The cable

AS THERE are fifteen minutes between tides when the ocean lies quiet at neither ebb nor flow, so the world seems to rest between Christmas and the New Year; preparations for holidays over, active work not resumed.

Cis had decided to continue as Mr. Lucas’ secretary, at least until spring. Affairs in which he was interested had taken on sudden activity in ways and directions which would have made it hard for him to begin a new secretary at that time; entire fidelity to him and complete silence as to what had to transpire to his secretary were especially required now in her who filled that office. Cis knew, in spite of her lapse for Rod’s sake, that her successor might easily bungle things, as she never would, or intentionally talk, to her employer’s detriment. In view of Mr. Lucas’ proved interest in her, Cis felt in honor bound to stand by for the present, if she could do so. Yet there was upon her a restlessness of mind that impelled her to change, any change. “It was growing pains,” Miss Braithwaite told her, and Cis knew that she was right. She was growing, and the expansion of her powers called to her to give them scope.

Yet Cis was growing steadily happier in Miss Braithwaite’s home, and she knew that Miss Braithwaite thoroughly enjoyed having her there. Her sense of humor, which never could long be downed, was coming to the surface again; she made her hostess laugh with chuckling delight over her nonsense. Once more she was growing to be the frank, boyish Cis, who was excellent company and attractive to all sorts of people. With this revival of her old charm, Cis was acquiring the charm of one who lives intimately in the best companionship. She read eagerly, with Miss Braithwaite to guide her choice of books; she listened no less eagerly, and began to share talk as valuable as her reading. She met interesting people, and heard discussed measures of great import, helpful to individuals and to her country. She began to drift up to the edges of these things and to help in them, ever so little, but learning to do, to plan; being, unknown to herself, inducted into the great things now waiting on every hand for lay men and women to perform.

Father Morley came often to see Miss Braithwaite; he relied on her acumen, her remarkable powers for help in his undertakings. He, a tired man, not particularly strong, delighted in the refreshment he received in her restful library, from her own wit and gracious talk; from her brain which understood at a half word much that he could not say. She put at his disposal all her resources of talent and wealth and social position.

Father Morley was himself a person of rare cultivation of mind; he had been an omnivorous reader from his childhood; his remarkable education began long before his seminary days, exceeded textbooks.

He found Cis interesting; he recognized in her that capacity to soar which so far surpasses the sufficient goodness of excellent souls, and he made it his affair to help Miss Braithwaite to hold up Cicely’s opening wings. She grew deeply attached to this tenderly kind, austere Jesuit, and yielded herself gratefully to his molding.

Thus the winter swung into its steady pace after the New Year, and Cis was amazed to find that her days were not only peaceful, but full to overflowing, and that they were happy. There was an ache in her heart for Rodney; she did not forget, yet being an honest Cis, she realized that if he were to return to her he would not satisfy her as he had done; that in severing herself from Rodney Moore she had leaped over on to a height beyond him, and that from that hour she had gone on ascending.

How strange it was that in doing right she had gained in time the good that had been promised her only for eternity! There was that ache in her heart for Rodney—what woman would not mourn a lost love, perhaps the more that she began to see the loss in its true light—but the Cis who had been for a quarter of a year the inmate of Miss Braithwaite’s house, associated with her and her friends, had grown beyond the girl who had been satisfied with Rodney Moore.

As the winter evenings grew cold and drear, Anselm Lancaster sought no less frequently the cheerful fireside, the laden shelves, the grand piano of Miss Braithwaite’s library; still more the delightful fireside talk of its mistress, whom he admired with all his might.

And Cis herself? Did he find her an attraction? Sometimes Miss Braithwaite thought so, but Cis surely did not. However, she had grown friendly and at ease with Anselm Lancaster, chatted with him, showed him her natural gifts, as well as the supernatural ones developing in her; was her frank, sunny self, and of course Anselm was not so stupid as not to find her likable, admirable. But there was no ground for seeing more in it than that, Miss Braithwaite decided, perhaps with relief.

