"You did make me so happy by that play and the candy. I have never had a better time but once, after which I was disgraced and sorry. (I had not met him socially, you know, which made it improper to eat sundaes with him, even while on an errand of mercy to a sick and dying cat.)
"We hear an orchestra every Saturday, chaperoned by our English teacher, who has asthma horribly and splutters a great deal. The music is classical and improving. I do not enjoy it very much, but there is a man in the orchestra who has an Adam's apple that wiggles and he helps me. One can always find enjoyment when looking for it, can't one? He plays a horn, and blows the spit from it often. He seems to have a great deal of spit.
"I have not thanked you the way I wanted to for the play, and everything, not forgetting the taxi ride and the sundae afterward. I do love you, Father McGowan, dear. I believe if there were more priests who believed in God,andpink boxes of candy, there would be more Christians.
"Most respectfully, and lovingly,"CECILIA."
The clock struck one. Father McGowan folded up a pink sheet, and put it, in its envelope, in his pocket.
He was smiling gently. He opened the door into the hall, and the people struggled tiredly to their feet.
"Pax Tibi!" he said with a hand above his head. A girl with sullen eyes sobbed aloud. A Doctor sneered.
Much later the Doctor was admitted to a rather bare room, made tolerable by the colours of the books which lined its walls. The priest sat behind a table. They exchanged the usual formalities, then Father McGowan said: "Well?" Doctor Van Dorn shifted uneasily. "It is difficult to explain," he said. "I don't know just how to put it, but I thought you, if any one, could help me."
"I shall do all in my power to help you, if I think you need help," answered Father McGowan. The Doctor picked up a paper knife. He toyed with it, then blurted out: "I feel sure that there must be some reason for it, and that he's merely doing it from some evil wish."
"Who? Doing what?" asked Father McGowan.
The Doctor looked silly and laughed uneasily. "I'm not very coherent," he said.
"Oh, well," said Father McGowan, "we're both doctors in a way. We both meet that enough to understand it. Now take your time and tell me your story in your own way." He pushed a box of cigars across the table. "Want to smoke?" he asked with the move. The Doctor nodded and lit a cigar.
"It concerns a man named Madden," he said, "who, I have found, is one of your people. I have no proof, at least of the tangible sort, but I believe he is doing all he can to ruin me.... He is succeeding fairly well, too."
"Well, well," said Father McGowan. "Now what's he doing?"
"It began," said the Doctor, "with my hospital, which you know is a private affair, and in which some of my fellow doctors, with me, do some experimental work. The most of my clientele consists of the rather more well-known people of this city, as you know."
Father McGowan nodded. The Doctor's voice was as usual, and he began to swell a bit, with the tale of his hospital and its clientele.
"I rarely take charity work," said the Doctor. "All New York is after me...." Suddenly his face changed. "Was after me," he corrected. He studied the end of his cigar. "I did take one small chap," he went on slowly, "a charity case. He interested me. The complications were most unusual; however, you would not understand about them, and they do not influence the tale. I took him in and gave him the best of care, even to giving him a hundred-dollar room and an especial nurse. (His case was most interesting.) Well, as you know, the action of the muscles and organs is changed by anesthesia. I—ah,—I did but the slightest experimental work, keeping him well-fed, you know, and in this hundred-dollar-a-week room. The best of care, as I explained. He,—ah,—himself submitted to this slight pain when I told him that after it he would run and play as other boys. He had a natural, childish desire to run and play. Quite natural, I suppose."
"I suppose so," said Father McGowan. His tone was dry. His expression was very different from that which he had worn while reading the pink letter sheet.
"Then one day when a slight,—very slight, I assure you,—operation was absolutely necessary to his getting well, he said he would not, could not endure it. He had been quite weakened by his being in bed, and so on, but he screamed wildly. What he said was most improper and very ungrateful. He turned against us suddenly, as is the way of some when diseased." The Doctor stopped. He had grown rather white. He was again in a hundred-dollar room, which had a slat door, and no way to keep the voice of a frenzied charity patient from the rest of his aristocratic hospital. He heard the voice again: "Gawd, no, youse devils! ... Youse are killing me! Lemme die! Oh, Mister, don't strap me down! I can't stand it no more.... Don't—don't! Christ ... Christ ... Kill me, but don't——"
The Doctor moistened his lips, and came back to the bare room in St. Mary's Rectory. "He was most ungrateful," he said to Father McGowan, "and he bit my hand when I tried to silence him." Father McGowan was looking out of the window. The Doctor went on less surely. "A woman who scrubbed the floors heard this, and, as is the way with her class, got emotionally aroused. It seems she lived in a tenement, and had lived there when Jeremiah Madden had lived across the hall, before he made his money. She went to see him. He removed the lad from my care, and with his malicious help, lied viciously about me and my work, scattering statements broadcast, and giving their statements to the papers. My own profession do not largely back me up, being, I suppose, jealous, and of little spirit. I think they recognise my skill too well to love me. You read those articles?" he asked, turning to Father McGowan.
"That has nothing to do with your narrative," answered Father McGowan. "Please go on."
"Well," said the Doctor, his well-bred voice holding a hint of frost, "it,—that is, this malicious attack,—had prejudiced many. For the good of this Madden man's soul you should help him to be truthful, not to so belittle his nature by——"
"You're worried about his soul?" said Father McGowan. "Isthatwhy you came to me?" Father McGowan smiled. The Doctor shifted in his chair. There was the staccato tap of crutches on the bare floor of the hall. The knob of the door turned.
"Father," came in a small boy's voice from the doorway, "I brung yuh a toad. I want youse to bless it. It's dead. It was a cripple, too. I found it all mashed. You'll bless it? Me an' the fellers is going to bury it.Ain'tit cute?"
The Doctor had not turned.
"Come in, little Saint Sebastian," said Father McGowan. The little boy gave him a look that was pathetically adoring. His crutches tapped across the bare floor. Opposite the Doctor, he looked at him. Suddenly he screamed.
"Gawd! My Gawd! Oh, Father McGowan,—don't—let him have me!" He clung to Father McGowan's cassock as he sobbed out his broken prayer. "Don't, Mister, don't!" he ended weakly. Father McGowan picked him up. He looked at the Doctor.
"Go," he said.
Father McGowan again settled back of a bare table. A little boy sobbed in his arms. "Will you forgive me, little Saint Sebastian?" asked Father McGowan. The child's arms tightened around his neck. Father McGowan coughed.
"We're going to have some pink ice cream," he said after an interval. "Now here's my hanky. Gentlemen don't wipe their noses on their sleeves!"
"Will—will yuh bless the toad?" asked the child, after a damp smearing of Father McGowan's handkerchief. "He was a cripple.Ain'the cute, now?" he added in a tender, little voice. Then he brightened and said loudly, "But I'm glad he's dead, for they ain't no Father McGowan toads to be good to little toad-cripples!"
Father McGowan coughed, and tightened his arms about Sebastiano Santo of the slums.
"Oh, dearest Paw—I mean Papa!" said Cecilia. She clung to him. The lights of the New York station blurred through her tears. Then she veered away from him, and gathered Johnny close.
