"After that I started makin' bricks instead of layin' 'em. (Celie, ask that young feller to loan me a piece of bread. I want bread with my supper. I don't care what the style is.) So I begin to make bricks, an' when I look around and think that bricks done it all——" Jeremiah's voice faded. He left the rest to the imaginations of his listeners, while he laid a piece of bread flat on the table, and spread iten masse.
"I wisht my wife could have saw it," said Jeremiah as he loosened the piece of bread from the cloth. "She deserved everything. I never gave her nothing."
"You gave her a great deal," disagreed Cecilia. "You know you did! We were happy in that little flat. I remember that. We loved each other and we had enough to eat."
Cecilia was aware of Stuyvesant's eyes. They were so dear! She wondered if it was very wicked to love them, for she knew she always would.... And he had intimated that if Jeremiah were less prominent—Cecilia swallowed hard. The gods are visited with temptations, and too often they come to little humans. Cecilia was meeting hers. For the minute she felt anything possible, justifiable for the end she craved, and in the middle of her minute the white spark in her little heart flared.
"Papa," she said, "please tell Mr. Twombly about the time you hit the boss on the ear with a brick."
The request of that tale was her crucifixion on the cross of loyalty ... her proof beyond all doubt that her heart was in Jeremiah's rough old hands. Jeremiah looked pleased. His face lit rather pathetically. Cecilia answered his happy smile, and then she looked down at her plate. Her throat felt full and stiff. She found it hard to swallow.
Through a numbed consciousness she heard a long and much loved tale.
"I love him, I love him!" she chanted inside. "He and John areeverything!" She looked up and found Stuyvesant looking at her. The way he looked made her gasp a little, and below the table she closed her small hands so tightly that her nails hurt her palms.
"An' then I sez, 'Yuh can lay yer own bricks,'" came in the voice of Jeremiah. "'An' here's one to begin with.' (It took him on the ear.)" He ended in parenthesis.
"Your stand for liberty—was—well—timed. It was—certainly the best thing you could have done," commented Stuyvesant in jerks. He was trying very hard not to look at Cecilia, and it was work not to.
"Celie," said Jeremiah, "whathasthis fellow did to the potatoes? He does be-devil 'em so. He puts on so many airs that yuh hardly recognise 'em fer potatoes!"
"I don't know, dear," answered Cecilia, "but I'll see about it to-morrow."
"Mebbe Celie couldn't fry potatoes!" said Jeremiah. He smacked his lips loudly in remembrance. "These here furriners," he went on, "that we hire to cook,—poor things,theydon't know no better!" And thus Jeremiah disposed of French chefs. The lips of one of the pompous persons curled a little. The roses nodded and bobbed.
To Stuyvesant, who stared resolutely on them, they all whispered, "Cecilia!"
To Cecilia they shouted "Keefer, the butler."
To John they were lovelier that night from a new hope, and, of his father, a new understanding.
But to Jeremiah Madden they brought back only the heat of an overcrowded flat—the woman who held his heart dying by inches, when money might have made her live.... Money! ... A little tired-eyed girl struggling under a woman's load. A little boy who always cried for things he couldn't have.
"The bunnit with pink roses."
Life's question mark,—Fate's smile,—or God's hand?
Jeremiah looked away from the roses, and absently stuck the corner of his napkin in his collar. Then he looked about to see if any one had noticed, and hastily took it out.
Cecilia saw and her heart leaped with love. It seemed to her that the Saints had made Jeremiah do that then. Do it to show the little earth maiden her work in life. The taking from her father the shame which a son would have him feel, and giving him a substitute for the love that left him too soon,—too hungering.
They got up at last. Cecilia took a bobbing rose from the centrepiece. She began to break the thorns from it, but Stuyvesant's hands took it from her. He removed them methodically, and surely,—as he would. When he gave it back to her, there was nothing left to hurt.
"Thank you," she said.