He talked to Cis of the things which interested him; of his work, his plans. Of his home, which he made a temporary home for those who had left home and relatives for conscience’ sake, who needed a foothold upon which to stand to catch the breath of the new atmosphere when the old had become too vitiated for them to continue to breathe it. Of his Italian classes, his organized effort to hold the immigrant against assault in the new land; of all the ramifications of his lay army to fight against Lucifer, the once-beautiful, the forever subtle and attractive.

Cis listened enkindled.

“It is splendid, glorious!” she cried. “If I stay in Beaconhite will you teach me how to do, and put me at something? I’ve got to pay back, a little, somehow!”

“You could do anything with the Italians, Miss Adair. Will you study the language? It isn’t hard to learn it. And you could do much else; you’re a dynamic creature. But ‘if you stay in Beaconhite’? Aren’t you sure of staying?” cried Mr. Lancaster.

“Not a bit,” declared Cis. “I don’t know what I may do, but this isn’t quite my own life. I love Miss Braithwaite a little more each day; I’d be thankful to go on here forever, if she needed me. She is greater than any other woman; there’s just one of her! But I don’t mean much here. I think there must be a place for me somewhere that will be my very own, something that I was meant to do. Sometimes I think I’ll go home where I came from, but that isn’t sensible, either. Oh, I don’t know! I’ll know, I suppose, when the time comes.”

“That’s good sense and good theology—which is tantamount, though lots of people don’t know it,” said Mr. Lancaster. “It seems to me that you have a decidedly real place here, as you put it. Miss Braithwaite is strong and active, but at sixty-five the goal is in sight. It seems to me that to stay on here, companion her, look after her, work in with her in her numerous ways of usefulness till you can carry them on alone as she drops out, is an opportunity anyone might welcome. Miss Braithwaite is a power for good; there is no one whom I admire more, and everyone, from the bishop of the diocese to that small lame boy in whom you are interested, turns to her for help. To prolong such a life and make it happier—of course there is no better way to prolong life than by making it a happy life—it seems to me I’d think several times before I decided that was not a worth while chance for a young thing like you!”

Cis returned the smile that Mr. Lancaster bent upon her, but she said:

“That all sounds beautiful, and it is more than worth while; the only trouble is that I can’t imagine my doing it! I wonder where Miss Braithwaite is? Don’t I hear Ellen bringing someone in here?”

Ellen pushed open the heavy doors of the library.

“Miss Lucas and Mr. Lucas, Miss Braithwaite,” she announced, and Cis looked up to see Mr. Wilmer Lucas coming forward, and behind him Jeanette Lucas.

“Oh, Miss Lucas!” Cis cried, and ran forward to greet Miss Lucas on a sort of track of red wool, trailing her crimson knitting by a needle caught in the fold of her gown, the little lame lad’s sweater which she was just finishing.

“Oh, Miss Lucas, I am so glad to see you! Ellen, please find Miss Braithwaite; she may be in her room. How kind of you to bring your niece here, Mr. Lucas! You know Mr. Lancaster? Miss Lucas, this is Miss Braithwaite’s friend, Mr. Lancaster.”

“I’m truly glad to see you, Miss Adair,” said Miss Lucas in that unforgettable sweet voice of hers. “And to see you so happy here. Uncle Wilmer has been telling me that he is grateful to father and me for sending you to him.”

The two girls stood, their hands still clasped, looking at each other, both remembering where and how they had parted, the singular bond that united them, all that had come to pass since they had met.

Jeanette Lucas looked years older; her face had lost its sweetness; it was as beautiful as ever—Cis thought that she had forgotten how lovely it was—but older lines, which barely escaped being bitter ones, had been graven on each side of her delicate lips, and her eyes were introspective, no longer meeting other eyes with ready sympathy. Her wound had gone deep, the cruel wound of finding unworthy someone whom one has utterly trusted, and of learning to unlove. She had withdrawn into herself to hide her hurt.