"Aw," he said, "cut it! There's one of the fellows over there." But "one of the fellows" faced the other direction, Johnny saw, and he allowed himself to hug Celie quickly. He was glad to see her, but he felt a vague resentment toward her because her coming made his throat so stuffy. He remembered the time when he used to sit on her lap and eat bread spread thickly with molasses. He didn't know quite why he was thinking of it in the Pennsylvania Station.... He remembered that he used to pull her curls and that she'd pretend to cry and then kiss him, and then they'd both laugh, and laugh. It was always a great joke. And then she'd look at the clock and fry potatoes and meat over a smelly stove, and say, "Now laugh! Paw's coming home. He needs all our laughs!"
"John dear!" said Cecilia. Johnny forgot the past, and swelled. Cecilia's use of his name made him feel a man.
"Mister, will yuh please attend to this here baggage?" he heard his father say.
"Don't call him 'Mister,'" he corrected Jeremiah in an undertone. Cecilia stepped from them to a group nearby.
"Good-bye, Marjory," John heard her say. "Yes, Iwillcome to see you. You'll come to my house, too?" She turned to a rather more cool looking young person, and added less surely, "I would love to have you, too, Miss Annette, if you'd care to come."
"I'm rather busy——" John heard the Annette person reply. Then he saw her turn away from Cecilia. His heart grew hot. "If I don't see you again," said Cecilia, "I wish you the happiest kind of a Christmas!" Annette did not reply. The Marjory girl kissed Cecilia twice. "Good-bye, little Saint," she called after Cecilia. "I'm coming to see you to-morrow!"
In the motor there was a pause for inspection. "Yuh look so different," said Jeremiah rather wistfully.
"My heart is just the same," said Cecilia. "It will always be the same." She kissed Jeremiah Madden after her words and then leaned forward and kissed Johnny. He didn't mind, none of the fellows being present. Then they were silent, for when hearts are very full they are liable to wiggle up into throats and choke people when they try to talk. At last they were out of the crowded streets and on broad ones, where other cars, taking people pleasure-bent, rolled past them.
Then the house. The house from which Cecilia had gone last September, wearing a suit all over buttons, with a touch of "tasty" red here and there.
"Norah, darling Norah!" said Cecilia. Norah's red arms drew her close, then, quite in Norah's way, she eclipsed behind a blue-checked apron, and sobbed loudly. Cecilia looked about the hall. There was some new furniture. A hat-rack that was evidently the work of a lunatic with the unrestrained use of a jig-saw.
"Look up, Celie!" ordered Jeremiah. Cecilia looked up. Strung across the hall was an elaborate electric sign. The words were made of blue, yellow and red globes. She read: "Welcome to our Darling!!!" Cecilia gasped. Then she turned to her father. "It is beautiful," she said, "and just what I wanted." She stopped and swallowed with difficulty. Then added, "Papa dear, I love you so!" Johnny smiled. He raised his eyebrows and his shoulders. Then he sniffed. He thought he smelled the scent of roses.
Father McGowan, holding a cassock high about his black-clad legs, stood in the back yard of the rectory grounds. The back yard looked like those photographs entitled, "Rude shelters for the soldiers," or "Huts built by the South Australian Light Horse Brigade."
All over the brown lawn were small shacks. Some of them made of brick, some of old and weather-beaten boards, and some of these two with a smattering of very ex and sticky roofing mixed in. Father McGowan smiled. Mrs. Fry looked out of the window. Her lips tightened.
A small boy emerged from one of these affairs. Emerged on his stomach, wiggling out.
"Father McGowan," he yelled, "we got a secret passage!"
"No!" said Father McGowan enthusiastically, "No!"
Another door opened. Another boy came wiggling forth. "Wegot a secret place to hide things in, in ours!" he said in a sing-song, mine-is-better-than-yours tone.
"Aw——!" said the first disparagingly.
Father McGowan laughed. A boy came swaggering across the lawn. He whistled, "In My Harem." He touched his hat to the priest.
"I'm going to get a case of pop," he said loudly, "an' drink it here. Mom, she gimme a candle, and Pop sez I can stay out 'til nine." After this he was instantly the centre of an awed and admiring group.
Mrs. Fry opened the door. "The 'phone wants yuh," she said shortly to Father McGowan. Father McGowan went in with evident reluctance. He wanted to hear more of the case of pop, which he knew would narrow down to two bottles.
After he'd passed through the kitchen, Mrs. Fry spoke again to her sister who sat steaming by the stove. "He'slike that," she said, a great love, yet vast contempt, showing in her tone. "He lets all the kids around build shacks in the backyard, and even gets 'em stuff to build with!"
"What fer?" asked the steaming one. Her bewilderment was complete.
"Oh," said Mrs. Fry, "he sez something about its bein' necessary to a boy's soul to build something and tear it down. An' pretend things that ain't. One day they calls that mess of rubbish the wilds of Sieberia, an' the next an Indian camp. An'he, he gets right out an' chases around with 'em. He's busted his glasses twice this month." Mrs. Fry sighed. "I kicks," she went on, "and then he sez, 'Mrs. Fry, I'm sorry, but the fact is, an aunt brought me up, awfully good woman, too, but too neat. I never pounded, and a boy needs to pound.' Then he sez, 'Now if there is anything you need for the kitchen that I can get you, Mrs. Fry, I'd be glad to.' An' what can I do? I lead an awful life because of them young rapscallions, buthecan't see it!"
"Well, I'll be beat!"
Mrs. Fry poured out a cup of coffee and pushed it toward her guest. "Ain't sugar high?" she said as she dumped in two lumps.
"You bet," answered her guest. "Doesheset and study much?" she questioned.Hewas very interesting. Mrs. Fry drew a long breath. "He don't get no time to set," she answered. "He hardly has a chance to eat half the time besides being pestered by them kids. I never know when he'll be on time for meals. Did I tell yuh about the bath-tub?" she questioned.
The steaming shook her head.
"It has two ally-gaters in it!" said Mrs. Fry with emphasis.
"My Gawd!"
"Yes, one of these here kids got 'em sent him from Florida, or some furrin port, an' his mother, being a sensible woman, wouldn't have 'em near. Well, the kid comes bawlin' to Father McGowan (they always do), an' he sez, 'Now, Jimmy, don't cry. You can put 'em in my bath-tub; I only bathe once a day, and I can use a tin one. Mrs. Fry has her own bath-tub on the third floor, so she won't care.' I did, but what kin yuh do? I sez, 'I won't enter that room with them reptilesin it fer to clean it.' He sez, troubled like, 'Well, Mrs. Fry, I'll do it, or get one of the boys to. I don't mind.' Them kids messing around there. Can yuh see the waythey'dclean it!"
"Ain't that fierce?"
"Yes, an' he don't care so much fer it, either. He sez hecouldhope they'd die or summer'd come. (We're going to have a pond in the backyard—to run into the cellar!) Yuh oughta see that room after he's bathed in that there tin tub. All that's missin' is Noah and Shem—we got the animiles."
There was the click of crutches in the dining room. The door opened. A small boy appeared.
"Come in, dearie," said Mrs. Fry. Her tone was softened.
"What's his name?" asked the visitor.
"He don't know," answered Mrs. Fry. "He was in the hospital one time, real sick, and lately he don't remember so good. 'Father McGowan calls him 'Sebastiano.' Want a cooky, dearie?" The boy nodded, and smiled.
Cecilia had had her friend Marjory to lunch. It had gone rather well. She recalled it as she stood looking out of a heavily glassed window into a frosted street. She, herself, had set the table. The napkins had not been set up in tumblers. The fibroid tumor vase was quite absent. There had been valley lilies in a flat bowl for the centrepiece.... She had disposed of the blue glass butter dish by dropping it. Cecilia felt strangely sad as she did it. The blue glass butter dish had once seemed so very lovely.... "Are they giving me anything to take your place?" she questioned, as it shattered on the floor. Then she called Norah, and listened to her laments as she gathered up the pieces. She had the feeling of untruth added to her little sadness.
