“I SEE the whole world through your tresses, Holly! They cover my eyes as a veil and everything glows, shines with glory!” Rodney had said to Cis.
It was true of them both that a joy past realization, past expression, filled and flooded their ways and their days. Cicely gave herself up to the rapture of a love so mighty that it was almost pain; gave herself with the generosity of a nature honest, fearless, intense. Rodney found her love for him far exceeding his expectation of it, and he had expected to be endowed beyond the average man by the love of a woman who, more than any that he had ever known, asked nothing for herself but to be allowed to submerge herself.
He was delirious, breathless at times when she bared to him her rare, sublimated passion, yet there was in her a quality which awed him, while she enkindled him. Cis loved him with all the forces of her royal human nature, yet with it she also loved him with a purity of soul that frightened the man, ten years her elder, versed in the ways of lesser women. Crimson as a flame fed by her lifeblood burned her love upon the altar she erected to it, but over and above the red flame of human love, burned a white flame of utter devotion, idealization, spiritual detachment; it dominated and sublimated the love that, though it was rare, yet was lower than this, its supplement. Wonderful in a girl whose life had not trained her for the highest form of love, was this purity of aim which Rodney recognized at all times in her.
Rodney himself arose to reverence this idealized love, to defer to it. He was not a man whose life was notably better, nor was it worse than the average man’s life. He had thrown off his religion because it would have thwarted him; because its law bore heavily upon his particular case; because it never had meant much to him, and this world fully engrossed him. He meant to be both rich and happy; he had intended to marry ambitiously, but Cis had come, with her red hair, and it had burned like dross everything that would have stood between her and him. He had fallen in love with Cicely Adair passionately and honestly; to get her and hold her his he was more than ready to throw over any other woman, however full her hands might have been when he had espoused her. After he had won Cis, Rodney was ready to stake anything on himself; he felt that he was sure to get the worldly goods which he craved. Cis must be first. Now that he had Cis, he knew that, even if he missed the riches, he should be rich. She filled his horizon, filled his eyes and heart, yet she held him indescribably above himself; she humbly worshipped him, abasing herself with wonder that such as he should love her, yet never descended to what Rodney himself knew was his natural level, nor ever for an instant suspected that she held him down while she lifted him up by assuming that he was the type of man whom Arthur tried to form to sit at his Round Table.
Cicely mystified Rodney; she was at once flame and starlight. He could not understand that the flame was of the sort that burned away dross; that Cis loved him with such overwhelming love that she walked under a sense of consecration. He could not understand, yet he recognized this and deferred to it in a way that amazed himself when he came to think it over. He could not risk letting Cis find him less than she believed him. Her trust in him, her idealization of him, humbled him and intrigued him. Could he marry Cis, deceiving her? Could he undeceive her? After they were married Cis would learn to accept things as they were; she would not love him less; she would love him more, tremendous as her love now was, for then there would be the complete blending which was marriage. Cis was not the sort of woman to criticise her husband. She would understand and justify him when she was his wife, nor would her slender hold upon the dominant Old Church be maintained against the clutch with which she would hold to her husband. Rodney’s fingers tightened as he thought how he would hold his wife, although Rome itself were hurled upon his grasp that held her. He knew that his love now flooded Cicely’s whole being with joy; when he was married to her he would show her that she had known no more of joy than the bird in the shell knows of the sunlight awaiting it.
Cis had received her engagement ring from Rodney, not the conventional diamond.
Rodney had a friend who was a dealer in precious stones; from him he had obtained a ruby perfect in color, beautifully cut, and he had himself designed its setting. Holly leaves laid one upon another, points resting each upon the following leaf, formed the ring; four leaf points converged to hold the wonderful ruby high to catch the light. It glowed and pulsated upon Cicely’s slender, nervous hand as if it refracted the light within her, the glow of her love for her lover.
“Oh, Rod, my dearest, it’s beyond words to praise!” sighed Cis, turning her hand to give the ruby light upon every side. “It’s too wonderful for me!”
Rodney caught her head between his hands and kissed and kissed her red hair. Then he crushed her face against his and held her lips to his in a long kiss.
“I deserve it,” he said releasing her. “The ruby is you; how can it be too wonderful for you? No white diamond for you, but a ruby, like this one. You are my Holly, my glowing, ruby-red Holly! My Christmas Gift! Cis, we shall be married on Christmas Eve? Cis, I beg of you, don’t ask me to wait longer! That’s almost two full months! I’ve found the apartment; I haven’t told you, but it’s a little bit of all right! Christmas Eve our wedding! Christmas morning, when the bells ring, to say for the first time: ‘Good morning, my wife!’ ‘Good morning, Rod, my own man!’ And our Christmas breakfast in our own home—no trips away then; perhaps later!—but I yours, you mine, wholly, forever, my Holly upon my own walls! Cis, in mercy—say yes!”