Jeanette Lucas saw the girl who had been merry, frank and free, grown older, too, but in every way bettered by it. Never precisely pretty, Cis’s face had sweetened and softened; its whole effect was of a face that had been clarified and ennobled. Dressed in soft dull gold and brown, her wonderful hair topped the harmony of color like an aureole; in undefined motions, intonations, Cis had refined, become one of the world in which Jeanette Lucas had been born and always lived.

Miss Braithwaite, hurrying in, interrupted this unconscious scrutiny of each other which absorbed the girls in oblivion to all else. She welcomed Jeanette cordially, even affectionately, putting her at once into Cicely’s chair close to hers before the fire.

Anselm Lancaster dropped into his usual place; Mr. Lucas, in a capacious chair in the middle. For a moment Cis hesitated, then she took a low stool and put herself close on the other side of Jeanette. It seemed to her that Anselm Lancaster found Miss Lucas interesting, and instantly Cis’s busy brain began to weave a plot to which the happy ending was intrinsic.

“Father is perfectly well, thank you, Miss Braithwaite,” Jeanette was replying to Miss Lucas. “We went abroad on my account, but he profited from it more than I—except as it added to my knowledge. Father already had enough knowledge of pictures and architecture. We had a delightful trip, yes, thanks; England, France, Italy; Spain, to a limited extent. I’d like to go back. Why not go with me, Miss Adair?”

“I am going; I’m saving up to go,” said Cis unexpectedly; Jeannette had not been in earnest. “I’m getting ready for it in other ways; Miss Braithwaite and Mr. Lancaster talk about Europe so much that I almost know which corner to turn to buy shoe-strings, or to see the best pictures in the gallery! I’ll show you the way around Europe, Miss Lucas, if you will let me go with you.”

“Miss Adair can show you many other things besides the way around Europe, Jeanette!” Mr. Lucas corroborated Cis. “If ever the day dawns that I’m not involved in crises of several corporations and public affairs, simultaneously, I’ll take you both abroad; Miss Braithwaite shall go as duenna and Mr. Lancaster as cicerone.”

“A contract, before witnesses!” cried Mr. Lancaster. “I want to show you a picture in Florence for which you might have sat as model, Miss Lucas.”

“How delightful! I’ll keep the appointment, Mr. Lancaster,” said Jeanette. “Miss Braithwaite, do you know why I’m here to-day?”

“Because you knew how glad I’d be to see my little Jeanette again?” suggested Miss Braithwaite.

“Dear Miss Braithwaite, I hope you are!” said Jeanette, touching Miss Braithwaite’s hand. “That’s dear of you, but that’s not why. We are in desperate straits for a housekeeper. She must not be an ordinary person, but someone quite extraordinary. Father is going away, to be gone a year; possibly more. Mother is in wretchedly bad health; father will not leave to me the responsibility for that great house of ours, the children and the servants; rightly or wrongly, he doesn’t consider me competent to it. He wants a woman higher above suspicion than Cæsar’s wife; competent to take charge; good, and she should not be a common person, or the servants will not obey her, and I doubt that the children would; they’re keen-eyed little animals! I suggested to father that he had these qualities compounded in a laboratory, and the form containing them somehow galvanized into the semblance of a living human being, but he said: ‘Before we resort to such extreme measures to get the unlikely person we want, you run over to visit your uncle at Beaconhite, and see Miss Miriam Braithwaite. She is a such a good Roman that she has acquired some of St. Peter’s quality of fisher of men; she has all sorts of ramifications out, and no end of all kinds of people on her lines. Quite possibly she may know precisely the person we need, and one who equally needs us.’ So here I am, Miss Braithwaite, at your mercy.”

“Dear me, that’s a hard order to fill! Can you suggest anyone, Anselm?” began Miss Braithwaite, when Cis interrupted with an exclamation.

“Miss Gallatin!” she cried. “Nice, queer, splendid Miss Hannah Gallatin!”

“The very person! But why do you think she’d go, Cicely?” said Miss Braithwaite. “She takes boarders, and is going on well, I think?”

