Cissie

“ Miss Mordaunt had been right away at the outer edge of the group. She had been helping the younger ones to get more confidence in their own powers; she had to see these headed for safety before she could come to the help of Miss Ball and Cissie, so she was behind Dorothy.
Miss Ball shot forward, gripped hold of Cissie by the bathing-dress, and was holding her fast, when poor, frantic Cissie, with a thin shriek of pure panic, seized Miss Ball in a frenzied grip, clinging with all her might, and choking the Fourth Form mistress by the tightness of her clutch. ”

“ Cissie shall be made sound, and when this weak member is whole our entire community will rejoice with it."
"I have no doubt but that you are wonderfully humane and Christian, and all that sort of thing; but I cannot go your length. Charity, I have ever heard, begins at home."
"And, never leaving it, becomes selfishness."
Cissie did bestir herself over the preparations for Christmas dinner.
She had Joan to assist her, but the sight, the smell of the goose were enough to stimulate the most languid faculties, and the steam of the plum-pudding to quicken the pulsation of the feeblest heart. ”

“ So on about the second day down the river Cissie dropped her saddened manner and became frankly, freely, and riotously happy. After the fashion of village negresses, she insisted on helping Mrs. Higgman with her work, and, incidentally, she cultivated Mrs. Higgman's Northern accent. When the chambermaid was out on her errands and Cissie found a moment alone with Peter, she would tweak his ear or pull his cheek and provoke him to kiss her. Indeed, it was all the hot, shuddering little laundry-room could do to contain the gay and bubbling Cissie. ”

“ Laws, customs, and conventions were for the strengthening of men, to seed the select, to winnow the weak. It was white logic, applied firmly, as by a white man. But somehow the stars multiplied and kept Cissie's image before Peter—a cold, frightened girl, harassed with coming motherhood, peering at those chill, distant lights out of the blackness of a jail. ”

“ The artist in Peter, the thing the girl loved in him, caught again that Messianic vision of himself.
“Why, no, Cissie,” he said, with a return of his inspiration of an hour ago; “I'll be going here and there all over the South preaching this gospel of kindliness and tolerance, of forgiveness of the faults of others.” Cissie looked at him with a queer expression. “I'll show the white people that they should treat the negro with consideration not for the sake of the negro, but for the sake of themselves. ”

“ She has only to laugh at the proper intervals. However, these intervals are not always distinctly marked. Some girls take no chances and laugh all the time.
Cissie's appreciation was the sedative Peter needed. The relief of her laughter and her presence ran along his nerves and unkinked them, like a draft of Kentucky Special after a debauch. The curves of her cheek, the tilt of her head, and the lift of her dull-blue blouse at the bosom wove a great restfulness about Peter. The brooch of old gold glinted at her throat. The heavy screen of the arbor gave them a sweet sense of privacy. ”

“ That was Cissie's work, made easier, perhaps, by some recollection he retained of me. When he has a few days' leave—so Ethel Rossiter writes me—he spends it at Goldborough Castle or Strath-na-Cloid. I ran across Cissie when for a time I was helping in first-aid work not far behind the lines at Neuve Chapelle.
I had been taking care of her brother Rowan—Lord Ovingdean, he calls himself now, hesitating to follow his brother as Lord Leatherhead, and using one of his father's other secondary titles—and she had come to see him. I hadn't supposed till then that we were such friends. ”

“ From the tone of the negroes one would have thought some impersonal disaster had overtaken her. Every one was planning how to help Cissie, how to make her present state more endurable. They were the black folk, the unfortunate of the earth, and the pride of righteousness is only to the well placed and the untempted.
Presently Nan came back with a bundle of Cissie's clothes. Tump took the bundle of dainty lingerie, the intimate garments of the woman he loved, and set forth on his quixotic errand. He tied it to his shoulder-holster and set out. Peter went a little of the way with him. ”

“ To ask her to come over and spend a month or two in New York. She says she will if she can. She's a good deal of a girl, Cissie is. If you're going to keep your hold on Hugh— Well, all I can say is that Cissie will give you a run for your money. Of course, it's nothing to me. ”