As yet nothing had taken the place of blue glass butter dishes for small Cecilia. She still preferred rhinestone hair-pins, and French-heeled shoes to their plainer sisters. Beauty had been taken away and none substituted, at least none that she enjoyed. The only thing she really cared for was the dragging of her newly acquired French in her talk. She did this often with the proud feeling that it was what her mother had wished.
Jeremiah had said, on meeting Marjory, "Pleased to meet yuh, mam," and Cecilia had broken in with, "I love papa so much, Marjory, you must too." She had hardly known why she had made this defiant and sudden declaration. Johnny had been much impressed with Cecilia's guest. So much so that his misery was acute when Jeremiah related the incident of the brick throwing.
"I sez to him, 'Yuh can lay yer own bricks an' here's one to begin with!'" Jeremiah had said with his customary chuckle, that chuckle that always came with his proud remembrance.
"I think that was exceedingly clever of you, Mr. Madden," Marjory had replied. Cecilia had smiled on Marjory with the smile of an angel, she had also laid her hand on her father's. Johnny had squirmed.
Cecilia gazed out of the window. The air looked cold. She wondered whether she would ever get the chance to thank that Mr. Keefer Stuyvesant Twombly for those lovely flowers? They had come just at the right time. He was wonderful, as the girls said, and "ravishing," but better, he was nice. There was a scuffle at the door, Norah's voice was heard: "Now mind theeee-lectric sign!" she said sharply. Cecilia knew that the tree was coming in.
Late that evening Jeremiah opened the door of the pink and gold "parlour."
"Santa Claus has been here and went," he said mysteriously to Cecilia and Johnny, who sat on the stairs, "an' he's did good by yuh!"
"Now remember!" said Cecilia to Johnny, with a stern look. Johnny had been told that his disbelief in Santa Claus was not to be expressed. They scrambled up. Cecilia stopped in the door. The tree was a mass of silver and glittering lights. It was really very lovely. Mr. Madden's tastes were well suited to trimming a Christmas tree.
"Showy like, an' nothing cheap or old lookin'!" he said, as he surveyed it with proud eyes. Cecilia went toward a table on which her gifts were spread out. First, she saw a phonograph with a morning glory horn.... By it was a pink velvet box, strapped in silver. "Jewels," was written in a neat, spencerian engraving on one spot of the silver banding. There was a mother of pearl brush and comb and glass, bound in wiggly gold.
"They are lovely, Papa!" said Cecilia. "Andjustwhat I wanted!"
"Looka here!" whispered Jeremiah. He pulled her toward the light the tree threw and took from his pocket a small box. He opened it slowly. Cecilia saw a chain and pendant that would have made a very good showing on the Christmas tree itself. It was plainly built for one of the rhinoceros family. It had seemed to dislike showing any partiality in gems. There was a fair smattering of all jewels present.
"Three hunderd dollars!" breathed Jeremiah Madden. His eyes shone, and he breathed quickly. "Celie," he said, "it ain't too good fer yuh! There ain't nothing I wouldn't do fer yuh!"
"I know, dear," answered the small Cecilia, "but you shouldn't. It is too much. You have made me very happy." She turned away. There was a sudden smarting beneath her eyelids.... She hated the school that had taught her a quiet manner, and to see blue glass butter dishes as a visitation rather than a glory.
"That ain'tall!" said Jeremiah. He took hold of her arm, and led her to the other side of the room. "Throw on the lights, Johnny!" he called loudly. Cecilia felt him tremble. The lights snapped on with a too white glare. Jeremiah and Cecilia stood before a picture over which was thrown a cloth. Jeremiah drew it aside.
"It was did from a tintype," said Jeremiah softly. He looked on the face of his Irish wife. Her lips were painted a brazen carmine. Her cheeks glowed like the stage ladies' of the billboards. Around her neck were three ropes of huge pearls.
"He threw in the pearls," explained Jeremiah in a voice that shook a little, "an' fancied her up some, but them eyes,—it's your maw, Celie. Your maw that died in a two-room flat." With the last words Jeremiah had turned away. His shoulders had a limp droop. The happiness of the evening had faded.
"What's in this box?" asked Cecilia, unsteadily. It was a hat box and stood beneath the new portrait.
"Her present," answered Jeremiah. "The present I give her. Look at it, Celie. Ain't it pretty? I picked it."
Cecilia opened the box. She drew out a large, flopping hat. It was trimmed with pink roses.
The next day when Father McGowan was all ready to start for the Madden house, there was commotion in the wilds ofSieberia. It had been reported the day before that one of the "guys" had smoked a Piedmont, and Father McGowan, finding this so, had had to dust him mildly with a hickory cane, hung on the back porch for that purpose.
He disliked doing this, and smoked for a good hour afterward to soothe his nerves. Mrs. Fry had watched the chastising with pleased eyes, but then, on going to the bathroom, all happiness had vanished, for one of them reptileshad crawled out of the tub. She had dropped her scrubbing cloths, and disappeared screaming.
Father McGowan had been all ready to start. He had found his hat (which had the most mysterious way of disappearing), and with an ashamed expression, he'd put a small box in his pocket.
Then the wilds ofSieberia had demanded attention.
"Them young devils," Mrs. Fry had said, with a bob of her head backward. "They are raising Cain! Something's wrong." She went off muttering. She still cherished and resented the encounter with the reptile. Father McGowan went towardSieberia. It was one of the few times in his life that he hadn't wanted to.
"Nowwhat?" he called from the back porch. A scream was the only answer. It came from one of the brick dwellings. The chastised of yesterday, Father McGowan saw going quickly over the fence.
"Oh, drat!" said Father McGowan. There were wilder howls from the brick mansion. Father McGowan went toward it. He looked for the door, then he chuckled softly, for the door was entirely gone. He took off his gloves and began to pull out the bricks.
"Walled in," he muttered.
"Lemme out! Lemme out!" came from within, in muffled tones. Then with the opening Father McGowan had made, and with the advent of light, the screams dissolved into pathetic sobs.
"When I git him!" came in moist tones. A small boy wiggled out. He had a paper covered book in his hands. "He done it," explained the boy, between sniffs, "while I was a-readin' in the secret chamber.Hedone it. When I git him! I'll smash him! I mighta starved!" he ended pathetically.
"Well," said Father McGowan, "that is a shame! Won't you come have a piece of pie now? You must be hungry."
The boy nodded. He followed Father McGowan toward the house. "He done it," he went on, "because I told on him fer smoking. I thought Ioughta." The sufferer's tone was pious. "My nerves is shook up," he said when they reached the porch. "I was afraid I'd starve. There's pictures in our physiologies of starving Cubans—they ain't so nice.
"Mrs. Fry," said Father McGowan, "we do need a piece of pie. Could you find us some?" Mrs. Fry muttered and went to the refrigerator. Out on the back fence the chastised called, "Yi! Yi!" A note expressing scorn. He added, "Cry baby! Cry baby!" The cry baby turned and exhibited a piece of pie. The chastised relaxed into a pained silence.
