"'Nothing counts that we do for ourselves,'" Celeste repeated, as she
was ascending the stairs to her daughter's room. At the door she paused
and listened for a moment, then, softly turning the bolt, she entered
the room. The blinds were down to exclude the sunlight which was growing
warm. On the great white bed Ruth lay asleep. One plump bare arm,
shapely wrist, and hand lay against the mass of golden hair. Celeste
stood at the foot of the bed, and with a mother's parched thirst drank
from the picture before her eyes. How beautiful the child was! How
exquisite the patrician brow, the neck, the contour of nose, mouth, and
chin! How temperamentally sensitive, imaginative, and high-strung! How
proud of her father, of his social and financial standing and his old
name of Puritan respectability! How affectionate she was with her
mother, how adored by the servants and by her absent uncle!
"She is all I have now!" thought Celeste, as she choked down a sob, "Can
I do it--am I able to do it?"
She sat in a rocking-chair near the bed, her gaze still on the child's
face. A sudden breeze fanned the shades of the windows inward. She
locked her hands in her lap, her thin, blue-veined, irresolute hands in
a lap of stone. "'Nothing counts that we do for ourselves,'" she quoted,
uncompromisingly. "If I refuse I'll not be acting for myself, but for
her--my baby--my darling baby! Charlie loved her enough to undertake her
rescue, and I must help him carry it through. Yes, I can do that
conscientiously. It would kill her to learn that her father was a
convict. She couldn't grow up under it. It would blight her whole
existence. At school she would hear it. In society it would be whispered
behind her back and thrown in her face. Oh, it can't be! God would not
allow it to be. He would not allow the sins of a father to fall on
shoulders so frail and helpless. Some coarse children would think
nothing of it; it would kill my baby. She would brood over it--oh, I
know my child! She would hold it in her mind night and day. From what
she now is she would become an embittered cynic, soured against life and
her Creator. She would never marry. She would not want to bring children
into a world so full of pain. And yet, and yet--" Celeste rose and went
to a window and stood looking out, peering through the small panes as a
hopeless prisoner might.
"And yet--justice must be done." Her white lips framed the words which
shrank from utterance. "Charlie has _his_ rights, and so has the girl he
loves. He undertook our rescue without knowing the cost. He was full of
repentance at the time over his trivial mistakes, but now he must see it
differently. Shall we drive him to roving again? Would God give my child
a happy life at such a cost? Would He blight the lives of two of His
children for one--and those two wholly innocent? No, justice must be
done. It must! It must! It must! But I can't be her executioner. Why,
I'm her mother! She is all I have in the world!"
Celeste crept back to the bed and bent over the sleeping child. Her hand
went out as if to caress the white brow, but her fingers lifted only a
fragrant lock of hair, and this she bent and kissed as soundlessly as
the sunlight's vibration on the rug-strewn floor.
The next day was Sunday. Leaving her husband and his uncle smoking over
their papers in the dining-room, her child in the care of a maid,
Celeste slipped away unnoticed. She did not often attend church, but she
was going to-day. Why, she could not have explained. It was as if a
building with a spire and chimes, altar and surpliced clergyman,
white-robed choristers and bowed suppliants, would help her make the
decision that a long, sleepless night had withheld. She felt faint as
she entered the family pew and bowed her head, for she had taken little
nourishment since her travail began. Somehow her own death seemed a near
thing, but she did not care. There were other things so much worse than
mere death.
She failed to comprehend any part of the sermon which the gray-haired
minister was delivering in that far-off, detached tone. She noticed some
rings on his stout fingers and wondered how such mere trinkets could be
worn by an ordained helper of the despairing and the God-forsaken. As
soon as the service was over she hastened homeward. She told herself
that she would act at once and face her husband with a demand that
either he or she should perform the bounden duty. But as she entered the
door and heard the voices of the two men in the dining-room, and smelled
the smoke of their cigars, her courage oozed from her. She could not
tell them both. Her talk must be for William alone; it would be for him
to inform his uncle, and he would do it. William, once shown the right
road, would take it. She knew him well enough for that. His wavering for
the past year had been like hers, but when he knew all and was faced
with the call of justice, as she was facing it, he would obey.
At the foot of the stairs in the hall she paused. Should she go back to
the two men, or--It was the rippling laugh of her child up-stairs, who
was being amused by a maid, the joyous clapping of a small pair of
hands, that drew Celeste up the carpeted steps and into the child's
presence.
"Oh, mother, see what she has put on me!" Ruth cried, gleefully, as she
sprang into the middle of the room robed in a filmy pink gown which had
been made for her use in a class in interpretative dancing, and held out
the skirt, forming wings like those of a fairy floating over beds of
roses. A circle of artificial flowers rested on the golden tresses.
Ruth's eyes were sparkling with delight as she bowed low in one of the
postures she had been taught, and then glided gracefully into her
mother's arms.
"Oh, we've had so much fun! Haven't we, Annette?"
"Madame will pardon me," the French maid said. "I know it is Sunday, but
she was so full of joy when she waked that--"
"It doesn't matter," Celeste said. "You may go. I'll dress her for
dinner myself."
And as she did it, that morning of all mornings to be remembered,
Celeste was the most pitiable of all pitiable creatures. Her coming
sacrifice was not like that of Abraham in his offering of Isaac to his
God, for, while he was a child of God, Abraham was not a mother.
"Justice must be done!" she kept saying. "The happiness of two against
the misery of one--two against _two_, in reality; but I don't count, I
mustn't count. Charlie said to Michael that nothing counts that we do
for ourselves, and this protesting ache within me is self, for my baby
is myself. Sweet, sweet little daughter! Mother has the blade ready and
must thrust it deep into your joyous heart. Oh, if my cup would only
pass, and my will might be done instead of God's!" She held her child on
her knees as she took off the pink symbol of dawn and robed her anew.
She was laying her child on an altar before God and no sacrificial ram
was in sight.