The cable

IT WAS pleasant to come out from the great office building at half past four to find waiting a motor coupé of the most correct and up-to-date type. It was still pleasanter to find the car door held open by a small hand in a grey glove that managed, in spite of its smallness and other occupation, to give a welcoming pat with two fingers on Cicely’s shoulder as she entered the car; to meet a warm smile in a pair of appraising eyes, and hear a beautiful voice say heartily:

“Well, child, the morning and the evening were the first day! Was this first one hard, or was it rather agreeable to pick up the threads again?”

For the first time in her life Cis had a sense of belonging, and it warmed her with a thrill of actual pleasure, the perception that in spite of all and after all, it might be good to be alive.

What a beautiful thing this elderly gentlewoman was doing, Cis thought, thus to feed the hungry! There were many who limited that corporal work of mercy strictly to its proper bounds; few who fed the hungry of heart, mind, and soul in Miss Braithwaite’s way, and yet it was more like feeding than it was like a ministration to the soul. To take Cis into her home, to warm her into renewed life, to open up to her hitherto unknown resources for the maintenance of life’s true values, this was Miss Braithwaite’s divinely inspired dealing with Cis. The girl knew that Miss Braithwaite was an aristocrat to her finger tips, exclusive in her friendships, withdrawn by instinct; that she wisely and justly chose those whom she would admit into her home. How fine it was then to fly at once to the rescue of Cicely Adair at the summons of Father Morley, mothering her as he had asked her to! Plainly, Cicely Adair must repay this goodness by its success with her; she must be good and happy; put away grief; grow in the directions which Miss Braithwaite indicated. Now that, for all the rest of the winter, Cis was to be an inmate of this ideal home—well, after all and in spite of all, Cis ought not to find her share of the days hard to fulfill.

Miss Braithwaite would not let Cis tell her anything of the events of her day during dinner.

“Dinner should be eaten to the accompaniment of chat, but not of long, nor of too absorbing tales, my dear,” she declared in her crisp little dogmatic way, half-amused with herself, yet entirely in earnest as to her dictum. “You will not eat properly if you recount to me the history of Mr. Wilmer Lucas and his reception of his secretary’s confession of crime! I know perfectly well that your wishbone will not be scraped clean if you are too absorbed in talk—it is chicken to-night! Beside the hearth, Cis; that’s the place for a long narrative! The table for brief comments and flashes of wit. At the table I disapprove of discussions, monologues, anything that too greatly distracts from the business in hand!”

Later, “beside the hearth,” Miss Braithwaite handed Cis the tongs, and lay back in her deep chair with a breath of content. She looked like some sort of bird, tiny, alert, her quick, keen eyes flashing behind the eyeglasses resting on her thin arched nose; her hands making sudden small movements characteristic of them, not unlike the uplifting of a wing, its outspread and infolding.

“There are times that I doubt my own nobility of soul, Cicely Adair,” she said, her mobile lips twisting with a tiny mocking smile. “But when I’m before the hearth fire, and hand someone else the tools to stir and mend it, then I know that I am fit to rank with the noblest Roman matron! Perhaps I mean Roman ladies living in the catacombs; I’ve no doubt that they were more self-sacrificing than the Mother of the Gracchi and the rest of ’em! Do lift that log end, Cis! It’s wasting there, smoldering out; make it blaze.”

Cis obediently lifted the charred end of a log into the heart of the fire, and then, at: “Now tell me!” from Miss Braithwaite, told her story of Mr. Lucas’ reception of her confession to him, and his comments on her obedience to her conscience.

Miss Braithwaite sat erect as she listened, her face expressing her interest.