“ Miss Williams fairly gnashed her teeth with envy, and left the hall shortly after ten o’clock, disgusted with that thing from the telegraph office, while the gentlemen eagerly sought for an introduction to the acknowledged belle of the ball-room. Miss Smith was as proud of Cissie’s success as if it had been her own. With all her faults the girl possessed a good heart, and in doing as she did fancied she was doing the innocent country girl a kindness in opening to her the highway to fame and fortune, even though it were reached by the gate of dishonor. ”

“ It need hardly be added that, mysteriously conjured from the vasty deep, there soon appeared about her solitary craft at varying distances, some seventeen other boats, each holding a man person bent upon saving the life of Cissie Ann should any emergency arise. Perhaps Lord Wiltonhaye and Adolph, the Bavarian prince, were closer than any of the others. Cissie Ann endured this as long as she could, then folded her sunshade in a roll of fluff and took up her oars to pull back again. She was tired of men. ”

“ But of course these Hooker's Bend negroes will never see that!"
Peter, surprised and grateful, looked at Cissie. Her construction of the swindle was more flattering than any apology he had been able to frame for himself.
"Still, Cissie, I ought to have used the greatest care—"
"I'm not talking about what you 'ought,'" stated the octoroon, crisply; "I'm talking about what you are. When it comes to 'ought,' we colored people must get what we can, any way we can. We fight from the bottom." ”

“ I have every reason to hope that I am first in the field. He has bought Cissie and Albert from Mr. Flack!" "Has he indeed?" said Cecil, trying to recover himself. Into what a grotesque mistake had he fallen! Was it likely that a clergyman and a gentleman would refer to his engagement in a manner so flippant? But his stiffness remained, and, though he asked who Cissie and Albert might be, he still thought Mr. Beebe rather a bounder. ”

“ Cissie's tired of Keats now. She's made a hero of General Gordon instead, and has his portrait hanging up in her bedroom, with a piece of palm over it. She says she should like to marry a soldier some day, only she'd be so afraid of his getting killed."
"Cissie's a goose," said Winnie; "she can think of nothing but soldiers since her brother went to Sandhurst. She even drew one in my album, and it's not particularly well done. Patty, are [95] you going to paint anything for me, or are you not? ”

“ The mulatto became aware that his whole crusade had been undertaken in behalf of the octoroon. Everything the merchants said against negroes became accusations against Cissie in a sharp personal way. "A nigger is a nigger"; "A thief is a thief"; "She wouldn't quit stealing if I paid her a hundred a week." Every stroke had fallen squarely on Cissie's shoulders. A nigger, a thief; and she would never be otherwise.
It was all so hopeless, so unchangeable, that Peter walked down the bleak street unutterably depressed There was nothing he could do. ”

“ Cissie smoothed her crêpe draperies complacently. "What could you know of a man of the world like Farley?"
"I know that he has led Gene into all the trouble he was ever in, and poor Julian, too! That's enough for me!" Nan poured herself a cup of the cold coffee. "How you can be so stupid, Cissie!—"
But Cissie had trailed from the room, and her younger sister was left to her own thoughts.
In the smoking-room back of the library Richard Lorne was closeted with Samuel Titheredge of Titheredge, Gore & Wells, attorneys and counselors-at-law. ”

“ That wicked Cissie was the means of early bringing my secret to light; and for that I determined that she should be the next to go. She tried to run away, and when I stopped her at the very door she sneered at my love for Rannie. I would have killed her then, I think, only the young man from Headquarters was in the drawing-room, and I remembered in time that I must not use strength. My seeming weakness was the most perfect evidence in my defense as long as I could keep people from knowing how strong I really was. ”

“ Cissie did not come up to the Dower House that afternoon, and so Mr. Direck, after some vague and transparent excuses, made his way to the cottage.
Here his report become even more impressive. Teddy sat on the writing desk beside the typewriter and swung his legs slowly. Letty brooded in the armchair. Cissie presided over certain limited crawling operations of the young heir.
"They could have the equal of the whole British Army killed three times over and scarcely know it had happened. They're all in it. It's a whole country in arms." ”

