Ainslee's Magazine, February 1913 — page 56: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

46 if she were imposing a renunciation upon herself: “Tl not take a glass of beer the while.” “For seven Fridays!” exclaimed Miss Maitland, with delight. “For seven wakes entirely,” said the old woman. ‘My face might be tellin’ some secrets on me, miss. I'll take no more.” That was of a Monday, as Bridgit Moreen would have said; poor, hard- worked, tempted, silver-haired, sweet- faced Bridgit Moreen, Celia thought of her with tenderness. Then she forgot her for a week. That week had its charm. Monday night Miss Maitland dined out. It was a worldly affair—a little dinner of forty people who were invited to meet a lion—an English ex- plorer, Lord Romney Farrell. The lion roared to please the forty, who, in a corner of the music room, listened to Miss Maitland. She played divinely, and Lord Farrell listened as some peo- ple know how to listen—divinely, Aft- erward she talked to him. That night, in her dressing room, she sat and dreamed. Without, the April night was mellowing into a warm day, and the dandelions were pushing up- ward in Central Park. Bridgit had said to her once: “Wan can hear the flowers fairly grow in Kerry, it’s so solemn still.” Miss Maitland looked back on what a long day it had been since morning.: It seemed five years. She felt five years younger. Life no longer discouraged her. She felt discouraged neither with heaven nor with earth. She felt that all the souls of Sodom would be saved. She smiled gently as she thought of Bridgit Moreen. From then on, she thought only of Lord Farrell, and what he had said to her when she had finished play- ing. There were eligible men in New York who had said things much more to the point, but no one had said anything to her sufficiently convincing to induce her to give up her liberty. Lord Farrell was slightly over forty. He had climbed the Mountain of the Moon, he had seen AINSLEE’S vast distances, and had been with Nan- sen to the pole. Miss Maitland did not think of these things. It was-.not the lion that made her thoughtful. On Friday Miss Maitland found her- self one of a house party at the week- end at Westbury. At the end of the day she found herself one of a party of two on the country road—the other was Lord Farrell. There were between them the common memories of several dinner parties, and several téte-a-tétes. They rode together all the afternoon in the fresh air. The color came into her cheeks. A touch seemed to have been given to the door of the world, and it opened the right way. Through the widening crack, she looked into what promised to be—paradise! That very evening, as he bade her good night in the big hall before going upstairs, Lord Farrell said: “I’m going to San Francisco to-morrow,” and she had hardly been able to bid him good-by. “You are going to be lionized in the West?” “IT am going on a private errand.” Celia had found her self-possession. “I am going farther—to Japan, perhaps— then back here—then home.” And, be- fore half a dozen other people, they had bidden each other a conventional good night and good-by. She sat reading until midnight, un- willing to take her eyes from the pages of the book. At last she laid her book down and glanced at the calendar on her dressing table. It marked in black let- ters “Friday.” This had been an im- portant day to her. But there seemed to be a haunting persistence in the big, black word FRIDAY. She suddenly remembered Bridgit Moreen, and her promise. Poor Bridgit Moreen, one of three hundred in a tenement house, the scrubwoman, the charwoman, with her hard-worked, disfigured hands, and her rich brogue! Bridgit had prayed with faith for forty years, and at the end had been obliged to give over her burden to younger life. Where would she be after forty years herself? How much of faith or life would persist in her? Bridgit Moreen, patient, toiling, COL MUCE v_OoOK (COL