"Come here!" called Father McGowan. The boy slid from the fence and came slinking toward him. "Mrs. Fry saw you smoking," said Father McGowan. "I never listen to what you tell of each other. Here's a piece of pie for you." He looked at his watch and added in a perfunctory way, "You shouldn't have walled him in."
"I ought to have given you a Rosary," said Father McGowan. He still looked guilty, but happily so. Cecilia stood before a mirror, looking at a dainty little chain and pendant, which she'd clasped about her throat.
"I know you ought, Father McGowan, dear," she answered, "but I'msoglad you didn't! It'ssobeautiful!"
She gasped happily. Father McGowan smiled. "Papa gave me one," she said. "It—it is, that is, I love it, but I'll wear this more." She looked into Father McGowan's understanding eyes.
"I am learning," she said, "but I learned things before I went to school that I shall never forget, and that I never want to forget."
Jeremiah came in.
"You give her that?" he asked in a pleased voice. "Well! But have you saw the one I give her?Threehunderd dollars! Get it, Celie, and then play us 'The Shepherd Boy.'" Celie vanished.
White-clad nurses flitted about the halls of Jeremiah Madden's house. There was a dead silence, and upstairs that druggy-sick smell.
Cecilia had been very ill. She was better, but still sick enough to keep Jeremiah anxious. He hovered about the house almost forgetting bricks, and wearing a collar all the time, as he did on Sundays. It had begun with a cold, then a cough, which (through Celia's standing on the curb, better to view a gentleman down the street who was interestingly drunk) had turned to pneumonia on both sides.
She had gone to bed protesting that she felt very well, but that her breath was not acting quite right. Then she had grown so very, very sick that she had forgotten time, life and even Jeremiah of the bricks.
Those days had been rather dreadful for Jeremiah.... He had taken to sitting just outside her door on a very upright chair. He turned the pages of "Ridpath's History of the World." He was trying to "educate himself up to Celie." ... However, he missed a great many of the pictures and only got as far as Volume One.
Each time a trim nurse would step from Cecilia's door, he would cough to get his voice in shape, and then whisper gratingly: "Excuse me, Missis, but how is she?"
"She is doing well," the white one would answer, in a tone of thin sincerity. Then Jeremiah would go back to Ridpath, miserable, and unconvinced. Once in a while he would hear Cecilia's high, little voice—"Keefer, the butler!" she repeated again and again one day. She said it in gasps, but somehow got out the words. The effort in her voice had cut Jeremiah's heart, but the words had brought a proud smile.
"Associatin' with butlers!" he whispered. "Ain'tshe gettin' fine?"
Then Cecilia moaned of butter dishes, blue ones. Jeremiah had left his post and Ridpath's History long enough to go shopping. He bought her three butter dishes. Two of them had covers. The third boasted of a curling handle, on which perched a dove and a cupid, on a spray of something that looked like spinach in the crude state. Cecilia had been very pleased with them. She had looked on them, said, "T-thank you,dearest!" and then cried gently, the tears slipping down her face with pathetic regularity. She cried all that afternoon.
"I'm not good enough for you!" she gasped, "but I love you, and butter dishes!"
Time had been careful with Father McGowan. Perhaps he thought Father McGowan rather nice as he was, and unneedful of the lines that usually come with heart and soul expansion. Be this as it may, the fact was that he was little changed. The lenses in his glasses were a bit thicker. He had accumulated a little more tummy in the last seven years, but he still played Indian and exile inSieberia with the same joy, and he was still the true father to every child who knew him.
He sat behind a bare table in a room unbeautiful except for the books which lined its walls. He was looking over his mail. He laid one letter with a foreign postmark aside.
There was a tap on the door. A small boy of nine, or thereabout, came in, sobbing wildly. "My mom, she sez you're aCatholic!" he gasped between sobs. "Yuh ain't, are yuh?"
"I'm afraid so," answered Father McGowan. He looked very guilty.
"Oh, dear!" replied the small boy, and sobbed more loudly.
"Now, now!" said Father McGowan. "We can'tallbe Methodists, you know. The church wouldn't hold 'em.". The child still sobbed. "I'll tell you," went on Father McGowan; "you pray that we'll all belong to one church in Heaven. You do that. Wouldn't that be nice?"
"Uh huh," agreed the boy with tempered enthusiasm. He smeared his tears across his face with his coat sleeve. They left white streaks. "I couldn'tbelieveyou was a Catholic!" he said sadly. "You're so nice, and because of the pie and all." His face was long and his eyes melancholy.
"I'm sorry," said Father McGowan, "so sorry. How's Siberia to-day?" The child reported and then vanished to do his utmost in making a convert by prayer.
Father McGowan opened the rest of his mail, and then reached toward the letter of foreign stamp. He always kept the best 'til last.
"Dearest Father McGowan-dear:—" it began in a hand characteristic of many boarding schools, and yet showing a bit of individuality—"I have wanted to write you.... So many things to do that half the time all I get accomplished is my loving of you dear people, every day a little more, though more seems impossible. I love you, and Papa and John so much. So much that when I'm away from you, and think of you, I feel quite choked. It is rather beautiful, and terrible, this caring so deeply. I do not know how I could ever say good-bye."
There was a page of Cecilia's large scrawl. It contained no news, but Father McGowan read it closely. His eyes were the same as when, years before, he had looked on a table Cecilia had decorated in honour of a big, fat, Roman priest. Suddenly he laughed. "We have a small donkey," he had read, "whom we have named Clara, after the vicar's sister. Our donkey has long ears and a religious expression, too. The vicar's sister is really very nice, but our grey donkey looks so like her that we always expect her to stop in the middle of the road and talk of missionary barrels and Sunday School treats. The latter is a form of entertainment which contains much jam, tea, many pop-eyed little girls and boys, not to omit a large stickiness. (I went to one, and poured tea down Lord Somebody's neck. It was a great condescension for him to 'stop in,' and only the fact that I am of 'mad America' saved me from a public hanging.)
"Marjory and I have splendid times. I am so glad I am with her. It is nice for me, and I think for her. Mamma Aliston is one of those poor ladies who enjoys suffering. If she had lived where I did in my younger days, she would have said: 'I ain't feelin' so well. The doctor's give me three kinds of medicine. It's menerves.' As this is not in order, she mutters of draughts, and places a pudgy and diamond-ringed hand above her heart many times a day, sighing expressively. Marjory has no sympathy with her. She only says, 'Don't eat that, Mamma; it is bad for you,' about anything Mamma enjoys. I am a beautiful buffer. (Please pardon the 'beautiful'; it refers to spirit.)
"The way those two people clash is utterly dreadful. I remember always, when I hear them, Saturday nights, years ago, when the gentlemen of our building used to tumble upstairs, very drunk, and I would then hear squawks and abuses. We are all the same, but people never realise it.... I laugh inside when they talk of 'lower classes.' I laugh but sometimes it hurts a little. I am ashamed, Father McGowan, that it should.... Coming home very soon. I want to give a man named Jeremiah Madden as many years of happiness as I can. I am coming home to play 'The Shepherd Boy' every evening after a lemon pie-ed dinner.
"Father McGowan-dear, I have been worried about John.... Here I see so many heavy-eyed boys slinking into manhood. Those boys who travel with their blindly indulgent mammas and leave a man at home, alone, across the seas.