"I wish I could take them out of the world for you," he answered gruffly. She shook as she crossed the room to where her father and John waited at the door. Her temptation was past. Her heart was strong, but she prayed that he would not say such things so much as if he meant them. It made it too hard.
"I am so weak," she thought, "so weak!"
Stuyvesant walked laggingly across the soft grass. John had said that he would find her by a white wall with a Greek relief, that that was her favourite spot. Stuyvesant knew that he dreamed of that spot because of her, but his connection with it influencing her, he never thought of. His spirit, always humble with her, knelt.
He thought of John's understanding, and whispering, "Good luck, Stuyv, dear!" and of his gasping, "John,—you'd be willing?" John had whacked him on the back and had answered convincingly. Then he'd gone unsteadily down the steps, and had lagged across the close-clipped grass. He wanted as he had never wanted anything to see her, but he was shaken and unsure ... sick from longing and fear.
Ahead of him in the half light he saw the stretch of wall standing out among the shadows.
He stopped, heart pounding, at the corner of the hedge-sheltered path. The little Irish maiden who was his key to heaven sat on the wall. Behind her the Sound was black. The soft stillness enveloped everything. The half night throbbed. Cecilia looked up, and saw the tall shadow in the shadows.
"John, dear?" she queried. Stuyvesant didn't answer for his voice was gone, but he stepped toward her. He put out a hand and laid it on a white wall. The world was reeling for him.
"Oh," she said, "I thought it was John, but—but you wanted to see me?"
He nodded.
"Marjory——" she began, then scolded herself for a too abrupt start. She drew a quick breath, and tried to control reason and tact. "She is so lovely, Mr. Stuyvesant," she went on, "but sometimes she doesn't let people know when she likes them. She's like that."
Cecilia stopped and gasped. It was harder than she had dreamed.
"Has she been a good friend to you?" asked Stuyvesant in a queer, tight voice.
"Oh, yes!" answered Cecilia, "so good! I do love her so much! I would do anything to make her happy!"
"Youdarling!" said K. Stuyvesant. He spoke loudly, but his words shook, for his heart was pounding with a sickening speed. With his words Cecilia caught her breath so deeply that it seemed a sob. Doubts vanished,—seemed incredible,—but she spoke what would always be her truth, though her heart famished from it. She looked Stuyvesant squarely in the eyes: "I love my father," she said, "and I am proud of him. I am proud to be his daughter."
"Of course you are," he answered. "You should be. Cecilia, I am very little, but I am large enough to see what you love in him. Have you misunderstood what I thought?"
She nodded. White, she was, and her eyes were on his face, imploring in their new hope.
"I loved you," said Stuyvesant, "on the boat. I saw how wonderful you were, but, Cecilia,—when I saw you here! When I see you turn and kiss your father when his eyes grow hurt because of John's unkindness.... Oh, my dear! Every instant of this year I've loved you, and more and more. I love you so ... No one could be worthy of you, but, little Saint,—no one could love you more! No one."
He stopped, choked. "I dream on my knees," he went on: "I'll dream of you until I die. But,—what's the use of saying all this? I love you! I love you so! That's everything."
He put a hand out toward her, then drew back. "Cecilia," he whispered, "you are so sweet!"
He looked down and drew his breath sharply. He wondered if she would ever speak.
He heard her slip from the wall.... Perhaps she would leave him without a word. Dully, he wondered how he could go on living if she did that.
And then the world turned over and then it ceased to be, for Cecilia's hands lay on his shoulders. He felt them move and creep up and around his neck. It was true.... He felt a wonderful, shaken strength.
"Cecilia! Cecilia!" she heard him gasp.
After a time she pushed him away and laughed tremulously. "Dearest Keefer Stuyvesant," she whispered shakily, "whose tears are these? Yours or mine?"
There was no room for laughter in Keefer Stuyvesant's soul. He drew her close again and answered gruffly: "There is no yours nor mine any more, little saint. They're ours, dearest,—ours. Oh, Cecilia,gosh, how Iloveyou!"