“My dear child, you never can tell!” she cried as Cis ended. “Robert Lucas became a Catholic about ten years after I did; he is fifteen years younger than I. Wilmer Lucas was no less disgusted than he was angry. He said that Robert had made a fool of himself, that with his mind continually hovering over kisses upon the pope’s toe he never could get anywhere, amount to anything! Wilmer always enjoyed vigorous symbolical language! In point of fact Robert Lucas has gone far, has amounted to a great deal. He is not involved in national politics, as our lawyer Wilmer is, but he is a successful man, and no one ever speaks of him without paying tribute in the highest terms to his lofty character. Wilmer Lucas is honorable and honored, but it is Robert, not he, whose goodness seems to impress people over and above his other qualities. Wilmer Lucas has been most intolerant of the Church all these years; he is protestant, not only against her directly, but against her intrusion into his family. He is exceedingly fond of Robert’s daughter Jeanette, by the way. I have always seen that in the case of Father Morley, whom he avoids; my own case; his unwillingness to allow his brother ever to speak on the subject, Wilmer Lucas betrays his perception of the impregnable position of the Old Church, that he pays her tribute, though it is in a form not unlike the tribute to her Founder recorded in the Gospel. He is a man of logical mind, highly trained to sift evidence; he cannot fail to perceive the immense difference between her consistent logic and the shifting sands of mere opinion outside of her, nor can he account for her hold on men’s souls down through the ages by natural means. Now, to-day, you have startled him by a new instance of the power of conscience. I am glad that you look pale, Cis dear, that you show suffering! And how it must have impressed him that, though you could not withstand Rodney’s pleading with you to do what you held wrong in a lesser matter, you have held your Faith against all pressure from without and within! Evidently Mr. Lucas is impressed, the more so that he had not thought you particularly devout. Perhaps it will set him thinking, farther and hard! As I set out by saying, you never can tell!”

“Oh, Miss Braithwaite, it isn’t likely that Mr. Lucas would pay attention long to no-consequence me!” cried Cis.

“You—never—can—tell!” repeated Miss Braithwaite emphatically. “Usually a train of circumstances, some of them trivial and hardly noted, lead men to the Truth; it is like a sort of Divine hare-and-hounds; tiny scraps of paper flutter along the trail, unconsciously seen by the players, till at last! The goal and the game won!”

“That’s great, Miss Braithwaite!” cried Cis with quick appreciation of the figure. “I wish I were that sort of a scrap of paper, but it’s not likely.”

“Never can tell!” Miss Braithwaite harped on her premise. “I’ve always noticed that when God breaks us, my dear, it’s to use the pieces in new combinations, and for good. It is as if we were picture puzzles, with reverse sides. We’re something quite pretty at first; then the pieces are tossed and displaced by a great experience, and, if we submit and wait, behold God’s Hand puts us all together again, the reverse side up, and the picture is no longer merely a pretty thing, but a beautiful, shining illumination, of which all who run may read its meaning which is at once a magnet and a map of the way.”

“Miss Braithwaite, you tell me wonderful things!” cried Cis softly. “If I’m here all winter with you I ought to amount to something; I’ll try to. It’s strange that I don’t hear—from Rodney. Do you suppose he isn’t going to say one word to me? I was sure he’d try to see me. Do you think he’s given right up like this?”

“From my experience of men I’d say decidedly not,” said Miss Braithwaite. “However, it is strange that he makes no sign. Perhaps he’s the exception; that his anger will prevent him from claiming to hear his verdict from your lips, but very few men would submit to banishment on the strength of a brief note from you.”

“I will not see him; he can’t hear the verdict from my lips!” cried Cis. “What would be the use? Only miserable pain; parting all over again. I’m so afraid of meeting him! You can’t drive me everywhere I go. I truly think I ought to leave Beaconhite; I think perhaps I must.”

“Well, well, we’ll see! Not to-night, at least! To-morrow is also a day. I like those wise old sayings. I hope that you may stay on; you need Father Morley for a while. Yes, Ellen; someone to see me?” Miss Braithwaite turned toward her maid, entering with a card on a small salver.