"I think if my little brother should grow up to be viciously weak, I could not bear it. I cannot see how he could, for the blood in us is too plain for fancy wickedness. Rather ours would run to fierce encounter, and, if we must be truthful, flying dish-pans. But,—well, I've dreamed of him too often lately, and I remember that he may be stepping into manhood. I wish I were better fitted to be wise with him.... I have not liked his letters, Father McGowan. His estimate of people is made in the shadow of a dollar mark...." Father McGowan read another page. On the last was written: "So, I will see you very soon, dear (excuse the liberty, but youaredear!), and I am ready to take up my burdens. Those that come with money. I hope to do much and learn to do it well. You will help me?
"I shall leave Marjory and her mother in this sleepy little village, shadowed by its Cathedral. The cross that has stood for peace through many years shines from its spire and seems to bring it here. It is so lovely, Father McGowan!
"Very much love from your always grateful and loving
"CECILIA."
"But, my dear!" said Mamma Aliston, "I could notpermityou to return alone! Could not permit it!"
"I'm sorry," answered Cecilia, "but I must go. I have my maid. I should not be really alone."
"I don't like the look of it," said Mrs. Aliston fretfully. Then, "IsClara going to sleep! Why you girlsinsiston having her when you could motor smoothly with a footstool and cushions and all the windows closed,—Oh! My heart!" Cecilia turned a sympathetic eye toward Mrs. Aliston. "It is nothing, my dear," said Mrs. Aliston in answer to her look, "nothing to one who isusedto suffering. Oh, dear, what a sorry thing this world is, when we are poorly equipped to meet it. Who was that who passed us? Not Lady Grenville-Bowers?"
Cecilia nodded and stopped Clara so that Mrs. Aliston could feast her eyes on the holy dust titles were kicking up. It was not Lady Grenville-Bowers, but Mrs. Aliston was happily unconscious of it, and Cecilia had learned the proper use of lies. After Mrs. Aliston again settled she went back to the original subject. "Let me see," she said, speculatively; "perhaps there will be some one crossing to whom it will be suitable to confide you. I dislike so intensely this running about alone,—my dear!pleasewatch that beast! Yes, more than likely there will be some one. I know so many people, many of whom some would feel privileged to know! I'll look about. I dislike so intensely this idea of your crossing alone. It is rather, pardon me, dear, common,—middleclass. Yes, I'll look about. No doubt some one may be found."
Cecilia nodded absently. She had learned to "yes" and "no" at the proper times with Mrs. Aliston, quite without a listening attention. Strangely, she was thinking of some one else beside her father, John or Father McGowan. This some one who had been the leading man of her dreams for a great many years. In fact, ever since she had rescued a sick and dying tabby.
She had carried his true voice with her wherever she went.... Often when things called men had asked for her hand because it held money, a genuine voice had echoed through the years.
"Pussy needs some Mothersills,——" she would hear, and then with an absurdly little-girl feel for being so influenced, she would gently discourage.
There had been some who really loved; some loving with an air of condescension showing through their manner,—others truly, and with humbleness. Some poor, weak, with only love as recommendation. Some just ordinary men,—one or two made big by what they felt for small Cecilia.
And with them all, something was wrong. She heard the echo of a nice boy's voice, as he bought a small girl a "choclut soda," and a sundae all-over-whipped-cream, and she heard it while she said: "No; I'm sorry. I really can't. I'mnevergoing to marry. I hope you'll find some one you'll likemuchmore than me!"
And they had all said they never would, which is the way with young men.... Cecilia had believed the first one, then life had taught her the quick healing of some hearts, and she had smiled a little when the rest said it.
That smile was always the undoing. They usually kissed the hem of her dress, and swore to shoot themselves, and Cecilia would whisper: "Oh,please!Some one will see you!" or, "Oh,please!Some one might hear you!" whichever the case might be. Then they always kissed her hand and went away, and Cecilia would sigh and say, "Well, I suppose that means an awfully nice wedding present soon, to show that I'm not put out!"
Sometimes she wondered if K. Stuyvesant Twombly were living, and if so, where? Then she often decidednotto think of him, because it was too childish.... And then she would discover that every life must have its fairy tale, and that he was hers.... "Home!" said Mrs. Aliston, with a sigh of relief. "Oh, my poor body! 'My little body is a-weary of this world.' Who said that, Cecilia? Bernard Shaw? or Arnold Bennett?"
"No," answered Cecilia, "I think it's in the Bible, but I can't just remember."
A groom stepped forward to lead Clara away to her boudoir and dinner. Cecilia went into the cool house to write her father on a small typewriter she carried for that purpose, Jeremiah being "partial to print."
Outside the grey of the English twilight crept slowly near.... Everything was peaceful,—quiet. America were far away.
The person suitable for Cecilia's chaperon was found. She was very correct, had several chins, and was well connected. She came from Boston and mentioned this fact in a hushed tone. On talking with her, Cecilia felt as she had in the first few months of boarding school—chilled, and alone.
This morning was the one before they sailed. Miss Hutchinson had wished to go to Westminster for a last look. "You will come with me?" she had asked of Cecilia. The question had really been a statement. Cecilia replied that she would be charmed to go. She went to get a broad hat that entirely eclipsed one eye.
The sun was faintly present. "It is fine," said Miss Hutchinson, who spoke English whenever she remembered it, to show that she had lived much abroad.
"So it is," said Cecilia. "How absent-minded of the sun!" Miss Hutchinson didn't answer. She was busy showing a taxi driver the error of his ways.
"Robbers!" said Miss Hutchinson, as they settled on the stuffy cushions. Cecilia looked after a passing bus, and wistfully. She dearly loved to ride on top. They bumped along, Miss Hutchinson expatiating on some one's relatives. It seemed that one of them had been "in trade."
"Papa makes bricks," said Cecilia calmly, wondering, as she said it, whether the British soaked their shoes overnight in the "bath" to get that delightful muffiny effect and the curl up at the toes.
"My dear," said Miss Hutchinson quickly, "that is quite different. His business is on a large scale, and his fortune excuses anything. This man had been in trade in a small way?—a sweet-stuff shop, I believe, or a chemist. Something fearfully ordinary."
"Horrible!" said Cecilia. Miss Hutchinson looked at her. Cecilia's smile was strange. She hoped she was not saddled with a young person of too modern ideas for seven days.... In Westminster Miss Hutchinson went toward the Poet's Corner. Cecilia wandered outside. She paused by a small stone set in the wall. "Jane Lister, Dear Child," she read. The gentle little ghost smiled on her from those simple words. She looked long at them. She always saw the "Dear Child," quaintly frocked, smiling.
Some one paused behind her. She turned. "Isn't that almost too beautiful?" she whispered.
"Yes," answered K. Stuyvesant Twombly.
He looked on this impulsive, American girl, and smiled. Then she turned back to Jane Lister, and he raised his hat and went on.
Her eyes made his memory itch, but he could not know why. Perhaps some one whom he'd met suggested her. He met a great many people.... Uncommonly pretty, if he cared for beauty,—or girls. Then his mind turned to business interests. He was supremely American.
The girl in the cloister still gazed at a weather worn slab. "Dear child," she said, "he is alive. Oh, dear child, isn't that beautiful too?"
John was faintly smiling. A superior smile that was his own and took in no one else. He used it often on the "Gov'ner," who from it, was reduced to a pulp, and realised himself fit for nothing but supplying funds.... Father McGowan was not reduced to a pulp, but he was genuinely angry. He thought with a longing of a hickory cane which hung on the back porch of the rectory.
"How old are you, John?" asked Father McGowan.
