“Rod! Rory, my darling!” Cis caught her breath, her words almost a cry. “I want to come and I can’t! It’s too soon, Rod dear! Only two months; not quite that! I could leap with you into fire when you call me, yet I can’t marry, not so soon! Girls—girls—Oh, yes! Girls have to get ready, get clothes and things, and it takes time, Rod!”
“Cis, you’re a royal princess, a giver by rank and nature! Would you put me off with such a mean, a dishonest excuse? Do you know what you ask when you ask me to wait? You, the generous, the unselfish, the royal giver! As though you hadn’t clothes! If you have enough to go to Lucas and Henderson’s every day you have enough to live in your own home, hidden from all eyes but mine—and they won’t see your clothing, my Holly! We’ll live only about seventy years, all told; less than fifty more! Will you waste time? How dare you waste time, youth time, too! We should have been married these four years, at least. You could have been married at eighteen, if I’d have known you then—No, we couldn’t! I couldn’t have married you then, my own. You are my own, Cis! Nothing else is mine! Cis, I’ve had a harder life than you know; I’m going to tell you when we’re in our home, sitting down all alone, you in my arms, your dear red head on my shoulder! But don’t be a niggard with me, generous Cis! Make up my hard luck to me. Oh, make it up to me! You’ll wipe out memory of the word hard luck! Cis, how can you think of delaying life together? It’s cowardly, unfair, cold love, and these things are not in you! Christmas, Holly?”
Rod had pleaded with such quivering earnestness that Cis paled and trembled before it, swept beyond her power to hesitate, even beyond deciding.
“My poor Rory! Were you so badly off four years ago?” she murmured. “But I’d have married you, if you were a beggar with a little dog on a string! I’ll come home to you at Christmas, then, my own Rodney; I’ll keep my birthday with my husband in my own home. Oh, Rory O’Moore!”
For Rodney had fallen at her feet and was kissing her hands over and over again, kissing the ruby which he had placed upon one of them, as if he feared his own joy, and for the moment dared not rise to the level of the girl who had shackled her brave freedom for his sake, who so trusted him and sacrificed for him.
Three days later Cis received an invitation from Miss Gallatin to dine and spend the evening with her. Rodney had told his eccentric, but fine landlady of his engagement and speedy marriage. In default of relatives on either side Miss Hannah Gallatin felt it incumbent upon her to do something as a mild celebration of what had happened, the more that she had doubted Rodney, and, for lack of anything else upon which to hang that doubt, had feared that he was playing with Cis, would never marry her. Besides this, with the ardor of her own strong, and comparatively recent adherence to the Catholic Church, she was anxious about Cicely’s marriage to a renegade from it, Cicely, whose own lukewarmness was only too evident.
Miss Gallatin was not an ordinary boarding house keeper; queer as she was in appearance, uncouth and almost shabby in attire, she had come of good stock; her youth had passed in refined, even luxurious surroundings; she was well-read, clever, was what used to be meant by “a gentlewoman.” She was dependent upon her own exertions for a livelihood because her patrimony had passed from her wholly into a brother’s hands, owing to her father’s conviction that nothing of his must ever be administered by one who would be likely to use its smallest fraction to benefit that menace to American institutions, the Roman Catholic Church.
Miss Gallatin did not invite Cicely to dine at the common table; it was not covenable to expose a young girl to criticism among her lover’s fellow-boarders; she was so far from being their concern that they were sure to watch her closely and later to comment on her violently.
A small table was spread in a cozy room near the general dining room and in it Cicely and Rodney were to dine with their hostess, and a gentleman whom Miss Gallatin explained to Cicely in private.
“I feel honored to entertain him, the gentleman whom you’re to meet at dinner, Miss Adair,” she said. “He’s a great man, doing great things as if they were less than little ones. He has a fine estate and plenty of money; is not married. He is not so much a good Catholic, as an enraptured one; he consistently puts his faith before all else. He has travelled everywhere, speaks several languages, has a great library, reads much, writes, too, a little, I believe; essays, articles on current questions, giving the Catholic point of view. He is organizing Catholic lay men and women to be ready to serve the Church wherever it is needed, and his quite splendid big house is the headquarters for this league of his. He has people staying there all the time who need what he can give; a chance for a convert to get on his feet, for instance, one who is impoverished by coming in, and a chance to find friends if he is alone, lonely, needing countenance and advice. He has a teacher of Italian there, to fit people to stem the tide of theft of Italian immigrants through bribery by the Protestant sects. All these sorts of things he does. He is well on toward forty; a knight riding to rescue, if ever there was one! I call him Sir Anselm—not to his face! In fact, I rarely see him. He’s in town, and I’m gratified to death that he’s going to stay here. He’s come to see Miss Miriam Braithwaite; she’s a great friend of his, one of his sort, a convert. His name is Anselm Lancaster.”