The cable

“THE only defect in this sort of a day is that it has to end so early. It makes things seem thin and flat to pick up and start back on a train leaving a few minutes past three,” grumbled Rodney, putting Cis into her car chair and bestowing himself opposite to her, as they had come up to Pioneer Falls.

“Oh, no, it doesn’t!” Cis contradicted him happily. “Don’t be greedy, Rory! Greedy and ungrateful. Think what a beautiful day, and—four, six, ten—it will be more than ten hours long by the time we get home!”

“Ungrateful I’m not; but greedy? Well, why shouldn’t I be? Hungry people are greedy, especially for the kind of food that best nourishes them. Philosophy is all very well, but it’s not always a satisfactory symptom! Don’t you be too easily satisfied, Miss Holly Adair! One day couldn’t satisfy me; it whets my appetite!” Rodney’s eyes were literally devouring, his voice sharp.

“Oh, well, Rod!” Cis said softly. “I’m not exactly easy-going. One day at a time! They sing a silly hymn at church, all about not praying for anything, not even to be good, except ‘just for to-day,’ when of course we’re saying all the time: ‘Now, and at the hour of our death,’ and we’re made to pray for final perseverance! But ‘just for to-day’ comes in all right now; this is our day, and a pretty nice one! I’ve been happy all day long, and we’re still happy, with two hours and a half ahead, and I love to ride on the train. A whole day happy is a big thing!”

“Cis, you speak as if you were afraid! There are years of happy days ahead, my girl! When I first knew you, Holly dear, I thought I’d never seen a creature who had passed the twenty-first birthday, who was so absolutely without a thought of the morrow as you were.” Rodney looked at Cis questioningly.

“Ah! When you first knew me!” Cis breathed the words so softly that Rodney leaned forward to catch them. “I’m changing fast, Rod; I have changed; I’m getting tamed. Happiness scares you when you know you’re happy. Before I came here I was happy, but it was the way kids are happy. I didn’t know I was happy; just went along as if I was a boy, whistling. Now—I think about it.” Cis pulled herself up short, then she added: “They tell you that life isn’t particularly happy when you get well into it, that happiness is not meant to last. I suppose what everybody says is true; how can I help being afraid? But it’s a queer thing: I’m happier when I’m afraid than I was when I wasn’t afraid one bit!”

Rodney smiled on her, well-content with her unconscious revelations, or was it that Cis was so trusting, so honest that she was conscious of revealing, yet did not mind it?

“Do you believe that you will not be happy, Holly dear? That we shall not be happy? Do you believe all these croakers who try to make you think life is a dismal thing, and all true happiness is beyond the grave? That’s religion’s talk! Don’t you heed it. Of course no clock strikes twelve every hour, but you’ll see what bliss life holds, and that we’ll keep tight grasp on it, provided you steer straight. Why, little kid Cicely, you’ve no more notion of what bliss is ahead of you than a small brown bunny out in those woods yonder! Believe me, you glowing, gorgeous-tinted Holly, you will laugh at your fears when you get over the drunkenness of the joy you’re going to have!” Rodney smiled at Cis with flashing eyes.

Cis smiled back at him, her breath a little short, but her candid eyes looked into his unafraid. Whatever Cis feared or dreaded, it was nothing within the compass of Rodney’s control; to him she trusted herself completely.

She leaned back in her chair, her hat in her lap, luxuriously rumpling her hair by rolling her head slightly on the chair’s plush back. Her face grew grave and sweet as her thoughts travelled onward from Rodney’s promise of lasting happiness to her own conviction that sorrow must come. It did not matter greatly as long as fundamentals held. Rodney’s “we” destroyed fear. Womanlike, she felt that sorrow that was shared would in itself hold a sweeter joy than happiness; that if she could lighten a burden for Rod there would be no weight in the heaviest burden upon herself. The prescience of the woman showed Cis the profound meaning of a true marriage; not, first in importance, to be happy together, but to learn to be happy in being unhappy together.

“Cis, I did not know that you could look like that!” cried Rodney suddenly. They had been silent for a little space, and he was watching Cis’s changing expression with awe and wonder, unable to follow her mental processes, yet guessing their course.

“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.