"Eighteen," replied the overgrown boy. "Gettin' on, yes, gettin' on." He lounged back in his chair. Father McGowan leaned across the table.
"Old enough to take tender care of your sister when she gets back," he said.
"Certainly," answered John. He studied his finger nails. They were gorgeous examples of the manicure's art. John wished the old man would get on. He had a date.... He wondered what he was driving at anyway? He covered a yawn and muttered a pardon.... "Late hours," he added, in explanation.
Father McGowan again thought of a cane which hung on the back porch.
"How's your father?" he asked.
"Oh,—the Gov'ner?" replied John in a tone of entire surprise. "Really, I don't know. I haven't seen him for a week." He again looked at his finger nails then he thought of a girl he did not meet socially. His thoughts and attentions ran to that kind.
"What a rotten life a priest's would be! Staying in a dull room like this—" he thought, then became conscious of a long silence. He looked up. Father McGowan's eyes were full on him.... Space faded. John was a baby in a crowded flat. He cried, and a little, tired-eyed girl picked him up. "Aw, Johnny!" she said. Flies buzzed about. The dull hum of traffic came from the street below.
Some one called, "Celie, aw Celie! Quick!" from a room off of the kitchen. The little girl vanished. He heard unpleasant sounds, then moans.
John started up. The chair in which he'd sat overturned. "You devil!" he said to a fat priest. The dream had faded. John breathed in gasps.
"I will excuse you," said Father McGowan, "if you will remember what a sister did for you, and in return give her the greatest gift: a pride in the boy she loves. Good-night, John."
After the boy had gone, Father McGowan scratched his head, as was his manner when perplexed. "What was the matter with him?" he asked aloud. Then he sighed. The talk, he was afraid, had done little good. At first he had gotten only a supercilious smile, and then that outburst.
Well, life was only a succession of tries, and a climbing at the wall unscalable.... Father McGowan dismissed the problem, thought of the comfort of a hot bath, and then the perusing of a new book he'd just bought. "Oh, drat!" he muttered. There was a baby water snake in the tub, and the tin one did not invite a lingering. It scratched in several inconvenient spots.
Outside, John still breathed in gasps. "Home," he thought as he settled in a low, grey roadster. "I don't like her hair anyway," he offered in weak excuse for abandoning his original plan. Yes, he would be good to Cecilia. Awfully good to her.... Had her life, his,—ever been as dreadful as that flash? Cecilia should never know him otherwise than she believed him. It would be a noble deceit, lived for love of her. That was the game one played with women that one truly loved.
TheArcania'sdecks were alive with people scurrying hither and thither, seemingly with no impulse behind their unrest, nor aim in direction.
A few souls stood very calmly by the rail, watching the steerage embarking. Their whole attitudes said, and loudly: "This is all old to me. I will have you know it is even a bore!" They were looked on with respect by the few to whom crossing was a novelty.
Cecilia was pleasantly excited. Sailing was not new to her, but she was so healthily alive that she tingled with any enthusiasm near.
"Our deck chairs are in the most absurd spot!" said Miss Hutchinson. "I told the steward what I thought of him, and them. He said he would change them. Aren't you going to look at your flowers? Your state room is full of them. I stepped in. Your maid was putting some of them in your wash bowl. I told her that would never do. You will have to use it, you know, to brush your teeth, wash, and so on, and if you're sick—it is most inconvenient to have the stand cluttered with flowers. I—ah, happened to notice Lord Ashby's card on some flowers. Where did you meet him,dear?"
"Sunday school treat," replied Cecilia. "I poured tea down his neck." Her reply was made in an absent way. She was scrutinising the passengers. There was a fat woman near who looked lovely! She stood within earshot of Cecilia and Cecilia heard her address her husband as "Poppa," and then a very healthy and pleasantly loud-looking maiden as "Lotty." It made Cecilia feel as if she were in the warmth of a summer sun, just to hear them. So happily natural, they were.
"Horridpeople!" said Miss Hutchinson loudly. She elevated a lorgnette, and looked "poppa" up and down critically. "Beer, Cincinnati," she decided in far-reaching tone. Cecilia squirmed.
"That dear baby in the steerage!" said Cecilia, to divert the offended Miss Hutchinson.
"Dirty!" commented the diverted. "So absolutely degrading the way the lower classes have children! One after the other!" ended Miss Hutchinson. Cecilia did not voice it, but she wondered what other mode of entrance into the world was possible, one at a time, rarely two, having been the style for a good many years.
The baby began to whimper. Its mother slapped it vigorously. Cecilia looked away. She hated to see a child slapped. Johnny had often been most trying. She had rarely slapped him.... Then she turned and quite forgot the hot, whimpering baby of the steerage.... K. Stuyvesant Twombly stood behind her. He recognised the impulsive girl who had spoken to him at the small tomb of "Jane Lister, dear child," and he raised his hat and smiled.
Cecilia gasped. Then, she went below, and very quickly, to see her flowers.
"Oh, but you are nice," said Cecilia, "if your name is not!" Then she looked away from K. Stuyvesant Twombly. She had not meant to say anything like that! It had simply come out!
The wind blew strongly and ruffled her hair. K. Stuyvesant Twombly watched her with a good deal of interest. She wasquitedifferent from any girl he'd ever met.... She watched first the rough sea which looked like a small boy's chewing gum, laid in a safe place waiting for the next chew ... grey, indented with the marks of small teeth. Then all the sea would slip below the rail, and all of the world would be sky.
"I was named," explained K. Stuyvesant, "Keefer, after a rich uncle. He died and left all his money for the support of Lutheran missions in China. After that my mother used to faint every time she'd think of my first name."
Cecilia laughed. "I'msosorry!" she said. "Does she still faint over it?"
"She died last February," answered K. Stuyvesant quietly.
"I'm so sorry!" said Cecilia again. K. Stuyvesant didn't answer. They were quiet for a few moments, both watching the tilt, and eclipse of the sky-line. At last the man spoke. "It is tragic," he said, "to have the ones you love die, but it is more tragic to have those you have loved from instinct, and never known, die. You wonder, all the time, whether they too, are fretting because of the lost opportunity. You wonder what there was below that you didn't see.... All I remember of my mother was her hurry to get in a great number of engagements, and a chill aloofness, cultivated, I have thought since, to keep in check over-tired nerves.... If we could have once gone below the surface! Even with incivilities, if in that way, we could have known each other.... Never saw one another, fleeting glimpses...."
"You poor man!" said Cecilia.
"I'm ashamed to have said that," he said. His voice was gruff. "But,—it's been in my heart these long months,—that endless regret." He drew a shaky breath. Cecilia laid her hand on his arm. Without a shade of consciousness his hand closed around hers. "I've never told any one that before," he said. "You're awfully—different. I feel as if we'd known each other always." He turned his head and looked down at her. Their eyes met, and it was hard to look away.
"You're so dear!" he blurted out.
Cecilia, used to many men of many compliments, coloured. She squeezed his hand, and then shyly drew hers away.
Mrs. Higgenmeyer came waddling down the deck. She saw Cecilia and smiled widely. "Well, dearie!" she said in her usual carrying tone, "Lotty was looking fer yuh. She and poppa are playing rum now. She wants you should see a wireless she had from her gentleman friend."
"I'd love to!" answered Cecilia. Momma passed by. K. Stuyvesant and Cecilia laughed gently.
"I like to love and laugh," said Cecilia; "but if you leave the love out, the laughter is too liable to turn sour."
