The cable

“NOW, my dear, you must turn toward the east when you say your prayers,” Miss Braithwaite briskly said to Cis the next morning at breakfast.

Cis smiled inquiringly, missing her meaning; it was one of Miss Braithwaite’s highest assets that her meanings were not always obvious; they stimulated curiosity and held attention.

“I don’t suppose you really mean that I’m to turn to the east?” Cis said.

“You are to face the coming day, keep your eyes on the rising sun, your back resolutely turned on the setting day,” explained Miss Braithwaite. “That is called orientation, and it is your best attitude now. Indeed I don’t know anyone who can afford to take any other—eyes toward the orient ‘whence comes the light.’” Cis was considering this hint from Miss Braithwaite all day.

“Anyone else would tell me to brace up, or let bygones be bygones, or something of that sort, but Miss Braithwaite gives everything she says a turn that makes you begin to do what she advises, even while you’re listening to her,” she thought. “I’ll look eastward! I’ll wear blinders so I can’t see, except straight ahead! But I’ll be glad when Christmas is over.”

Miss Braithwaite involved Cis in preparations for a Christmas totally unlike any that she had hitherto known. There was to be a tree for her “scalawags,” and it was not hard to interest Cis in this. She went with Miss Braithwaite to see her little ragged boys, and capitulated to them at once, as they did to her. It refreshed Cis to play with them, to talk to them, falling back on the vernacular which she had learned from her newsboys in those old days, hourly becoming more and more unreal to her. There was a small, peaked lame little creature of nine who won and wrung Cis’s heart. She immediately began a glorious warm crimson sweater for him, on which she knit frantically every evening when she was not oversewing tarlatan candy bags with bright worsteds, or assembling and gluing into place the figures for the little, but perfect “Cribs” which each child within Miss Braithwaite’s orbit was to receive to take home at Christmas. She would set up a “Bethlehem” in wretched places, far enough removed in squalor and vicious ignorance from the light of the Star, the chant of the angels.

Every one of Father Morley’s girls in his club was to receive a book and some of the useless, pretty things which girls covet.

“It’s downright brutal to give only utilitarian things at Christmas!” declared Miss Braithwaite. “It’s a joyous time, and who can be joyous over black stockings and initialed handkerchiefs? The girls must have nonsensical things; dangling, silly vanity-feeders along with their substantial gifts from Father Morley, else Merry Christmas would be mockery said to them.”

She put Cis at assorting these gifts, and, being a girl herself who was to be but twenty-two on this same Christmas, she enjoyed her task.

Mr. Lancaster often dropped in after dinner, and not infrequently to dine. They all three drew up before the vast hearth, with its jolly fire lighting up Cicely’s red hair, turning it to gold-with-copper-alloy on its surface coils; making a dark warmth below its surfaces, like a low fire on a forge.

Cis did not talk much, but she listened, and, listening, found new worlds opening out before her. Both Miss Braithwaite and Mr. Lancaster had been much about Europe; they knew unfrequented corners of it as one knows the places beloved in childhood.

“Do you remember, Anselm?” Miss Braithwaite would begin, and then would follow eager reminiscences of dear, queer, crooked streets; a shrine in a cathedral; a room in an ancient palace, or, more delightful still, a sleeping village and the sweet ways of its peasants all informed with faith, the realization of God, and utter trust in Him.

Or Mr. Lancaster would exclaim: “Oh, Miss Miriam, do you recall that little wounded kid which we saw the summer you and I met in the Tyrol, and how its sad-eyed little owner carried it—at such an effort!—out to the Calvary on the hillside, and laid it at the foot of the crucifix? There was faith that the God Who suffered to save souls would also pity His small four-footed creatures!”

“Indeed I could not easily forget it, Anselm! It was so sweet, and so piteous,” Miss Braithwaite had answered. “I’ve always been most thankful that you came along just then! I am sure that there is one young creature in Switzerland who will carry to the grave the conviction that, together with the guardian angels, Americans are the instruments of God’s mercy in answer to prayer! What a happy child that was when you bound up the kid and set its leg!”

Cicely, sitting silent on her side of the fireplace, raised her eyes and met Mr. Lancaster’s look, like a boy’s who has been found out in gentleness, always more mortifying to an American lad than detection in naughtiness—together with her impressions of life amid venerable, yet vividly existent faith, she was getting the revelation of two beautiful souls, the elderly woman’s, the twenty-seven years younger man’s, who knew and loved these things because they were part of them.

Sometimes something came up in these desultory, aimless talks which made Mr. Lancaster spring up, take a book from the shelves—Miss Braithwaite seemed to know exactly where to send him for any volume of the three thousand or so in this room—turn to a passage or a poem bearing on what had just been said, and read it aloud.