“I’m sure she perfectly detests taking boarders,” insisted Cis. “I believe she’d love to be with people like the Lucases, with children to help bring up, and someone she’d love, like Miss Jeanette! I’m sure she’s horribly lonely; she was dear and good to me; she would adore Miss Jeanette. Wouldn’t it be all right to ask her?”

“I am sure that Miss Adair has hit it!” cried Mr. Lancaster, rising. “I know Miss Gallatin well, and she is lonely, and she does loathe her present surroundings. I’m going home; I pass near her house. Would you like me to sound her for you, Miss Lucas?”

“I’d be most grateful,” returned Jeanette. “Though it makes my head whirl to find the impossible right around the corner, turning possible under my eyes! I had no idea of getting so much as a clue to a person!”

“This is the House of the Thaumaturgi; you see your friend, Miss Adair, is getting their powers; this suggestion was hers,” said Mr. Lancaster, and said good night.

“Now you two children take each other off somewhere, and compare notes on these past months since you met,” ordered Miss Braithwaite. “I suspect you want to see each other, and I know that I want to talk to Mr. Lucas, now that he has delivered himself into my hands!”

“She doesn’t realize how little I really know you,” Cis said apologetically, as she led Jeanette to her own room.

“Neither do I!” retorted Jeanette. “I think we agreed that circumstances had made us friends beyond common measures of time and opportunity. May I speak like an old friend? May I call you Cis; will you call me Jeanette? That’s right! You have changed a great deal, Cis; you are wonderfully changed. So am I, but not for the better, like you. My uncle has told me what you have done. My dear, my dear, I am proud of you, and ashamed of me! You have been brave, faithful, and you are not whining! I’ve been bitter, awfully, horribly bitter, Cis! I hope it’s better now. I’ve been feeling that it wasn’t fair, what happened to me. I suspect it hurt my pride. I felt insulted, dragged down, as if God had dealt unfairly with me.”

“Oh, my, no!” cried Cis. “God doesn’t deal unfairly; why would He? You wouldn’t. But any girl would feel insulted in your place; it’s a shame! I thought so then, and I’ve been thinking so ever since. But it wasn’t God’s fault, you know. Don’t you suppose God saved you from worse sorrow?”

“Yes, I do! He sent you, true-hearted and courageous, to interfere for me!” cried Jeanette. “Cis, I’ve blessed you before every shrine I visited in Europe and here!”

“Then it’s likely that you saved me in your turn, Jeanette. I might easily have slipped my cable; likely you helped me hold,” said Cis simply.

“Do you know what you have done, Cicely of the burnished hair? You have impressed my uncle Wilmer by your action, coming as it did on top of my great father’s choice of the Old Church, Miss Braithwaite, and other people and things. He is looking into the Church; he never would before! He told me he was going to satisfy himself just what this strange power rested upon that made ordinary people martyrs and saints! He is a prejudiced, strong-willed man, Cis, but he is an honest one, and you know what happens when honest people begin this study. Your hand set this in motion, Cicely Adair!” cried Jeanette.

Cis looked up, then she looked down, for tears stood in her eyes.

“Would you really call it my hand?” she asked.

“Ah, well, the nails which hold the wall together do not drive themselves,” said Jeanette. “Cis, do you remember Mr. Singer, of the telephone office at home? I saw him lately; he asked about you. He told me that, although he was forced to dismiss you from the office for what you did, because it was a flagrant break of their rules, still he admired you exceedingly for it, as well as for your qualities as he knew them. He said that they were making a department of welfare work for their employees, and that he knew no one whom he would so well like to have over it as you. He said that if I came in contact with you he should be grateful if I would tell you this, and ask you to communicate with him. He said that he wanted a girl of high character, integrity, kindness, and someone able to entertain and attract the girls whom she looked after; he added that you were the one above all others whom he had in mind. So I’m handing on the message, in spite of disloyalty to Uncle Wilmer! You can think it over. At least your dismissal, Cicely, is thus squared off! Mr. Singer did not betray that he knew it was I who was involved in your violation of the rule of the company, but I’m sure that he did. Do you want to come home again, Cis? It’s good for you to be here, but I’m selfish enough to wish you were at home again.”