K. Stuyvesant nodded, but he hadn't heard what she said. He was undergoing new and terrifyingly beautiful sensations.
"The Higgenmeyers are dear, aren't they?" said Cecilia.
"Um hum," answered K. Stuyvesant. He turned quite boldly and stared at her, while she looked out upon the sea and sky. He wondered, while he swallowed hard, whether he had any chance. He wished he weren't such a duffer! He even wished faintly that she weren't so wonderful.
Cecilia looked up at him again, and again the warm colour came into her cheeks. Then she began to talk quickly of a recent play. Her voice was not quite steady. She wouldn't meet his eyes.
Miss Hutchinson was speaking of a paper she'd read before the Boston literati on "The Message of Ibsen." Cecilia didn't know much about Ibsen, but she thought he would have been rather surprised if he'd heard what he "really meant."
K. Stuyvesant was, as usual, with them. Cecilia and he looked at each other often. The new, disconcerting light in his eyes had given way, and was displaced for the moment by a mischievous twinkle. Cecilia was able to look at him frankly again.
Miss Hutchinson arose, untangling from her steamer blanket like a huge butterfly from a cocoon. "My point was," she said loudly, "that Ibsen is the Seer of those who SEE, but," she sighed, "there are so few of us!"
She vanished.
Cecilia giggled. "Are you one ofus?" she asked of K. Stuyesant.
"Lord, no!" he answered laughing, and then added seriously, "I'm an awful duffer. Stupid and all that. I never used to care, but now I do. You—you don't read that kind of stuff, do you?" His appeal held a great fear.
"Oh, no!" answered Cecilia. "I stopped reading improving things after I left school, I can't bear them, and it depresses me so to use my head! I'm not a bit clever." She sighed with her last words. They were both making many confessions about their failings. Somehow it seemed necessary. Also, they both wished a great deal of the time that they were much nicer!
"You know what Stephen Leacock said about intellectual honesty?" asked Cecilia. K. Stuyvesant shook his head.
"I can't quote," said Cecilia, "but he said as you grew old you would find books had brought you more pleasure than anything except tobacco. But then, he said, you must be honest about them, reading only what you liked. That if 'Pippa Passes' didn't appeal, you should let 'Pippa' pass, that she was not for you. There was some more, but I shan't ruin it by misquoting it. It was so clever!"
K. Stuyvesant didn't answer. Because Cecilia was afraid of his silences, she began to tell him of a small brother whom she greatly loved.
"But you'll know him," she ended, "if you come to see us. You will, won't you?"
"Well, rather!" answered K. Stuyvesant. "Why, youknowI'm coming!" There was almost a resentment in his voice. "Cecilia," he said, with his first use of her first name, "I haven't any right, but you're sodear, I have to. Have Ianychance?" He leaned very close above her steamer chair. He had gotten quite white. "Cecilia?" he whispered in question. He reached for her hand, then drew back sharply.
"I know you meet lots of fellows much finer than I am," he went on, "and when I'm away from you I don't see how I have the nerve to hope, but I can't help it. Cecilia—dear?" The "dear" was rather muffled. K. Stuyvesant had never used it before and it stuck, even though he wanted so much to say it!
She turned her face toward him, and he could say no more.
She thought of a brick on the top shelf of a gilt cabinet. "Nothing could matter to him," she thought; "he is so dear, but I must see..."
"When we get home," she whispered, "after two months you may ask me again, if you're sure."
"Sure?" he echoed. "Sure? Oh,heavens!" Then he looked down at her for quite a few rather breathless moments.
After that they talked. "After two months," repeated Cecilia stubbornly. It made no impression. At last she equivocated a bit and gained her point. "I hardly know you," she said, looking away from him; "I—I prefer——"
"I don't know anything about girls," said K. Stuyvesant, "but I know I've been a dub. I'll try to be agreeable, I'lltryto keep this to myself. But,—youwillgive me a chance?"
Cecilia said she would.
"Gosh,—I love——" began K. Stuyvesant; then he shook his head. Cecilia didn't mean to, but she slipped her hand in his, under the kind shelter of a blue and green checked blanket. K. Stuyvesant didn't say anything more. He only looked.
Mrs. Higgenmeyer came paddling by.
"Poppa ain't so well," she called. "He's sick to his stummick!"
"I'm—I'm sorry," answered Cecilia. She tried to pull her hand from K. Stuyvesant's. He refused to let it go. After Mrs. Higgenmeyer had passed, he spoke. "You're mine!" he said in the manner of all lovers. "You are!" His voice was gruff. Cecilia was to learn that that meant that she mattered much.
At his words Cecilia's heart turned over, but she remembered her eccentric, dear, and much-loved father, and a certain brick.
"You promised," she reminded him. "I said after two months, when I knew you. You promised."
"I'll be good," he answered dismally, "but I know you, and it's hard to think of waiting. There isn't any question of time. You're just——, well, I'm thirty-two. I'd never dreamed that I could feel this. I want to kneel when I think of you. I——" he stopped.
Cecilia drew a deep breath. They looked at each other, and the world ceased for them. They were only a chord stretched to breaking,—a chord for Heaven's tunes.
"I tell Celie, it ain't like we couldn't buy 'em perfect. (I could pay for 'em whole.) But she sez that ain't it."
Jeremiah Madden surveyed a Greek Venus as he spoke, whose arms were quite lacking. "As fer me," he went on, "I like 'em with all their limbs with 'em,—tasty and neat. This here kind of thing makes me think of the War. There's one in the Eyetalian garden I'm going to buy a cork leg for."
The young men who surrounded Jeremiah Madden laughed loudly. The loudness of their laughter made Jeremiah a bit suspicious at first, but he reasoned they would hardly accept his hospitality and laugh at him,—it must be with him. So, vastly pleased and beaming widely, he went on with pleased pride: "This here garden cost me near a million, fixings and all. That fountain to the right (the one with the dinky bird settin' on the female's arm) cost me——" but he didn't finish, for Johnny came around the corner of a path and emerged from its boxwood protection with a cough, and then a loud inanity. He frowned on Jeremiah and the laughter of the young men stopped.
"I didn't knowyouwere here," he said coolly to the quaking Jeremiah. Jeremiah realised that he had displeased, and began unsurely, "I'll be gettin' back to work. I just left fer a few minutes, I——"
"Come on," broke in Johnny, and the group of tired-looking youths followed him, leaving Jeremiah confiding to the stone "female" of his work and of how he must get back to it. Realising himself alone, he swallowed his words, and watched the group disappear toward the tennis courts with a puzzled hurt in his face.... A half a mile away, and well below, the waters of the Sound shone brazen blue in the sunlight. Sometimes a gull swooped low, and its wings were silver. In one spot a marble wall with a Greek relief stood out in blazing white against the distant water.... Jeremiah saw all the loveliness, but he could not feel it.
"That wall cost me——" he muttered, and then stopped, hearing footsteps.
Cecilia stepped from the same path from which Johnny had made his entrance. Her hat was a broad one, hiding her face provokingly, her dress one of those "simple" affairs, so dangerous to hearts and purses.
"Dearest!" she called rather breathlessly, "I did so want to see you! I've been hunting for you everywhere!" Jeremiah put his arms around her and forgot his worry about a certain son, and even forgot the cost of things.
"Well?" he questioned gently.
