There was no missing the implication in Tom’s wrathful voice. Cis felt her blood rush to her hair in a burning blush that rivalled the hair in brilliance, and which angered her, knowing the conclusion which Tom would draw from it. Characteristically, she grappled with the situation.
“If you mean to hint, Tom Dowling, that Mr. Lancaster was interested in me, any more than in a girl living under his old friend’s roof, or I in him, more than in the most splendid man I ever saw—except Father Morley, but priests don’t count—you’re ’way, ’way off the mark! I never once thought of such a thing as his really liking me, and you’ve got to take my word for it!”
“All right, Cis. I’d take your word for anything, and I’m fearfully glad to take it on this,” said Tom. “I’ve been jealous of that chap, but that settles it, and him. If you won’t hold out a chance to me it’s some comfort not to think someone else has a chance. I guess you’re right that Beaconhite has ruined you. If only you’d never gone! You ran into the whole thing there.”
Cis knew that Tom meant that there she had met and loved Rodney, and there had been separated from her earlier friends by the higher things to which she had grown up. It came over her with sudden force that in Beaconhite she had indeed found her fate.
She looked across the park with eyes that saw Beaconhite, the dignified street on which Miss Braithwaite lived in its most dignified house; the street where St. Francis Xavier’s church stood; the garden of its adjoining school; Father Morley’s thin figure with its drooping shoulders; the altar within the church, its lamp, her soul’s home. Beaconhite was her true home. Some day, she thought, please God, she would go back.
And then her eyes became cognizant of her present surroundings. She saw at a little distance from her, a tawdry, shabby woman sitting upon a park bench, although it was cold, and her silken clothes were thin. There was no mistaking her, even afar, for anything but one of those derelicts which sin, having floated them prosperously for a time, throws up against the barriers of civilized society to be dashed to pieces, or caught up by a pitying lifeguard, as the case may be.
As Cicely noted her, bringing her thoughts back to what was before her, the woman covertly drew something out from the sleeve of her coat, and picked at it.
A bottle! And she was pulling the cork!
Cis sprang forward and ran, not delaying for a word to Tom, flying toward the wretched being on the bench. As she reached her the woman, who had seen her fleeting toward her, raised the bottle to her lips.
Cis sprang; leaped the last lap of her race against suicide; threw herself, as a ball player throws himself against the base, and struck the woman’s elbow. The bottle fell in myriad pieces on the walk, scenting the air with the odor of peach stones. The woman crumbled up and slid to the ground. For one instant she and her rescuer were beside each other upon the walk. Then Cis regained her feet and stood looking down upon the degraded figure before her, horror, loathing, yet divine pity in her flushed face. This was the tableau which Tom, hastening after Cis, saw as he came up.