“Let’s walk to the house, Rod,” suggested Cis, when they came out of the station into Beaconhite’s main street.

“Let’s walk to the restaurant first of all!” Rodney amended her proposal. “I’ve no notion of being conveyed to the hospital on an ambulance call, perishing in the street from inanition!”

Accordingly they walked briskly toward the small hotel in a cross street, several blocks from the station, where, Rodney affirmed, “there was the most decent chef in Beaconhite.”

They came upon a block where there had been a fire; cordons were stretched across the sidewalk, into the road; within them a blackened mass of still smoking débris was all that was left of what that morning had been a block of small houses, each house divided into four- and five-room tenements at low rentals. Just as Cis and Rodney came up there emerged from the side street, evidently coming around from the rear of the burned block, a tall, thin figure in a long black coat; Cis instantly recognized Father Morley, and as quickly he recognized her, at least for one whom he had been seeing at the eight o’clock Mass. He possessed the natural gift of retaining faces in his memory, a gift heightened to the highest degree by the training of his Order, and his intense interest in the soul behind each face.

Cis, meeting his deep-set, keen, gentle eyes, bowed instinctively. The priest instantly returned the bow with a smile that lit up his ascetic face as if a light had been thrown upon it, but in this case the light came from within, outward.

The Jesuit stepped up to Cis’s side, taking it for granted that he was welcome.

“Good evening, my child,” he said, and his voice, which always thrilled Cis when he preached his five minutes’ sermon from the sanctuary, was still more moving heard in conversational tones at her elbow. She saw, too, that his face, thin, ascetic, worn, as she had seen it at the distance intervening between the church pews and the sanctuary, was more deeply graved with fine lines than she had seen; he looked like a man who had found life a serious matter, and whose bodily health was not the best.

“Good evening, Father Morley,” Cis replied.

“I do not know your name, but I know that you belong to me,” said Father Morley. “I am sure that I have not met you. I see you at my Mass, at eight o’clock. Have you been long in Beaconhite?”

“No, Father. I came early in the summer. My name is Cicely Adair; I am Mr. Lucas’ private secretary. You never have spoken to me before,” said Cis. “Father Morley, this is Mr. Rodney Moore.”

“Glad to meet you, Mr. Moore,” said Father Morley with a quick, comprehensive look at Rodney. “English More, or Irish Moore?”

“My people on the Moore side came from Ireland,” said Rodney, uneasy, and omitting the courteous title at the end of his reply to Father Morley.

“That’s good!” said the priest, as if Rodney deserved credit for his ancestry. “Though, to be sure, the English More once meant great things, when the lord chancelor bore the name who would not betray his God to save his head! Not that we would not all reckon martyrdom a splendid prize for which to hold out! You are in another parish, not St. Francis’? I don’t recall your face.”

“I’m in the St. Francis Xavier parish,” said Rodney shortly.

The fine face of the priest changed slightly as he correctly interpreted this answer.

“I missed you this morning, Miss Adair,” he said. “You know, a priest gets into the way of unconsciously looking for familiar faces when he turns to give the notices and read the Gospel; you are weekly in the same place. I am glad that you are not ill.”

“No, Father,” replied honest Cis, making no excuse to gloss her absence. “I did not go to Mass; I wanted to take an early train.”

“Good for her; coming straight out, no cringing!” thought Rodney, misinterpreting Cicely’s honesty.

Father Morley shook his head. “And not make the effort required to go to six o’clock Mass first, or even to the Mass at two? It is worth considerable effort to keep from offending God,” he said.

“Six o’clock? The eight o’clock Mass is the first one, isn’t it?” cried Cis.

“No, indeed! Who ever heard of such a late hour for the first parish Mass in such a large parish?” exclaimed Father Morley. “We have a Mass at two a. m. for the newspaper men and other night workers, trolley men, railroaders, all those people. The next Mass is at six. Then ours is not the only church in town! There are nine churches in Beaconhite, all told.”

“Bad influence, danger ahead!” thought the wise priest. “I like the girl!”

“I could have made the six o’clock at St. Francis Xavier’s; I might have asked if there was one, but I didn’t,” Cis looked straight into the priest’s keen eyes. “I’m a careless girl, Father; I never thought so much about these things as Nan—that’s my friend at home—did.”

