[Frontispiece: "MILK, AN' SUGAR IF YOU HAVE IT"]
CECILIA
OF THE PINK ROSES
BY
KATHARINE HAVILAND TAYLOR
ILLUSTRATED BY
MAY WILSON PRESTON
NEW YORK
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS
COPYRIGHT, 1917,
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
TO
MY DEAR MOTHER
SOURCE OF MY INNER PINK ROSES
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I Where Is Gawd?
II The Vision of a Promised Land
III The First Step into Canaan
IV Learning
V Disgrace
VI A Hint of Pink
VII Santa Claus
VIII A Little Touch of the Man with the Hour Glass
IX Home
X My Best Friend
XI Acceptance
XII Pain
XIII A Request
XIV Pink
XV Firelight
XVI The Mystery
XVII A Relapse
XVIII Forgiveness
XIX Spring
XX Pulling Off the Thorns
XXI Pink Roses
CECILIA OF THE
PINK ROSES
CHAPTER I
WHERE IS GAWD?
The Madden flat was hot and the smell of frying potatoes filled it.
Two or three flies buzzed tirelessly here and there, now and again
landing with sticky clingingness on a small boy of four who screamed
with their advent. When this happened a girl of seven stepped from
the stove and shooed them away, saying: "Aw now, Johnny!" and Johnny
would quiet.
The perspiration stood out on her upper lip and there were shadows,
deeper than even Irish ones should be, beneath her eyes. The sun
beat in cruelly at one window which was minus a shade. At another
the shade was torn and run up crookedly.
In the hall there was the sound of a scuffle, then a smart slap, and
a child's whimpering wail.
"What's--that?" came in a feeble voice from the bedroom off the
kitchen.
"It's the new gent in the flat across whackin' his kid," answered the
small girl.
"Oh," was the weak answer, and again there was quiet, broken by the
sizzle of hot fat, the tireless buzz of the flies, and now and then
the little boy's cry.
"Here, Johnny," commanded the small maiden, "come have your face
washed off." Johnny objected. She picked him up with decision, and
set him on the table with resounding emphasis, where he screamed
loudly during the rite.
The door opened. A man in overalls came in. "Hello, Paw," said
Cecilia Evangeline Agnes Madden. He answered her with a grunt and
kicked off his heavy shoes.
"Gawd, it's hot!" he said with his first contribution to the
conversation. "Two Dagos got sunstruck. One of 'em he just went
like a goldfish outa water, keeled over, then flop,--flop. The Boss
he up an'--"
"Supper, Paw," said Cecilia. She pushed a chair up to the
oil-clothed table, and the man settled, beginning to eat loudly. He
stopped and pointed with his knife to the bedroom door. "How's she?"
he asked in a grating whisper.
"She ain't so good," answered the small girl. Her eyes filled with
tears and she turned away her face.
"Maw--Maw--Maw!" cried Johnny.
"Aw now!" said his sister while she picked up his hot little person
to comfort him.
"Maw--Maw!" he echoed.
Cecilia looked up. Her eyes were like those of a small dog that has
been whipped. "I ain't the same," she said across his brick-dust
curls. "He wants _her_, I ain't the same. I do my best, but I ain't
her."
The man laid aside his knife. He set his teeth on his lower lip, and
then he asked a question as if afraid to.
"Has the doctor been here?"
"Yes," answered Cecilia.
"Whatud he say?"
"He sez she wasn't so good. He sez she wouldn't be no better 'til
the weather was cooler an'--"
"Celie!" came in the voice from the bedroom. Cecilia put down Johnny.
"Yes, Maw," she answered gently.
"Celie!" came again in almost a scream. Celie vanished. She
reappeared in a few moments. She was whiter than before.
"She throwed up fierce," she said to her father; "something fierce,
an' all black. Don't you want no coffee?" The man shook his head.
He reached for his shoes.
"Where yuh goin'?" asked Cecilia.
"Doctor's," she was answered. He went into the bedroom. "Well, old
woman," he said loudly, "how yuh feelin', better?" The thin creature
on the bed nodded, and tried to smile. The smile was rather
dreadful, for it pulled long lines instead of bringing dimples. Her
blue lips stretched and the lower cracked. A drop of blood stood out
on it.
"Gawd, it was hot to-day," said the man. He settled by her bed in a
broken-backed chair. She stretched out a thin hand toward him.
"Mary--!" he said, then choked.