“No, Miss Braithwaite, for Miss Adair. He—the caller—was determined to walk right in, but I made him go into the reception room,” said Ellen, who, like most good and faithful servants, was perfectly conversant with household affairs; took care that whatever happened under the roof should, in some way, transpire to her.

“Miss Braithwaite, see him! Hide me! I can’t, I can’t!” gasped Cis, snatching at the card, instantly dropping it and looking wildly around.

“G. Rodney Moore,” Miss Braithwaite read. “Go out that door, Cis; I’ll see him. Ellen, take Miss Adair through the little passage to the back stairs. Then go down and show Mr. Moore up here. Be quiet, Cicely; this is your last trial, my dear. Go up and say your beads and fear not, my child.”

Cis escaped, hurrying away, yet everything in her called upon her to stay. An instant, and she could see Rodney; a word, and they would never part.

Rodney Moore came half stumbling into Miss Braithwaite’s library. He found that little lady standing to receive him beside her hearth; the position of the chairs told him that she had not been long alone.

Although Miss Braithwaite had never seen Rodney Moore before, she recognized upon his face, in his disordered clothes, the marks of unhappy disturbance of mind. He stopped short seeing her, and said:

“I want Cicely Adair.”

“I know you do,” said Miss Braithwaite, and there was pity in her voice. “Sit down, Mr. Moore. Miss Adair has asked me to see you for her. She will not be able to endure anything more than she has borne.”

“The devil she won’t!” burst out Rodney. “What about me? I don’t count, eh? She can write me a cool note and expect that to satisfy the man who saw her last in the place he was fitting up for her to live in with him? Not much! I’d have been here before, but I didn’t know where she was. She left me; walked off like an oyster, with no heart nor tongue in it, and, when I tried to connect with her, she was gone. They couldn’t tell me anything about her at her boarding house. I found out that was the truth, too, and then I went off to see her old friend, Nan Dowling; I was sure she had run off to her, but no one had seen her there. I read all the papers—you know what I was afraid I’d see in one of ’em! I came back here, half crazy with fear, and I found that damned cool, calm note waiting for me, my ring in it! That Holly ring! So here I am. Bring Cis here. I’ve a right to see her. Don’t you try to keep her off!”

“Miss Adair was in this room when your card was brought up, Mr. Moore. She ran away, praying me to keep you from her; she will not see you. It is she, not I, who decides,” said Miss Braithwaite.

“You lie!” cried Rodney hoarsely. “Do you suppose I don’t know Cis? Nothing cold-hearted about her! I’ll go through this house till I find her, and when I find her—” He stopped, unable to go on; he had risen, and stood holding to the back of a chair, as if he might flay Miss Braithwaite with it.

“You will remain precisely where you are until you leave my house,” said the tiny woman quietly. “You will not step your foot beyond the boundary to which I admit you. You do well to threaten me, and to threaten a suffering girl whom you love! Be seated, Mr. Moore, and listen to me. I am truly sorry for you; it is hard, harder for you than for Cicely, for she suffers for a righteous cause, and you suffer because you are a traitor to that cause.”

“None of your sermons!” cried Rodney. “If I hated the Roman Catholic Church before, and was glad I was shunt of it, how do you suppose I like it now that it is stealing my wife? Cis is a girl; girls are easy fooled; they’re all alike when it comes to priests and stuff. I could have held my tongue and married Cis; this is what I get for being straight with her. Is that fair?”

“You could not have married Cis; you might have succeeded in ruining her life. Be thankful that you had the grace to stop at the crime you contemplated toward her,” Miss Braithwaite said. “But I truly believe, Mr. Moore, that this is not all that you get for being straight. I believe that good is coming to you, unforeseen good, because you conquered the temptation to trick her into a legal marriage that never in her eyes—nor at the last issue in yours, either—would have been a marriage. For so mighty is truth, so strong its hold upon us, that we can never free our souls from its blessed bondage. Our lips and our actions may deny it; what we have been taught persists in our souls, often saving us, at last. Now do one last, fine, atoning act: go away and leave Cis to find her way back into peace. You say she wrote you calmly, coldly. I saw the note written, there, at that desk. She wrote it in agony. Surely you could read agony there if you were not blinded with your own pain! Pain, but also anger, Mr. Moore! Remember your pang is partly the wrath of defeat.”