This was almost the best of all. Anselm Lancaster had a beautiful, flexible voice; he had been an Oxford man and had brought home with him the perfect modulations and pronunciation of English which Oxford gives her sons, and he read with the feeling that an artist and lover of literature brings to a book. Cis, listening, felt that her education was just beginning; she realized what Miss Braithwaite had meant when she suggested to her that she should spend this winter in this way. Heretofore she had learned facts; now she was learning what the facts stood for, what had called them into being, and no array of facts can compare with this knowledge. It is the clothing of the dry bones which are meaningless until the spirit prophesies to them and makes them alive.

Best of all, though, were those times when Anselm Lancaster went over to Miss Braithwaite’s piano, standing with its narrow end toward a book-filled corner, its keyboard toward the room, and, there in the shadow, played such exquisite music that it obliterated conscious thought, leaving no room for anything but the delight of harmonies. It was hard to go on working at these times. Miss Braithwaite’s work would fall into her lap, her face rest upon her hand while she gazed into the fire with eyes that seemed to look beyond the bounds of flesh, her expression unutterably wistful. Cis, who did not understand what she heard as Miss Braithwaite did, yet was engulfed by it. Never in her short life had anything so seized her as did this music, yet, while in the elder woman it woke the longing that nothing on earth can satisfy, in the girl it called out new resolution to live and to do.

Cis talked little during these pleasant evenings, yet she never felt, nor was excluded. Miss Braithwaite’s smile was always ready for her; Mr. Lancaster included her with small services rendered her as she worked, and his eyes rested upon her as he talked, leaving her free to reply or not as she chose, and thus she, though silently for the most part, made a third in the conversation.

On the eve of Christmas Eve Mr. Lancaster came rather later than usual; Cis had decided that he was not coming and was a little disappointed. She was restless; it was hard to keep her fingers steadily employed, her mind off the thought that the morrow would have been her wedding day. Somewhere Rod was remembering this. She sent a prayer out toward him wherever he might be, that he might be blessed.

When Mr. Lancaster came in Miss Braithwaite was more than usually glad to see him.

“Welcome indeed, Anselm!” she cried. “I am glad to see you, I heartily detest telephoning, but I must arrange the details of our Christmas with you. You know that the Jesuits have High Mass at midnight? Father Morley needed persuading to it, but he yielded to our clamor for it. My ragamuffins have their tree to-morrow, at five in the afternoon—though I don’t suppose you’d have suspected me of the morning five o’clock! As you’re to be my Santa Claus, you’ll meet me at the hall, I suppose? The tree should be all over by seven. Then you’ll come home with us; we’ll have a cozy dinner—maigre, for the vigil!—and quietly wait for the time to start for Mass. I’ll drive you and Cis; the maids are to be sent in another car. Then, after Mass, we’ll wish one another a blessed Noël, and Cicely a birthday of the best gifts, and go our ways to our well-merited slumber. Do you like my programme?”

“Only an ingrate could say no, Miss Miriam,” cried Anselm Lancaster. “I’ll do my best to fulfil my part of it. I’ve an idea! Do you mind if I costume as St. Nicholas, instead of Santa Claus, and tell the boys in a few simple words who I am, what I’ve always done for children, and, in a word, what a fine thing it is to have a saint for their friend, instead of a fake? I think I can get it over to them, and it’s rather a chance to steer them toward realities. What says the great little lady? And her lieutenant?”

“The great little lady highly approves, Anselm; it takes you to see chances to bolster up faith and morals incidentally to a frolic!” cried Miss Braithwaite.

“And—?” hinted Mr. Lancaster, waiting for Cis. “The lieutenant?”

“If I’m the great little lady’s lieutenant, she thinks it’s fine,” Cis said. “It will be good for me, too, because I don’t know much about St. Nicholas, except that somehow he stood for Santa Claus’ portrait, and it didn’t come near the original. Queer, but I never liked Santa Claus as well as other children did; he’s too fa-stout! I hated that line that told about his shaking when he trotted around! Maybe I’d have liked him better if I’d been one of a family, and a lot of us had got acquainted with him together, waiting for him to come down the chimney.”

Anselm Lancaster looked pleased at this unusually long speech from Cis. Sometimes Cis wondered if he knew her story and were sorry for her. She did not mind if he knew, nor resent his possible pity. He was so simply and truly a fine gentleman that no knowledge that he possessed of another could ever seem like an intrusion.

“Good! Then St. Nicholas appears, permissu superiorum!” he cried. “Miss Braithwaite tells me that you are to sing, Miss Adair; out of sight, impersonating an angel, probably. I didn’t know you sang.”