THE END
* * * * * * * *
CHARMING BOOKS FOR GIRLS
May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list
WHEN PATTY WENT TO COLLEGE, By Jean Webster.
Illustrated by C. D. Williams.
One of the best stories of life in a girl's college that has ever been written. It is bright, whimsical and entertaining, lifelike, laughable and thoroughly human.
JUST PATTY, By Jean Webster.
Illustrated by C. M. Relyea.
Patty is full of the joy of living, fun-loving, given to ingenious mischief for its own sake, with a disregard for pretty convention which is an unfailing source of joy to her fellows.
THE POOR LITTLE RICH GIRL, By Eleanor Gates.
With four full page illustrations.
This story relates the experience of one of those unfortunate children whose early days are passed in the companionship of a governess, seldom seeing either parent, and famishing for natural love and tenderness. A charming play as dramatized by the author.
REBECCA OF SUNNYBROOK FARM, By Kate Douglas Wiggin.
One of the most beautiful studies of childhood—Rebecca's artistic, unusual and quaintly charming qualities stand on midst a circle of austere New Englanders. The stage version is making a phenomenal dramatic record.
NEW CHRONICLES OF REBECCA, By Kate Douglas Wiggin.
Illustrated by F. C. Yohn.
Additional episodes in the girlhood of this delightful heroine that carry Rebecca through various stages to her eighteenth birthday.
REBECCA MARY, By Annie Hamilton Donnell.
Illustrated by Elizabeth Shippen Green.
This author possesses the rare gift of portraying all the grotesque little joys and sorrows and scruples of this very small girl with a pathos that is peculiarly genuine and appealing.
Her Book and Heart, By George Madden Martin,
Illustrated by Charles Louis Hinton.
Emmy Lou is irresistibly lovable, because she is so absolutely real. She is just a bewitchingly innocent, hugable little maid. The book is wonderfully human.
STORIES OF RARE CHARM BYGENE STRATTON-PORTER
MICHAEL O'HALLORAN, Illustrated by Frances Rogers.
Michael is a quick-witted little Irish newsboy, living in Northern Indiana. He adopts a deserted little girl, a cripple. He also assumes the responsibility of leading the entire rural community upward and onward.
LADDIE. Illustrated by Herman Pfeifer.
This is a bright, cheery tale with the scenes laid in Indiana. The story is told by Little Sister, the youngest member of a large family, but it is concerned not so much with childish doings as with the love affairs of older members of the family. Chief among them is that of Laddie and the Princess, an English girl who has come to live in the neighborhood and about whose family there hangs a mystery.
THE HARVESTER. Illustrated by W. L. Jacobs.
"The Harvester," is a man of the woods and fields, and if the book had nothing in it but the splendid figure of this man it would be notable. But when the Girl comes to his "Medicine Woods," there begins a romance of the rarest idyllic quality.
FRECKLES. Illustrated.
Freckles is a nameless waif when the tale opens, but the way in which he takes hold of life; the nature friendships he forms in the great Limberlost Swamp; the manner in which everyone who meets him succumbs to the charm of his engaging personality; and his love-story with "The Angel" are full of real sentiment.
A GIRL OF THE LIMBERLOST. Illustrated.
The story of a girl of the Michigan woods; a buoyant, loveable type of the self-reliant American. Her philosophy is one of love and kindness towards all things; her hope is never dimmed. And by the sheer beauty of her soul, and the purity of her vision, she wins from barren and unpromising surroundings those rewards of high courage.
AT THE FOOT OF THE RAINBOW. Illustrations in colors.
The scene of this charming love story is laid in Central Indiana. The story is one of devoted friendship, and tender self-sacrificing love. The novel is brimful of the most beautiful word painting of nature, and its pathos and tender sentiment will endear it to all.
THE SONG OF THE CARDINAL.
Profusely illustrated.
A love ideal of the Cardinal bird and his mate, told with delicacy and humor.
GROSSET & DUNLAP, PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK