Marion Ames Taggart

“ I don’t suppose anybody, no matter how young and strong and jolly she may be, can help feeling alone when she is alone! It’s strange that Miss Braithwaite wants me now. I have been growing restless, unsatisfied; I don’t know what is wrong. I don’t enjoy being here. I love the baby and Nan, but—I’m ashamed, but Miss Braithwaite, and Father Morley and you, and even the big things in Mr. Lucas’ office, have all spoiled me for nice, steady, dull little days! I’m not better than Nan in brains; not nearly as good in the other sense, but, I’ve been fed on stronger food. ”

“ Anselm Lancaster and Miss Braithwaite found them her greatest charm.
“How beautiful to have what you want most to do also your duty!” she murmured.
“It always is when she who desires is innocent of wrong-doing, whose heart is God’s first of all,” said Anselm Lancaster, his words barely audible above the softly purring engine. “Don’t you know, Cicely of the red-gold locks, that desire is one of the marks of a vocation? It was the Puritans who put into our heads the notion that it was praiseworthy to hate the thing one chooses. Love Beaconhite and Miss Braithwaite and choose them! ”

“ And I can’t claim my godson unless I do away with you and Joe,” Cis replied. “With Jeanette living in Beaconhite I’ll have one girl friend there. Father Morley will teach me what I ought to know; he’s truly a great man. You know what Miss Braithwaite is; I’ve told you as much as can be told about her. Life in that house is never far off from the greatest, the eternal things, but it is also overflowing with beauty of books, music, art—and Miss Braithwaite does so love to play like a child, but a witty, wonderful child! It’s a beautiful life; I can’t help being glad to live it. ”

“ It was a long time before she could think coherently. The horror of the suicide so nearly accomplished; the almost equal horror of the woman’s degradation; the unmistakable stamp upon her of vice, upon her who was Rodney’s wife, yet who was not in any true sense his wife, nor could be the wife of any honest man, filled Cicely with shuddering confusion. It was as if she had a vision of what it meant when one said: “A lost [347] soul.” Pity for Rodney overwhelmed her, yet, unjustly or justly, Cis felt as though he were stained by the vileness of this bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh. ”

“ Jeanette looked at Cis hard and long, then she leaned over to her and kissed her. “Strange,” she said slowly. “You have come into my life deeply with one stride. No other girl is bound up into my life as you are. As long as I live I shall remember you, the girl who saved me. I shall keep your face, your wonderful red hair, in my mind when I am old and feeble—if I live to be so! It doesn’t seem as though I could go on living, but I know people can’t die because they no longer really live. We are friends, dear, and your sweet, queer dream of me came true.” ”

“ Miss Miriam is sixty-five years old, dear Miss Cis. That isn’t old; we know how unfailing her strength is, her strength of character, of mind, of efficiency, but old age may be seen coming along at sixty-five, much as if she were standing on the corner waiting for a trolley transfer, and the other trolley which she was to take were bounding down its track toward her.”
“I don’t want Miss Braithwaite to be old! I can’t bear to think of it. She’s one of those persons who should never be old; so clever, so brilliant, so highly good!” protested Cis. ”

“ I cannot marry you because you cannot marry me. It cannot be a marriage so I must go away, never come to the dear apartment again. I will not disobey God. If He helps me, I will die first, and, Rod, oh, Rod, this is like dying! You will be angry, and say that I do not love you, but if you try to remember me as I was, you will know that I love you. Perhaps if I loved you less I might not care so much to do right. I am sending you the ring. It was not a holly berry, but the heart’s blood of your Christmas Cis that the ruby meant. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Dear little Nannie! Good little Nan! She is happy, but she deserves to be. I hope she will be, always,” Cis murmured, her face wistful, sad, but a gentle smile in her eyes.
“Well, dear, happiness is a term of comparison, but it usually takes years to teach us this,” said Miss Braithwaite. “If your little bride-friend is good, with the sort of goodness you convey an impression [255] of, she is likely to be happy. Enkindled people rise to rapture, but they sink into wretchedness; it’s safer to shine by refraction than to be enkindled, my dear.” ”