"Well," she repeated after him, "I just wanted to see you." She fidgetted as she had at seven, when the request for a new skillet or pan had been necessary. Jeremiah understood, and looked down at the simple affair, talking of it, to give her time. "That dress now," he said, "ain't it kind of plain? Don't you like 'em fancied up with ruffles and lace and stuff?"
Cecilia said that perhaps it was plain, but that she rather liked it. However, she would get one all-over ruffles for Jeremiah's dear gaze. After that they were silent, Cecilia staring absently out over the deep, blue Sound.
"Papa, dear," she said at last, with a gulp. "There's a man coming out to see me,—I mean us,—for Sunday. I hope you'll like him. He—he's really nice. I hope you'll like him." She stopped for a moment and then again said: "Idohope you'll like him."
"Do you want me to like him?" asked Jeremiah.
"Oh, yes," said Cecilia, "I do!" She was again looking toward the Sound. Her small, white teeth were set on her lower lip. "He's very dear," she said at last; then she plaited a pink-edged handkerchief. Jeremiah frowned. "There ain't a man fit fer yuh!" he said crossly, "not a one!"
"Yes, there is," answered Cecilia.
"There ain't!" contradicted Jeremiah. "Does he play tennis?" he questioned, "and set around in white pants?" Jeremiah's voice had grown absolutely fierce. Cecilia laughed. "I suppose he does," she admitted, "but he works, really hard. He told me that life had only meant work for him, until——"
"Hum!" grunted Jeremiah. "Hum! Let me catch him trying to keep company with you! White tennis, and pants, and gulfing around with them funny sticks!Lemmecatch him!"
"Don't get so excited!" said Cecilia between little giggles. "He may not even want me. He really hasn't asked me yet."
"He ain't?" exploded Jeremiah. "He ain't?Whynot? Is the durn fool blind? I'd like to know why not."
Cecilia sank to a white marble seat. She was laughing helplessly. Suddenly she sobered and wiped her eyes.
"Dear," she said, "do you think I'd love you less, for—for loving some one else? Didn't you love the whole world more because of mamma? It only makes me want to be much nicer, and want to hug the earth!"
She covered her face as she finished, with slender, little hands. Jeremiah sat down by her.
"I want my bonnet with pink roses on it!" she whispered, "Idowant it!" He put his arms around her because he couldn't answer. A gull with silver wings swooped low. Cecilia uncovered her face, and kissed the brick king. "Which is my very prettiest dress?" she asked. "I want to wear it Saturday afternoon."
She tried to think her depression came from the night before, but half of it came from the letter which she held in her hand. She had had the strangest sinking sensation on reading it, and shedidlove Marjory. Why it had made her feel that way was a mystery.
THE DINNER HAD BEEN WHAT SHE WANTEDTHE DINNER HAD BEEN WHAT SHE WANTED
She opened the letter again. Its pages crackled, and sprung into their first folds as she laid them on the table. The third sheet she picked up and read: "Mamma is really quite wild about travelling with the Johnstons and I am absurdly relieved. Being with that dear lady tells on my disposition (usually perfect, you know, dear!), and I am happy to say a dutifully depressed good-bye to the water bottles and ailments which are all I know of my progenitor. I told her I would come to you for the summer months, and then perhaps go to Cousin Alice. I may go home, but I'm not sure, and such a course involves the proper dowager, who is always too proper, or too improper, and ever a bore! I shall write you again about all this, and when I shall arrive.
"Dear, I shall so enjoy being with you. You are the only good person I know who does not offend me. Perhaps because you are so unconscious of that quality. Your influence is wonderful with me.... How do you like being an 'Influence'? I have turned flippant, but you know I was serious——"
And that letter, in some strange way, had depressed Cecilia. She had wanted the summer to be a quiet one,—one in which she could learn to know a small brother, have ample time to amuse her father,—and——
Well, she was utterly ashamed, but she'd wanted it alone. It was so little of her to wish it so. Marjory had been so good to her. But,—Cecilia had dreamed of quiet evenings with the moon making a glittering path of silver on the Sound.... She'd dreamed of a big, gruff man coming toward her across soft grass.... That, and the scent of roses, pink roses.... Instead the summer would be full of Marjory's friends. Marjory had so many and such gay ones! Dancing, playing cards, motoring,—hunting pleasure with a strained intensity, running foolishly so that boredom should not overtake them.... And she had needed the summer with John. Marjory, her good friend, was not the one to show him things as Cecilia would have him see them. Cecilia sighed.
Then a little spasm of pain flickered across her face. The night before was in her mind, when John, with the friends who were visiting him, had grown too joyous. She had heard them come in in the deep night. The sounds had rung clear in the still air.
The cars they drove had come crashing through rose bushes, knocking down slender trellises.... With silly laughter, she had heard the men come toward the house. There had been unpleasant words said loudly, as if such utterances were humorous. There had been more silly laughter after them.
Cecilia had felt quite sick. She had covered her eyes and made requests of some one's else mother.... Then she had slipped into a negligee and cautiously opened her door.
The hall was empty and she went to John's room. She shook as she travelled the long hall, and she hated John's friends with a marvellous hate for one so sweet-natured. She was heart-sick and afraid. John's room was empty.
She stood there a moment, steadying herself. There were pictures scattered about the room, which made her understand things more fully. One, on a table near her, showed a pert miss, with tightly curled hair, and a dress of cheap fanciness.
"Your own little girl," was written across its corner, and then the little girl's name, "Fanchette LeMain."
Cecilia turned away. She went out into the hall. She felt as she had years ago when John was her baby. At the top of the broad and long stairs she looked down. John was on the first step, sprawled unbeautifully, his head hanging limp on his chest, his hands closed around a cerise scarf on which glittered little silver spots.
She looked about to see that no one else was there and then ran quickly down the stairs.
"I'm too heavy," said John, halfway up the stairs. He had been considerably sobered by black coffee, and more so by the sight of Cecilia. He leaned on her arm.
"I have carried you before," answered Cecilia. "When we lived in the flat, that was. I used to think that when you grew up I could lean on you. It was funny how I planned."
John didn't answer. They had reached his room and he sank to his bed and sat, blinking stupidly, on the edge of it. Cecilia slipped to her knees, and began to take off his shoes.
"Don't!" he ordered sharply. "Ring for Higgens."
"I'd rather not," answered Cecilia.
"It was the heat——" he began. Cecilia sat back on her little heels. She looked like a small girl saying her "Now I lay me——"
"It was not the heat," answered Cecilia. "When you were small I washed your mouth out with brown soap for doing that. Now do you want a drink? I'll wet this towel; you'd better put it on your head. There's the dawn," she said, looking toward the window. Then she turned and picked up a cerise scarf with silver spots on it. She folded it and laid it on the table by the photograph of Fanchette LeMain. John looked unhappy.
Cecilia put her hand on her brother's shoulder. "Good-night, dear," she said. A quiver ran across his face.
"I didn't want you to know," he whispered "You're so dear, but old-fashioned. You don't understand how a man——" he stopped, and she slipped down on the bed by him. "Everything's so beastly here. I'm so ashamed to have the fellows see dad," he went on incoherently. "Always talkin' of how things cost—always makin' breaks in grammar,—afraid of his own butler——" John's eyelids were drooping. He fell back, asleep. Cecilia got up and tried to pull him into a more comfortable position. Then she went to her own room. On the way she passed Jeremiah's. She paused by his door. She wanted to kiss him,—as she had Johnny, when, very small, he had bumped himself.