“I don’t; I’m just going to do it,” Cis laughed. “If I impersonated an angel I’d be out of sight, that’s sure!”

“In a slang sense?” suggested Mr. Lancaster. “Will you sing now what you’ll sing then to the children, please, Miss Cis!”

“Oh, goodness!” sighed Cis, but she promptly arose. “All right; I will. It’s the quickest way to prove I can’t! But I can’t play; Miss Braithwaite plays it.”

“Not when Anselm is here,” said Miss Braithwaite. “Play ‘The Snow Lay on the Ground’; play it in F, and harmonize it beautifully, because I intend you to play it for Cis to-morrow night.”

Anselm Lancaster sat down before the dark instrument that reflected the fire and electric light in its shining case. He struck a few chords meditatively, then he went on to play the simple, lovely air over and over, surrounding it with new harmonies, varying it, not as a fantasia, but by holding to its simplicity, its lyric pathos, enriching it with all the possibilities of a choral.

Cis stood listening, entranced.

“Isn’t that wonderful?” she sighed. “It’s all there, and yet nothing is there till you bring it out! I love that hymn!”

“There’s a pretty allegory tucked away in what you just said, Miss Adair, if you look for it. Now will you sing it for me?” said Mr. Lancaster, softly touching the keys.

Cis sang, and Anselm Lancaster for the unnumbered time in his knowledge of her, applauded Miss Braithwaite’s wisdom. Cis had a fresh, true young voice, round and sweet, with the quality in it of a boy’s; she had no method whatever, but sang as it had been given to her to sing, yet no artist could better have conveyed the effect of an unearthly narrator, telling the story of the First Christmas. It was a song like the flow of a mountain spring, or the shape of a northern pine, translated into sound.

“My dear Miss Adair, that was most beautiful!” Anselm cried sincerely. “It is exactly what it should be. You sound like one of the shepherd boys who sing that hymn on the mountains beyond Rome, or even like one of their pipes! And you speak every word so that the dullest boy will get it.”

“I want them to know what it tells them,” said Cis, and Mr. Lancaster noted that she made no disclaimer of his praise, as she made no pose as a singer. She did what she was asked to do as best she could; there it began, there it ended.

“Of course they can’t understand the Latin, Venite adoremus Dominum, but they are all baptized, and I think we catch a little Latin then, don’t you? It seems to stick to us. I know Latin never seems like something I don’t understand, even when I’m not understanding it, and at high school it never bothered me a bit.”

“Do you know the Missal?” asked Anselm Lancaster, interested in this Cis, suddenly friendly toward him and at ease with him.

“Miss Braithwaite has been showing it to me, and all about the colors, and the vestments’ meaning; I’m so glad that she has!” cried Cis eagerly. “It’s so splendid, so beautiful, so big and so old! It’s as if I’d been a miserable little scrap of a beggar girl and someone had taken me into a palace with rooms and rooms, and told me it was all mine! Do you know, Mr. Lancaster, it’s scandalous to confess it, but I always thought there was just one Mass; every day the same, three hundred and sixty-five times a year. And here all these collects and prefaces—mercy!”

Cis waved her hands as she ended; her delight in recovering her inheritance was unmistakable.

“Now I know what Santa—I mean St. Nicholas!—must bring you!” cried Anselm Lancaster, exchanging a glance of pleasure with Miss Braithwaite.

Weary, but triumphant, having brought “her ragamuffins’ Christmas tree” to a successful conclusion, Miss Braithwaite took her guests home in her coupé to dine on Christmas Eve. It was another Cis from the one of the night before who sat, pale, with drooping eyes, in her golden gown with its slender line of brown fur, opposite to Mr. Lancaster, talking little, eating indifferently, her face grave, rather than sad, her smile sweet and ready, with a kind of friendly patience new to Cis.

Miss Braithwaite saw that Anselm watched her, and she, also, watched her covertly. The girl was changing fast; she was growing, deepening, expanding. At this rate she would soon be a gracious, attractive and valuable woman.

A thought new to her mind occurred to Miss Braithwaite, but she instantly dismissed it. Anselm Lancaster had seen many lovely and lovable women, in many lands; Cicely Adair could not attract him beyond his sympathetic interest in a girl who had done what she had done, had been faithful to the cause nearest his heart.

And if Cicely had been capable of attracting such a man as the scholarly and accomplished Anselm Lancaster, he was so far from her thoughts in this regard that she would never put forth the innocent wiles which are every girl’s for the man whom she feels may love her, by which she awakens and feeds his attraction, according to the plan of the Creator Who made them male and female. Cis withdrew from Mr. Lancaster as a rule, as from one outside her orbit, and when she approached him it was with that admiration and trust that frankly announced her sense of remoteness. Yet it was a sweet, a womanly Cis, with new depths in her eyes, and strength and goodness being graven upon her pale face, who sat so quietly across from Anselm Lancaster in her golden, brown-furred gown that Christmas eve at dinner.

