“Well, that’s true, what you imply!” cried Miss Braithwaite, rising to touch a bell. “It’s not the years, but the palate. Tea is the most refreshingly restorative thing I know. Ah, Ellen,” she added as a maid entered. “Will you serve us supper here? Miss Adair is staying with me. Let us have the cold chicken, lettuce, small biscuits; the cream cheese, tea—without cream? Now that’s a sensible girl, Cicely!—fruit punch, with considerable grape fruit in it, and a dash of the claret; cake, the white cake, not the solid one. Perhaps that’s all; perhaps not. It will do to begin with. Place the table there, Ellen, please; push away the couch. And will you please bring the roses from the dining room?”
Cis was amazed to find herself enjoying this supper, served beautifully by the quiet-footed, deft Ellen, before the deep red glow of the smouldering logs. She ate heartily, and lay back in her low, cozy chair afterward, feeling better able to cope with life. But with the return of strength, came the revival of her longing for Rodney, the conviction that, cost what it would, she must return to him. “Now I must tell you, please,” Cis said to Miss Braithwaite, and she replied: “Now you may. It is better to tell me before you try to sleep.”
She sat without looking at Cis, shading her face with her hand, which was one of strong individuality, rather than actual beauty; not speaking, but giving the impression of absorbed attention to the history which Cicely was giving her. She briefly passed over her early phases, amply telling Miss Braithwaite her pitiful love story. “And now I must decide,” she ended. “Rodney or the Church. It’s not fair, aside from anything else, to leave him when he was so truthful to me. But I want him! I must go to him! I left him in our home, alone! When I was in the church I thought, perhaps, I’d stick to the Catholic Church, but no, no, no! Telling you about him has made me see. It must be Rodney; I’m his wife. See, that’s his ring, made for me, Miss Braithwaite.”
“Yes, dear,” said Miss Braithwaite quietly. “A ruby. The Church wears red on the festivals of her martyrs. How good God is to you, how He loves you! In choosing Him you will save the poor fellow whom you love, but whom God loves more, my Cicely! Your sacrifice will bring Rodney back at last. Don’t you know that is the way these miracles are wrought? How fine that it was such as you whom Rodney loved when he was an outcast from God! It might so easily have been a weak girl who did not love Rodney truly, tremendously, as you can, as you do, and so who would have renounced her Faith; sealed Rodney’s doom; gone with him into sin, degradation, the awful hatred of each other which waits upon those who debase love. With a living wife Rodney cannot marry. Cis, dear, you are not really hesitating! You are not going into that horrible abyss. It is only your torn heart crying out, but your will is God’s. Little Cicely, be glad that you can suffer for Our Lord. It is He Who stands between you and the breaking of His unmistakable law. He is going to bring Rodney back because you will ask it, who have offered Him the sacrifice of a broken heart. Don’t let yourself imagine that you are hesitating in your loyalty to Our Lord! Fancy, turning Our Lord out of your life for the sake of anyone, or everyone whom He has made! Wouldn’t it be a lonely world, dear, if we drove out of it that great white Figure which towers above us, just before us at every step? Cicely Adair to say: ‘Go away from me, Lord Jesus, with Your wounds and beauty! With Your love, beyond anything that I can mean by love!’ Unthinkable, child! Come now, dear one; come to bed. Sleep and rest, for never, never will you be a traitor, betray your Lord. We won’t talk longer to-night. You’re nearly exhausted again. I’ll put you to bed, child, and thank you for letting me shelter someone who wears a ring of the martyr color, and is going to suffer to the end for loyalty to Our Lord Who died for her—and me!”
Miss Braithwaite had gone on at length, for Cicely was sitting erect, wide-eyed, her face changing as she listened, and Miss Braithwaite knew that she was winning her to great heroism. It was not the first time that Miriam Braithwaite had fought and won a like battle for the right.
“Ah, don’t, don’t! I can’t!” Cicely cried, but she arose and threw herself on her knees before Miss Braithwaite, clasping her tight, shaking with sobs which brought no tears; broken, weak, yet with a dawning strength.
Miss Braithwaite helped Cicely to her bed, brushed and plaited her abundant hair; it fell around the girl in red masses of glory. Then she put Cicely between fragrant sheets, switched off the strong lights, switched on a low reading lamp, its hooded screen turned toward herself, dark toward the bed, and began to read the story of the Passion from St. Matthew’s Gospel. “She cannot deny her Lord in the morning if she sleeps with this in her ears,” Miss Braithwaite thought, reading in her beautifully modulated voice the infinite pathos of those selfless hours.
Cicely slept deeply, wakening but once, and then not to lie awake as Father Morley had foreseen her doing, but falling off again into the profound sleep of complete exhaustion.
She arose in the morning steadier in nerves; the first poignancy of her agony laid for the moment, but sure to leap up again to tear at her.
After a delicious breakfast in Miss Braithwaite’s pretty morning room, her hostess arose.