“Difficult to think too much of things which are unending,” commented the priest. “I approve of Nan and am glad that you have so good a girl friend.”

He smiled, with a slight sigh, and walked onward in silence beside Rodney, taking it for granted that they would continue together as their ways lay in the same direction. Rodney was at once uncomfortable and angry, angry that he was uncomfortable. There was a silent power in this priest that he felt and resisted; it annoyed him to see that Cis felt it and did not resist it. It was impossible to say wherein it lay, but it was there, strong and as unmistakable as it was indefinable. That it was the manifestation of the sum total of the gifts of the Holy Ghost did not occur to him, nor would he have admitted it, but just as those recorded in the Gospel cried out against that Power to which they would not yield, so Rodney in his heart cried out against this quiet person, walking beside him unintrusively, saying nothing remarkable, certainly nothing in direct rebuke. Yet every fibre of Rodney’s being rebelled, and he felt that Cis was accepting and readjusting to that implied reproach.

“Must have been quite a fire,” Rodney said, trying to introduce a topic that was indifferent.

“Indeed it was, a shocking fire,” Father Morley corroborated him. “It was a gasoline fire in a tenement; could anything be worse? The young daughter of one of the tenants was cleaning gloves, I understand, in a room which was dark, using a lighted lamp, and there was not much air in the stuffy place. She did not realize how far the fumes would draw to heat where there was so little oxygen. Not only that tenement burned, but the entire block. Most of these people had kerosene oil in cans. Ah, it was a frightful fire! The firemen saved every life, but several people were badly burned, dangerously so, and a child was nearly trampled to death. One of the firemen was hurt; I came to anoint him and one or two others, but none will die—thank God!”

“Well, I suppose ‘thank God’ is the conventional phrase, but it doesn’t always fit,” said Rodney with a bitter, short laugh. “I suppose, too, that all these people had palm in their houses, blessed especially for protection against fire, lightning and general violent catastrophe!”

The Jesuit frowned slightly; Cis looked half-amused, and he saw it.

“‘Thank God’ is appropriate to whatever befalls those who trust in Him,” he said. “I would imagine the blessed palm was in those tenements, since, in spite of carelessness and ignorance, against which we cannot expect protection from their lighter consequences, no lives were lost. I am glad that you recognize the Providence that intervened, Mr. Moore; many people miss the province of its workings.”

“I think that I recognize its province precisely, Father Morley,” Rodney said. “It is distinctly limited. I would say that, if there be a God, He sets things going, and then leaves them to themselves. I am not a Catholic, though my people were.”

“I would hardly have mistaken you for a Catholic, my poor son,” said the priest quietly. “You have left the Church of your fathers? Better come to confession; remove the impediment to faith, and faith will revive. Strange to throw away that treasure to acquire which so many sacrifice everything earthly! My father, for instance, was an Episcopal clergyman. He came into the Church and suffered actual want, besides the cruel persecution which only near and dear kindred can inflict, in order to possess the Truth and the sacraments. But you are young and God’s arm is long; you will come back. A good friend can do a great deal for us!”

The priest smiled at Cis, who looked up at him with a smile in return, yet a troubled look.

“A good friend can, Father, but lots of people don’t have good friends—like Nan!” she said, with emphasis on the adjective.

“All goodness is comparative, my child,” Father Morley said. “I see that you regret your own deficiencies, which is a most healthful symptom! It is everything to be honest, and more than everything to be humble!” He laughed at his intentional clumsiness of word. “It must be a little lonely for you, a stranger here? You say you are Mr. Lucas’ secretary? I know Mr. Lucas’ brother.”

“It was he who gave me my letter to Mr. Wilmer Lucas,” cried Cis eagerly.

“Really? He is a noble man; I don’t wonder that Mr. Lucas welcomed you,” Father Morley looked pleased; he was beginning to feel cordial liking for Cis, with a perceptive anxiety for her safety. “I know Mr. Lucas, this Mr. Lucas, but he is not my friend, as his brother is.”

Father Morley did not explain that he had instructed Mr. Robert Lucas and received his submission to the Church, and that this new instance of the Jesuit wiles had made Mr. Wilmer Lucas cross the street from that day to this whenever he saw Father Morley coming.