“See here, I’m not calling on you. You may be a duchess, which you act like, but I’m not your serf!” cried Rodney. “I won’t take this from you. Cis has to refuse to see me. Send her here. How do I know you haven’t got her locked up somewhere, you and a priest?”

“Because you are not a fool,” said Miss Braithwaite contemptuously. “Take a sheet of paper from that desk, at which Cicely sat to write to you, and write upon it any message you please. My maid shall take it to her. After that, if she will not see you, you will leave my house and I trust be man enough to torment the girl no more.”

“You’re a high-handed little labor leader, if you are a fine lady, aren’t you?” cried Rodney, almost admiringly, in spite of his rage.

He crossed the room, took up a piece of paper from the desk, shook down the ink in his own fountain pen, and wrote several lines. Then he took an envelope, laid his note inside and sealed it.

“Servants are curious,” he said. “Are you going to call yours?”

Miss Braithwaite rang, and Ellen appeared.

“Please take Mr. Moore’s note to Miss Adair, Ellen,” said Miss Braithwaite. “Wait till she has read it, and bring back her reply, please.”

“No! I’ll go with you! Take me—I’ll follow you, Ellen; go ahead,” said Rodney, starting toward the door.

“Rodney Moore, you forget yourself! Stay where you are. Ellen, do as I have told you; this young man will wait here for your return.”

Miss Braithwaite drew herself up to her full five feet of height, but there was in her eyes and voice that which no one ever lightly disobeyed. Muttering something, Rodney fell back, and stood beside the library table, fumbling the magazines upon it with shaking hands.

There was perfect silence in the room for a strained quarter of an hour of waiting. A log on the fire broke and fell apart; Rodney jumped, his nerves quivering from sleepless nights and days of baffled will, together with fear as to Cicely’s fate. Then Ellen returned and handed back to Rodney the note which he had sent to Cis. Upon it she had written, almost illegibly, across the final page:

“Rod, dear, I can’t see you, truly I can’t. It would be harder for us both. I would give up anything on earth for you, but I will not give up God for you. Please, Rod, don’t try to see me, never, oh, never! And please, please, Rod dear, not so much forgive me as say to yourself: Poor Cis—Holly was right. It is right to serve God first. And be a good boy yourself, Rod, my beloved, and come back, too, so that after a few little years we’ll be together forever and ever. But till then, please let this be good-bye. Cis.”

Rodney crushed the poor little note in the palm of his hand, then he smoothed it out, laying it flat on his hand. Then he looked down on it, standing quite still. Then he bent down to it and kissed it. Miss Braithwaite knew that the long, silent waiting for it; the reaction from his harrowing fear, now that he knew Cis was safe; his proximity to her; his better self, perhaps the graces of his boyhood, had conquered. Rodney had struck his colors and accepted defeat.

“This settles it, Miss Braithwaite,” he said. “There’s nothing more to hang around for. You are right; Cis decides it herself. I beg your pardon for my impertinence, but—”

“I shall not remember it, Mr. Moore; you have been sorely tried. I do not wonder that your nerves snapped. Will you let me say to you that with all my heart I wish you well? Happy, too, though I know the word sounds mocking in your ears to-night?” Miss Braithwaite’s voice was exceedingly kind; her heart went out to Rodney, whose state was immeasurably more to be pitied than Cicely’s.