“That was nice of Mr. Singer; thank you for telling me, Jeanette. I don’t know what I want to do; I’m all at loose ends in my mind, but I think, after I’ve boiled for awhile, I’ll settle down; not boil over,” said Cis.

“It takes a long time to get one’s bearings after an earthquake,” agreed Jeanette. “I’ve been wretched, unhappy, bitter, bewildered; I’m better. But, Cis, you don’t look like any of these things; you look good, sweet and good, and—well, clear is the word! It isn’t going to be a vocation, is it?”

“For a convent? Oh, no; I’m afraid not. I’m not that sort; I’m active. Do you suppose there ever was a red-haired contemplative? Even though the hair was cut off when she was professed? I doubt it! You were always so good!” cried Cis.

“I don’t know, I don’t know! I wish I might go,” cried Jeanette. “It seems mean to offer yourself to God because a man failed you.”

“It wouldn’t be that; it would be that a man showed you that only God was worth loving,” Cis corrected her with the insight that was new to her. “If God wanted you, why would you care how He got you? I can see that there are all sorts of ways.”

“My dear, my dear, you have travelled far in a short while!” said Jeanette; then sighed and smiled. “We have come to the end of our talk; there is no more after that. Come back to Miss Braithwaite and my uncle.”

“Anselm Lancaster called up, Jeanette and Cis,” Miss Braithwaite said as the girls came back into the library. “He says that Miss Gallatin was overjoyed at the suggestion of getting away from her detested business and looking after Lucases of assorted sizes. She is coming to see you, here, in the morning, Jeanette. You are to stay the night; I’ve arranged with your uncle, and I only hope that you may carry off with you that pearl of great price, Hannah Gallatin.”

Miss Gallatin and Jeanette Lucas saw each other with perceiving eyes in the morning, and Jeanette went with Miss Gallatin in Miss Braithwaite’s coupé to find Mr. Lucas in his office to arrange for the speediest winding up of Miss Gallatin’s affairs.

“You had an inspiration, Cis,” declared Miss Braithwaite when Jeanette Lucas had gone home again from Beaconhite, with all arrangements made for Miss Gallatin to follow her. “A lonely woman, and a home that needs her. Jeanette Lucas will gain much from Miss Gallatin, and Hannah Gallatin will be lonely no more.”

“I wonder—” Cis began, and stopped.

“Yes?” Miss Braithwaite waited.

“If I had another inspiration?” Cis went on. “May I say it? I wondered if Mr. Lancaster would not fall in love with Jeanette Lucas, and whether it would not be beautiful if he did?”

Miss Braithwaite stared, then she laughed.

“She’s a lovely creature, and I’d not blame anyone for falling in love with her—you have fallen a wee bit in love with her yourself! But, Cis, my dear, are you getting to be a matchmaker? That’s a sign of old age, poor Cis! Why, I’m not nearly old enough to try to pair people off—or am I old enough to know it’s a risky business, besides being hard to work? That would be a pretty pair, I admit, and suitable. Well, well; possibly! Then you think my beloved Anselm is good enough even for Jeanette Lucas?”

“For anyone; too good for almost anyone else,” said Cis promptly. “Miss Braithwaite, Jeanette said that she told you about the telephone welfare department at home, and Mr. Singer’s selecting me to run it. What ought I do?”

“Come to dinner,” said Miss Braithwaite instantly, winding her arm around Cis to take her to the dining room. “And stay where you are till you get marching orders which can’t be forged. Dear me, are young girls the only ones that have a claim? How about an old girl who needs you? Stay with me, Cicely Adair, at least till you can endure me no longer! You’re a bright spot of comfort, my child, and I like to see your red hair beside my red fire on the hearth!”