After dinner, as usual, Miss Braithwaite repaired to her library fire. The night was cold; a sleet rain was falling, turning to ice as it fell; the fire was welcome, its warmth and its cheer needed.

“Anselm, before you begin to smoke, will you call the garage? I detest telephoning. Tell Leo to put the chains on my car, and not to fail to have it here by half past eleven; I will not drive faster than ten miles an hour to-night. Then you may light your cigar, and draw up to be agreeable to us,” Miss Braithwaite commanded her guest. “Cicely, dear, is it to be for you an order that keeps perpetual silence?”

“I’m afraid no order, of any sort,” said Cis arousing herself. “Fancy me not talking! But we went to confession, you see, and after that I can’t say much for awhile. I’m thinking about Nannie, married to-morrow, and wondering what my birthday resolutions ought to be.”

She spoke softly, sitting close beside Miss Braithwaite, but Anselm Lancaster heard her low, yet resonant voice.

He hung up the telephone receiver, and came back to the hearth. As he slipped into his waiting chair he laid on Cicely’s knee a package; evidently a book.

She untied the cord and disclosed a translation of the Missal, bound in tooled red leather, three ribbons hanging from its pages.

“Oh!” cried Cis rapturously. “Oh, Mr. Lancaster, how fine, how beautiful! Is it—” She checked herself, but, fluttering the leaves, her arrested question was answered. On the fly page was written in the close, small hand of one who wrote and thought much: “Cicely Adair. Her Lord’s birthday and her own. Christmas 1922.”

“Oh, thank you, thank you!” cried Cis. “You can’t know how much I wanted it! Nor how I thank you! Truly, Mr. Lancaster, I’m so grateful I can’t say it. To think of your bothering with me.”

“Oh, but, my dear Miss Adair! I protest! Bothering with you! How dreadful! And not grateful, you know! Aren’t we friends? You must not be grateful to a friend! But I hope you’ll like your Missal; of course you will! Now I’m talking nonsense, too! I wanted you to have it for the Midnight Mass. You told me you’d never been to a midnight Mass! It’s supremely beautiful; the Adeste, and that fourth stanza at midnight: ‘Ergo qui natus die hodierna.’ Will you say one tiny prayer for the Missal-giver?” cried Anselm Lancaster, so boyishly that Cis, as well as Miss Braithwaite looked surprised, and Cis said with the greatest friendliness, out of her own boyish side:

“I’ll say a big one! I’ll put you in with Miss Braithwaite and Nan. I’m going to receive for Nan; to-morrow is her wedding day. And someone who needs it most of all. I’ll put you into my intention, and if I mayn’t be grateful, Mr. Lancaster, I’ll be entirely ungrateful, but I’ll think you’re so good to me that I would be grateful if it weren’t terribly wrong to be anything but ungrateful!”

Anselm Lancaster threw back his head and laughed aloud, and Miss Braithwaite joined him. Cicely’s nonsense delighted her watchful friend; it was a symptom of health. Anselm Lancaster had never seen her mischievous; he found it delightful.

The church of St. Francis Xavier was crowded, but pews were held till ten minutes after midnight, and Miss Braithwaite had brought her two guests thither ten minutes before midnight tolled out from the clock on the adjoining house and school building.

The Mass was beyond words solemn and beautiful: the vestments of cloth of gold; the myriad lights; the scent of forest and incense; the great organ, the hundred choristers, the sublime music, the Adeste Fideles, sung with such fervor that all over the church people were sobbing with love for this inexpressibly dear hymn. With this the Mass marched on to its supreme moment, the greatest, the most inconceivable, the one infinite action of finite man, which encircles all creation, from Adam to the last born at the consummation of the world, performed in time, going on eternally.

Cicely was wrapt into something like ecstasy. The Christmas eve which she had dreaded had become the highest hour of joy which she had ever known. She was swept beyond herself into the rapture of the angels who first sang this Gloria to which she listened.

God had tested her; she had not failed Him. Now He was rewarding her with a reward beyond her comprehension. She received this communion with her face wet with tears of joy. At last, at last she knew in Whom she had believed, blindly, yet faithfully believed.

The rain had ceased when Mass was over; the congregation came out into starlight and an ice-clad world, shining under the light.

“Oh, Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas, dear, dear Miss Braithwaite, Mr. Lancaster!” cried Cis turning back on the lower step of the church with radiant face. “Merry, merry, merry! For it’s blessedly merry to be a Catholic on Christmas and to be at Mass when the little Lord comes down!”