For one instant she and her rescuer were beside
each other upon the walk. Then Cis regained her feet and stood looking
down upon the degraded figure before her, horror, loathing, yet divine
pity in her flushed face. This was the tableau which Tom, hastening
after Cis, saw as he came up.
“For heaven’s sake, Cis?” he questioned her without formulating his
question.
“Oh, yes, Tom, for heaven’s sake!” cried Cis. “I just made it. If the
police come up and catch us, she’ll be taken in for attempted suicide.
We must get her somewhere, quick.”
“Well, what if she is taken in?” Tom disgustedly asked, hating to see
Cis in proximity to this woman. “She’ll be looked after by the matron.”
“Oh, no! She must be saved, if she can be. Arrest won’t save her. Can
you hear me? Answer me. Were you a Catholic?” Cis asked, bending over
the collapsed figure.
“Once I was,” the woman muttered.
Cis straightened herself triumphantly. “The Good Shepherd!” she cried.
“Tom, help me to get her up. You poor thing, get up! We are going to
take care of you. Get up.”
Tom reluctantly, yet admiring Cis, lifted the castaway, and,
staggering, she made out to stand.
“Let me alone; I’m sick,” she moaned.
“Yes, we know. Try to come with us. I’m afraid a policeman will come
along,” Cis urged her.
The word acted as a stimulant. “They’d run me in, vagrant, suicide,”
she muttered. “What did you stop me for? I’ll get it yet.”
Slowly, Tom supporting the woman with his hands under her arms, disgust
and anger on his face, while Cis walked behind, occasionally steadying
the wavering figure by a hand upon her spine, they reached the confines
of the small park. Cis hailed a cab; they bundled the woman into it,
and Cis gave the driver his order.
“To the House of the Good Shepherd,” she said.
Then she added herself to the strange party, and the cab started.
“The Sisters won’t thank us, perhaps,” muttered Tom.
“Surely they will! There’s no bound to their charity, and no bound to
hope, except death,” cried Cis. “She is desperately ill.”
“Dissipation, dope, exposure, why wouldn’t she be ill?” growled Tom.
“It’s a great combination for you to hitch up to, Cis.”
“I don’t know. My guardian angel hitches up to me, and there’s more
difference between me and an angel, than between this woman and me. Are
you comfortable? Do you hear me speaking to you?” Cis asked.
“I hear. I heard. I don’t want to go to the Sisters; I want to die,
die, die! I’ve had enough,” the woman aroused herself to say.
“Poor soul, I’m sorry!” Cis’s voice was as sweet as Nan’s when she
comforted her baby. “I think you’ll be glad that we found you. Why,
you’re quite young, and you were pretty!”
“Pretty! Yes, that’s so. I’m twenty-eight or nine; I don’t know--” the
quavering voice trailed into silence.
“Do you remember your name? Will you tell it to me, so I can call you
by it?” said Cis.
“Lots of names, lots of names; plenty names. Here I’m Pearl Molineaux.
Out in ’Frisco I was Carmin Casanova. Giddy Gay--that was somewhere
else; I forget. Home in Chicago I was Myrtle Moore; that’s while I was
married,” the woman said, speaking slowly.
“Chicago!” “Myrtle Moore?” Cicely’s heart gave a great leap, then stood
still. Could it be? She was sure that it was! She was sure that it had
been given her to save from suicide Rodney’s wife.
She bent down over the woman who had sagged low in the seat of the
taxicab.
“You are the wife of George Rodney Moore?” she asked.
“No. Divorced. Rod and I were divorced,” she said.
“Oh, God help me!” Cis murmured, and Tom was frightened by the pallor
of her face.
“Oh, God, I’ll try! Please, help me! Help her; help me to help her!”
The cab stopped at the door of that beneficent house wherein stainless
women welcome within their consecrated walls the outcasts whose stains
of soul their pure hands labor to remove; wherein the virgin servants
of the Good Shepherd carry back to Him His lost black sheep.
Myrtle Moore was reluctant to enter that portal, but her strength was
spent, her will too enfeebled by illness to resist anyone who decided
for her and forcibly executed their decisions.
Tom helped Myrtle up the steps; the Sister Portress responded to their
summons on the bell, and they were shown into a small parlor, from
which Cis was conducted to another reception room, where a tall nun, in
the beautiful white habit of her order, came to hear from her the story
of this latest rescue and petitioner for her charity.
There was no question of Myrtle’s rejection. Another nun came to take
her away to the infirmary, and Cis left the convent with the promise to
come regularly to inquire after Myrtle, whose condition the infirmarian
at once pronounced grave. Tom took Cis’s hand and slipped it into his
arm; she was trembling.
“Great old adventure, splendid Cis?” he said.
“Oh, Tom, don’t talk about it; I can’t!” Cis almost sobbed. “You don’t
know how wonderful it is!”