“ As he turned, Cissie offered her bundle. “Here is something I thought might be a little treat for you and Ahnt Carolin'.” She paused, and then explained remotely, “Sometimes it is hard to get good things at the village market.”
Peter took the package, vaguely amused at Cissie's patronage of the Hooker's Bend market. It was an attitude instinctively assumed by every girl, white or black, who leaves the village and returns. The bundle was rather large and wrapped in newspapers. He carried it into the kitchen to his mother, and then returned with the list. ”

“ Well, we used to keep the leaves and flowers inside our books, and look at them during class whenever we had an opportunity. One day, [94] during grammar, Cissie was sitting gazing at her piece of rosemary, and, I suppose, thinking of Keats, for she didn't hear when she was asked a question. Miss Rowe repeated it, and Cissie gave such a start that all her treasures fell from her book on to the floor. Miss Rowe looked very grim, and told her to pick them up, and ordered each girl to take every single leaf and flower out of her book also. ”

“ Rossiter made the presentation in her usual offhand way.
"Oh, Miss Adare! I want to introduce you to Lady Cecilia Boscobel."
We exchanged civil, remote, and non-committal salutations, each of us with her hands in her muff. My immediate impression was one of color, as it is when you see old Limoges enamels. There was more color in Lady Cissie's personality than in that of any one I have ever looked at. Her hair was red—not auburn or copper, but red—a decorative, flaming red. I have often noticed how slight is the difference between beautiful red hair and ugly. ”

“ He started to hearten her by saying white women also underwent such trials, if that would be a consolation; but he knew very well that a white woman's hardships were as nothing compared to those of a colored woman who was endowed with any grace whatever.
“And besides, Cissie,” went on Peter, who somehow found himself arguing against the notion of her going, “I hardly see how a decent colored woman gets around at all. Colored boarding-houses are wretched places. I ate and slept in one or two, coming home. Rotten.” The possibility of Cissie finding herself in such a place moved Peter. ”

“ Your dress needs a brooch, an old gold brooch at the bosom, just a glint there to balance your eyes."
Cissie flushed happily, and made the feminine movement of concealing the V-shaped opening at her throat.
"It's a pleasure to doll up for a man like you, Peter. You see a girl's good points—if she has any," she tacked on demurely. ”

“ It was delightful to once more meet Enid, Avis, and Winnie, and to make plans for various cherished schemes to be carried out during the term; even May, [160] Ella, and Doris proved more friendly, and chatted quite pleasantly with her in their bedroom about their experiences: while Cissie Gardiner and Maggie Woodhall greeted her with enthusiasm.
"I've had such a lovely time!" said Cissie. "My brother Cyril was home from Sandhurst, and he took me to the Military Tournament. I think there's nothing in the world equal to cavalry. I mean to be an army sister when I grow up. ”

“ We all live for each other, are bound into one body; if one member suffers all the members suffer with it—that is what an apostle said, nearly two thousand years ago, and the world has not yet taken it sincerely to heart. I know that Cissie is trembling on the verge of a breakdown of the entire nervous system. Unless she be treated aright now, she may become paralysed as is Polly—even worse—and then there would be no chance of recovery. That is why I have taken her. I am going to turn up my sleeves and fight the lead, and rescue her young life. ”

“ There was a fineness, a delicacy about Cissie, that, it seemed to Peter, Ida May had never possessed. Then, too, Cissie was moved by a passion for self-betterment. She deserved a cleaner field than the Niggertown of Hooker's Bend.
Peter took Parson Ranson's arm, and the two moved to the gate by common consent. It was no longer pleasant to sit here. The quarrel they had heard somehow had flavored their surroundings.
Peter turned his steps mechanically northward up the crescent toward the Dildine cabin. Nothing now restrained him from calling on Cissie; he would keep no dinner waiting ”