"Aw, Jerry!" said the woman. In her voice was little Cecilia's tone
of patience, with the lilt removed by a too hard life.
"Do yuh feel _some_ better?" he entreated.
"Sure--I do. Gimme that glass of water--" She drank a mouthful and
again vomited rackingly.
"Oh, Gawd!" said Jeremiah Madden. He laid a rough hand on her
forehead and she pulled it down against her cheek.
"Jerry," she said between long gasps, "I been happy. I want you
should always remember that I been happy. Awful happy, Jerry."
"Oh, Gawd, Mary!" said the man. "If I'd a knew how hard you'd a had
to work, I wouldn't have brung yuh!"
"Don't!" she begged. "Don't say that!" She looked at him, time
faded, and with it a hot and smelling flat. She stood on a
wind-swept moor. Jerry, only eighteen, stood by her. His arm was
around her with that reverent touch that comes in Irish love. "I'll
send fer yuh," he'd said, "after I make me fortune in America."
She had cried and clung to him. With her touch, reason and a rolling
moor had faded for him. "I can't leave you," he had said, "I can't!
Mary, you come with me." And Mary had come. Those days had been
beautiful.... But fortunes in America did not come as advertised.
Sometimes Mary thought of green turf, and the gentle drip-drip of
fog, like rain. That rain that came so often.... Now she thought of
it more than ever. She hoped that the Virgin would allow her a
little corner of Heaven that would look like an Irish moor.... The
gold the priest talked of was "grand," but heresy or not, she wanted
a bit of green, with the gentle drip of rain on it.
Jeremiah bent and kissed her. Then he rubbed the spot of blood of
her lip from his. "It wasn't no mistake," he said. Her eyes grew
moist.
"Jerry," she said, "Celie is a good kid. She kin do fer yuh. Ain't
she, right along? She won't give yuh no trouble neither. But the
kid--he ain't so easy. It's the kids growin' up in America better'n
their folks, that go to the devil. Watch him, Jerry, watch him good.
Won't yuh now?" The man nodded; she closed her eyes. After a few
moments that throbbed with the heat of the flat, she spoke again.
"Jerry," she said.
"Darlin'?"
"It's this way, Jerry. I always wanted to be a lady--"
"Yuh are!" he interrupted hotly.
[Illustration: "NOW LAUGH! PAW'S COMING HOME AND HE NEEDS ALL OUR
LAUGHS"]
"No," she stated quietly, "I ain't, an' I always thought I could be.
The Irish learns fast. It's this way, Jerry; if ever the time comes
when you get money, you send Celie to one of them schools that learns
'em French and drawin' and such, Jerry, will yuh?"
"Before Gawd, I will, Mary. If I ever kin."
She closed her eyes and slept quietly, clinging to his hand.
The next day was Sunday so Jeremiah went to Mass and heard it with
especial intention. If his thoughts were more on the gentle Saint
slowly dying in a hot flat than on the Gentle Mother, who can blame
him.
Jeremiah went from the baroqued church vastly comforted, and
painfully aware of his Sunday collar, which had rough edges. Cecilia
had rubbed soap on it, but it still scratched. Outside Jeremiah
went, not in the direction of his home, but in the other. He passed
a beggar's entreating wail, and then retraced his steps to bestow a
penny,--and even pennies were not easily spared. Jerry was still a
little child at heart. He was courting divine favour. He needed God
and all the Saints on his side.
After a brisk walk of many blocks he turned into a house with a
doctor's sign on it. The office was crowded; he sat, outwardly
submissive, to wait his turn. "Blessed Mother," he prayed, "make him
mak'er well. Mother of the Saviour--" his thoughts were a chaos. "A
gold heart!" he promised rashly, even while he remembered the unpaid
grocer's bill. A woman with a pallid skin and hacking cough crept
from the office. Across from him a boy exhibited a burn to an
interested neighbour. "Blessed Mother,--" entreated Jeremiah, even
while his eyes saw the burn and he wondered how it had happened.
A crisp young person in white, who gave an impression of great
coolness, said, "Your turn next." Jerry jumped and got up. Two
little girls, at the Sheraton period in legs, giggled loudly at his
jump, but Jerry didn't notice. He stopped on the threshold of the
inner office. He twirled his hat in his hands. "Mister," he said,
"it's my wife I come about." The doctor had been up all night.
Added to his fact was the fact that he was fitted, emotionally, to
run a morgue.