“ There was a small, peaked lame little creature of nine who won and wrung Cis’s heart. She immediately began a glorious warm crimson sweater for him, on which she knit frantically every evening when she was not oversewing tarlatan candy bags with bright worsteds, or assembling and gluing into place the figures for the little, but perfect “Cribs” which each child within Miss Braithwaite’s orbit was to receive to take home at Christmas. She would set up a “Bethlehem” in wretched places, far enough removed in squalor and vicious ignorance from the light of the Star, the chant of the angels. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It might so easily have been a weak girl who did not love Rodney truly, tremendously, as you can, as you do, and so who would have renounced her Faith; sealed Rodney’s doom; gone with him into sin, degradation, the awful hatred of each other which waits upon those who debase love. With a living wife Rodney cannot marry. Cis, dear, you are not really hesitating! You are not going into that horrible abyss. It is only your torn heart crying out, but your will is God’s. Little Cicely, be glad that you can suffer for Our Lord. ”

“ Have you found out that ‘the library’ in many houses has no books in it?” Father Morley smiled at Cis as if he were sharing a pleasant bit of humor with her. “The Braithwaites have been book-lovers for generations. Well, and your hostess?”
“She is wonderful,” cried Cis heartily. “She is the finest lady I ever saw, but she doesn’t bother about it one bit. She makes you feel as though she’d do anything, and not be afraid; she’s daring, as if she was riding a spirited horse, yet she is pious—well, I don’t know exactly how she is pious! ”

“ I’m not! I’m your lover, Cis, and he loves you more than he can tell you. Will you come here, Cis, desire of my heart? Will you help me in the beautiful schemes we’ve discussed? Take my mother’s place, but fill only your own place, my wife’s place, my helpmeet’s place—and more; a thousand times more!”
“You are meant to be a real helpmeet to a fine man.” Cis heard Father Morley’s voice again saying these words to her. He had known when he said it that Anselm meant to ask her to marry him; he wanted her to marry Anselm, though Anselm was a great man, while she was only red-haired Cicely Adair! ”

“ What a girl! Did you remember everything he told you of Mr. Lancaster? Paul says—”
“Hallo! Who says?” cried Cis.
“Yes, that’s my news!” Jeanette triumphed over her. “Paul says, Paul, whom I’m going to marry! Paul Ralph Randolph, the confessor, and almost martyr!”
“Martyr nothing!” Cis relapsed under the shock into her earlier habits of speech.
“He’s no martyr if he marries you, Jeanette Lucas! You’re too lovely to marry any mere man. I always did think you were superfinely fine! But this is great news, my dearest, and nobody is gladder than red-haired Cis!” ”

“ Rodney rebuked Cis at last. “What are you thinking about? We’re getting into Beaconhite, and you’re cheating me!”
“Thinking—thinking—Oh, about something like the suffrage; woman’s influence!” cried Cis arousing, puzzled at first how to answer, then answering with laughter in her eyes, her one dimple playing just beyond the deep, sweet corner of her lips.
“Great trick not to be precisely a pretty girl, yet look so much better than pretty ones, Holly!” cried Rodney involuntarily, remembering Gertrude Davenport and her tiresome perfection of beauty. ”

“ Miss Braithwaite drew a long breath, and turned toward the fire, picking up the tongs to mend it, under the necessity of action; she was considerably disturbed.
“It’s most wearing to have love affairs, even by proxy,” she told herself. “He’s not without attraction, and I can see that he’s remarkably handsome when he has slept, and eaten, and shaved. Dear me, what a singular thing it is that with all the millions [281] of people there are in the world one can become so vitally necessary to another that the loss of him—or her—is cataclysmic in effect! ”

“ I know now that he was false to all things, to me as well as to God! Cicely Adair, you’re a Catholic girl; remember this lesson when you think of marrying. I am grateful to you, but, oh, I loved him, I loved him, and he never lived! I can’t mourn the loss of the man I loved; there was no such man. You can put flowers on a grave. I myself am the only grave I have: I am dead, but the man I loved never lived. Oh, me, oh, me!”
“Dear, dear Miss Lucas! Oh, I’m sorry!” cried Cis, beginning to tremble. ”

“ To go once more amid the familiar surroundings, greet the accustomed faces with a surface smile, seeing with bewildered amazement [258] that the eyes smiling back recognize one for the same person that they have always seen though one feels like a shade walking the earth in the semblance of life, this is to deepen that painful sense of remoteness from common experience, which is the lasting hallmark of profound suffering.
It was decided that Cis was to spend the winter with Miss Braithwaite. ”