“I have a club of fine girls, all self-supporting, a jolly, delightful lot, they are! How would you like to come to one of their ‘open nights’? That’s what they call the nights when outsiders are admitted. You’d enjoy them, and they’d take you right in. No need of being lonely, my child! Let’s see: Thursday, Holy Hour; Friday the League; Monday night their private, members-only night; Wednesday! That’s it! Come on Wednesday, and see my fine girls!” Father Morley beamed at his triumphant conclusion.

“Thank you, Father,” said Cis, and meant it. “I’m not lonely. I am happy in Beaconhite; I don’t have much spare time. But you are good to ask me.”

“Not a bit good!” said the priest. “The club is for girls, isn’t it? And you are a girl, aren’t you? I turn off here. Good night. Good night, Mr. Moore.”

He held out his hand and Rodney unwillingly took it.

“God bless you, my poor lad,” said the priest gently. “Help and bless you.”

He turned to Cis with great kindness, a sweet gravity, a steady look that told her that he fully understood her situation and recalled her to her duty with something of the infinite pity of God and His love for souls which grope. She knew that the priest saw that she loved Rodney, and that his prophecy of the outcome of that love would not accord with Rodney’s own forecast of her perfect bliss.

Father Morley held out his hand and Cis put hers into it, lifting her eyes to the deep-set ones above her, which rested upon her as if they would draw her up through their light into the Highest Light.

“Good-bye, my child. Remember that we hear confessions at St. Francis’ regularly on Fridays and Saturdays, afternoon and evening, and at any other time when we are called out, and that a mortal sin should not rest an hour upon the soul. Come to see me in the house; I should like to know you,” he said, ignoring Rodney, whose anger flamed into crimson in his cheeks and flashed in his eyes.

“Thank you, Father Morley,” replied Cis, ill-at-ease, conscious of Rodney’s annoyance, devoutly wishing that “Father Morley wouldn’t,” yet responding to his summons with a half perception of its value to her. “I shouldn’t know how to call on you; I never knew a priest, not that way. And I don’t get time, really.”

“And you are not lonely now, and would rather not have an old Religious bother you, my dear? Very well; but remember that when you need him, Father Morley is waiting, and, when things get too hard to bear, or the strain is too strong for your young hands to hold back on the ropes, come to him and he will help your feebleness. Don’t forget, Cicely Adair, that I shall be watching for you.”

So saying, the Jesuit raised his hat with a courtesy that included both the young people, and went off down the side street with a long, striding gait, his hands thrust into his coat-sleeves, his shoulders bent forward like a man so accustomed to meditation that the instant that he was released from talk, from attention to the needs of others, he was off and away to other realms than this.

“The old meddler!” exclaimed Rodney. “Don’t you go near him, Cis! They’ll make you into one of their idiot women, crazy for novenas and church work, always lighting candles and trotting around to ask a priest whether roast pork really is indigestible, or whether all-wool flannels are better than half-wool, or whether it is a sin to use a mud worm for bait, because it looks like flesh, and the fish eats it, and we eat the fish on Friday! Idiots! I’d beat a woman, if she belonged to me, and got feeble-minded in that particular way!”

Cicely moved slightly as if she were awaking; her eyes were fixed on Father Morley’s retreating figure; she had not heard Rodney’s diatribe against piosity.

“He is good,” she murmured. “I feel as though the statue of St. Joseph in the church had been talking to me! He’s like that, like something that looks like a man, but is ’way beyond one. And he’s kind, like St. Joseph; he must have been kind! And he’s ready to do anything for you, but he never could be common human! I wish——” Cis checked herself. “Oh, Rod,” she said, turning to him with a flooding blush upon her face and clutching his sleeve as if she feared to lose him, “Oh, Rory, dear, you are hungry; you said you were! Let’s get a supper for you; I’m not hungrier than a box-of-crackers supper!”

“Crackers nothing!” growled Rodney, but he tucked Cis’s hand into his arm. “That restaurant is right around the corner. The old chap has half spoiled my appetite! Come along, though, Holly, and hang on to me; I’ll feed you well!”