"Name?" growled the doctor. Jeremiah Madden sank to a chair and told
his name, of his wife, and how sick she was. He also interspersed a
few facts about Irish moors, love and business in America. And he
ended with: "An my doc he sez' no one can save her but Doctor Van
Dorn. He's the cancer man of New York. The only one who can
possibly save her! He sez that," repeated Jeremiah. "Oh fer Gawd's
sake, Doc! I can't pay yuh now but--"
The doctor swung about in his swivel chair. "My time is entirely
mortgaged," he stated curtly. "I can't keep up to my work. Your
wife will probably die anyway; accept the inevitable. You couldn't
pay me, and I haven't the time. All New York bothers me. Good
morning."
He turned back to his desk. Jeremiah went toward the door. His step
was a blind shuffle. Hand on the knob, he paused. "Doc," he said,
"I love her so, an' the little kids, they need her. I feel like
she'd live if you'd help her. I promise I'd pay. All my life I'd
pay an' thank Gawd I could--" he stopped. The doctor moved his
shoulders impatiently.
"The Virgin will reward yuh--" said Jeremiah. "Oh, Doc! Fer Gawd's
sake!"
"Good morning," answered the doctor with another impatient move of
his shoulders. Jeremiah left. A young person in crisp white said,
"Your turn next, Madam." Madam went in. "Oh, Doctor, my heart--"
she began. The doctor got up to move her chair so that the light
would not trouble her.
Jeremiah spent the morning in going from office to office. First he
told the unfavourable report of his doctor. He met sympathy in some
quarters, curt refusals in others, and worst of all he sometimes met:
"Cancer of the stomach? Not much chance--"
At half after one, sick from the sunlight of the cruelly hot streets,
he turned into an office for his last try. He felt numb.... His
tongue was thick. He looked with resentment on a well-dressed woman
who waited opposite him. "Flowers on her bunnit," he thought, "while
my Mary--" He thought of his hard labour and, with bitterness, of
the "Boss." He had never felt this way before. If he'd had money,
he reflected, how quickly that first doctor would have helped him....
The other refusals had come from truer reasons. His own doctor's
report, although Jeremiah didn't realise this, had stopped all
efforts. If the doctor had said no one but Van Dorn could help her,
Lord, what chance had they? This was their line of reason.
Jeremiah sat in the outer waiting room. At last his turn came. The
doctor looked tired; he was gruff in his questions. "I'll come with
you and look at her," he said at last. Jeremiah felt a sob rise in
his throat. The doctor rang a bell.
"Tell Miss Evelyn," he said to the maid who answered him, "that we'll
have to give up our drive this afternoon. She's my little girl," he
explained to Jeremiah. "Her mother's dead,--I don't see as much of
her as I should. A doctor has no business with a family. I'm ready.
Come on."
They went out by a back door, leaving an office full of patients.
The sun was hot. Jeremiah prayed fervently even while he answered
the doctor's questions and responded to his pleasantries. At last
they came to the building which held Jeremiah's home. They mounted
the long stairs. Two or three children, playing on them, stopped
their squabbling and looked after the doctor with awe.
"He's got a baby in that case," said one, a fat little girl with
aggressive pig-tails.
"There is too many now," said a boy. "They don't all get fed, and
they're all beat up fierce. Our teacher in that there corner mission
sez as how Gawd is love. Why don't he come down here an' love?"
There was an awed silence after this. Outright heresy as it was, the
immediate descent of a thunderbolt was expected.
Upstairs Jeremiah opened the door of the flat. The kitchen was full
of women. Several of them sobbed loudly.... Johnny Madden sat on
the table, eating a piece of bread thickly spread with molasses. On
seeing Jeremiah the women were suddenly silent. Jeremiah swayed and
leaned against the door.
The small Cecilia heard him and came from the bedroom.
"Paw," she said, "I'll do all I kin fer yuh. I always will.... She
was happy. She sez as how she seen green fields an' rain." Jeremiah
took her in his arms. He hid his face against her thin little
shoulder. His shook. Cecilia was very quiet. She had not cried.
She looked over her father's head at the roomful of gaping women.
Something flashed across her face. Her teeth set.
"She always wanted a bunnit with pink roses on it," said Cecilia. "I
don't see why Gawd didn't give her jest _one_."
The man sobbed convulsively and Cecilia remembered him. "She was
happy," Cecilia said in a less assured tone. "She sez as how she
seen green fields with rain on 'em like Ireland."