“You look at me so strangely, yet as if you hardly saw me.”
“I see you, Rod, but farther than in that Pullman chair. How did I look at you?” Cis asked.
“As if I were a baby, or a bird with a broken wing; I know you’d look like that at either of those things!” Rodney answered slowly.
“I was thinking,” she said simply. “Then, afterward, I was thinking how dear and good you were to those forlorn children, and how fine it was to be good like that, yet strong and brave, and what a lovely day you’d made for me, too!”
“Sweet Cicely! I don’t believe that you’ve the least suspicion of your own value!” Rodney cried, sincerely moved by her humility, which was less humility than the lack of all self-seeing.
He lay back, still watching her, while she looked dreamily out of the window at the flaming trees rushing past them in units of beauty, massed into a splendid whole. He was thinking: “She has been utterly content and happy the livelong day! She will soon get around to thinking that the day was complete, and completely innocent, without Mass; I’ll have no trouble turning her away and holding her fast!”
Rodney had a strong reason for wanting to get Cicely to drop her Church, as he had done; he was delighted to believe that there would be no obstacle before him there. But Rodney was wrong in thinking that Cicely was tending toward easy weaning from it. She was remembering that she had deliberately stayed away from Mass that morning in order to gratify Rodney; she was determining that she would not do so again. Hitherto she had not felt any more longing for God than had one of His young four-footed creatures; she had played in His sight, innocently as to the actions condemned by man, careless of His service. She had made her First Communion with awe and faith to a degree, but without the enkindling of her soul. It did not mean much to her, although she would have answered correctly any question in the catechism relating to the two sacraments for which she had then been prepared. She had no mother, no one to whom her approach to her God mattered vitally, as it must to a mother whose twofold love for her God and her child breathlessly watches their compounding. Cis had gone on through her brief years to the present, sound in mind and body, wholesome and true, but with not much more spirituality than a kitten. Now she began to grope for God, afar, dimly; she wanted to find Him to give Him to Rodney. For Rodney she wanted the best. Like Portia, she began to reach out after greater values with which to deck herself that she might stand high in his regard, be fit thus to stand. And she took her first, actually seeking steps toward God to find Him, the one, all-embracing God in order to give Him to Rodney. Rod had drifted away; he was not like her; he had deliberately turned from his Church. Well, she had heard of a woman, a saint—her name was something that sounded like Money—who had brought her son into heaven. Surely! St. Augustine, it was, and his mother, Monica! She, Cis Adair, was by no means a saint, but she might do that, too, if Rodney loved her well enough. And he did love her! How he looked at her, with eyes that made her own drop and her cheeks flush, and then with such gentle tenderness that she could weep. He was not going to tell her to-day that he loved her; she was glad of that; she would like to hold off that revelation in spoken words a little longer. It was so beautiful to look up and surprise its revelation in his handsome, dear face, and pretend to herself that she had not been sure that she should see it there! She was a bad girl to have indulged him by omitting Mass that day, yet how happy it had made him, and how happy it made her to make him happy! Perhaps it was not so bad, just this one time! After this she would keep to Mass faithfully and coax Rodney there with her. Curious that the Beaconhite church where she went, the one nearest to her boarding place, had no Sunday Mass before eight! She thought there were always earlier Masses. It was partly the fault of St. Francis Xavier’s church that she missed Mass to-day; if there had been one at six she could have heard it before she took the train. She did not push herself to state in her thoughts whether she was entirely sure that she should have done so.
“You have not spoken for a half hour, Holly!” Rodney rebuked Cis at last. “What are you thinking about? We’re getting into Beaconhite, and you’re cheating me!”
“Thinking—thinking—Oh, about something like the suffrage; woman’s influence!” cried Cis arousing, puzzled at first how to answer, then answering with laughter in her eyes, her one dimple playing just beyond the deep, sweet corner of her lips.
“Great trick not to be precisely a pretty girl, yet look so much better than pretty ones, Holly!” cried Rodney involuntarily, remembering Gertrude Davenport and her tiresome perfection of beauty.