“Thanks,” said Rod miserably. “It does sound what you might call far-fetched. You might tell Cicely, if you will, that I’m going away; I won’t stay in Beaconhite. I haven’t the heart to stay; I’d be always looking along the streets for her. Tell her I’ll stick with the same concern, and, if she ever needed me for anything, to address me in care of Hammersley and Rhodes, Chicago. That’s the head office, and they’ll forward anything. Good night, Miss Braithwaite. Is Cis staying with you long?”

“I hope all winter,” said Miss Braithwaite. “It’s only fair to her to tell you that she has gone through utter agony; her victory over herself has been hard won, so don’t underrate it, and try to see the value of eternal things, if such a girl as our Cicely Adair can turn from joy and love for their sake. Cis could not go to you into the wrong; come to her into the right. And God bless you, poor lad.”

“Thanks,” said Rodney again. “I’m done with Church, but I’m much obliged; you mean it well. I hope Cis will stay on; you’ll look after her. I don’t understand how she came to be here; I suppose you’re one of these befriending women. Good-bye. Tell Cis—No! What’s the use? You can’t send messages that do any good. I wish I could kiss her good-bye. She’s—she’s a wonder! Oh, good God, what’s the use? Good-bye, Miss Braithwaite.”

Rodney turned and dashed toward the door. He collided with the end of the bookcase nearest it, fell back, begged its pardon, and with a second dash was gone. Miss Braithwaite drew a long breath, and turned toward the fire, picking up the tongs to mend it, under the necessity of action; she was considerably disturbed.

“It’s most wearing to have love affairs, even by proxy,” she told herself. “He’s not without attraction, and I can see that he’s remarkably handsome when he has slept, and eaten, and shaved. Dear me, what a singular thing it is that with all the millions of people there are in the world one can become so vitally necessary to another that the loss of him—or her—is cataclysmic in effect! I wonder how the saints endure all the human disturbances unloaded upon them for their help! I find it exhausting. But then I have not died, and thus gained the larger point of view! And, furthermore, it’s barely possible that I’m not a saint! Now for my poor Cis! I can imagine her state with Rod downstairs and her polarized will holding her upstairs, forever separated, yet with but twenty-five feet between them!”

Miss Braithwaite went upstairs. She found Cis on her knees at the balustrade, her face pressed to the spindles, which her fingers tightly clasped.

It was a wet face that she raised to Miss Braithwaite, but she was glad to see it so; tears were healing.

“I heard his voice; I saw him go out, Miss Braithwaite! He will never come to me again! Oh, Miss Braithwaite, Miss Braithwaite!” Cis sobbed.

“Well, as to that,” began Miss Braithwaite in a customary formula of hers, as she lifted Cis gently to her feet and led her into her chamber, “I’m not so sure. You see, even though we live only about seventy years, it’s amazing the things that can happen in that time, things which we declared impossible! I have a notion that you may not be through with Rodney Moore, and his affairs, but I doubt that they will always mean to you as much as they do now. He behaved well, my dear—at the last! I’m bound to say that he seemed ready for personal violence upon me at first. He accepted your decision completely, quietly, and nicely. He told me to say to you that he was leaving Beaconhite, but may be reached through the main office of his firm in Chicago if ever he could serve you. And that is behaving prettily, my dear, and it is a real relief to us not to dread your meeting him. So now, my Cicely, will you go to bed and to sleep, resting peacefully on your knowledge that your fight is fought, your victory won, and that God is tenderly blessing your true heart with the love of His Heart?”

Miss Braithwaite left Cis on her pillow in her pretty room, ready to sleep from weariness, relaxed, as Miss Braithwaite had suggested to her, by the knowledge that this chapter in her life was closed.

At the foot of the stairs Miss Braithwaite met Mr. Anselm Lancaster, just coming to call upon her; they were great friends.

“You look tired, dear Miss Miriam,” he said at once as they shook hands. “Anything wrong?”

“No; on the contrary, something wholly right,” she replied, leading the way into the library. “I’ve been watching the Great Cable strain, but, thank God, it has held, and I know a little bark that has all sails set for the Beautiful Land.”