The cable

IT WAS settled that Cis was to return to Beaconhite. Mr. Lancaster had gone back, and immediately there came a brief, warm, characteristic letter from Miss Braithwaite to Cis.

“You are to come home on any terms you choose, my dear,” she wrote, “as long as you come; there are no terms to my wanting you. If you will establish yourself in this house for good and all it will be transformed. My library is large, but not large enough to fill the vacancy in my life. Summer is coming, and I shall not be able to keep a fire on the hearth much of the time; can’t you see how the library will need your hair in it? I need your radiance, my child; you are a most vivifying person, Cicely Adair! Other fires than that on my hearth are burning low; I grow chilled. Anselm tells me that you are coming, yet hesitate on the heels of the resolve lest you may not make good—isn’t that the way to put it? Let me judge. You know how fully I speak my mind; I suppose no one ever is doubtful of my meanings! Then, when I say that coming to live with me will fulfil several of the corporal works of mercy—feeding the hungry, comforting the sorrowful, visiting the sick—of mind, at least—it is strictly true. I am impatiently waiting for you; come as soon as you can, please. And be sure that I am not only lovingly, but gratefully, Your grumpy old friend, Miriam Braithwaite.”

“You are glad to leave me, Cis—and baby!” Nan reproached her.

“You are so completely married, Nannie! And I can’t claim my godson unless I do away with you and Joe,” Cis replied. “With Jeanette living in Beaconhite I’ll have one girl friend there. Father Morley will teach me what I ought to know; he’s truly a great man. You know what Miss Braithwaite is; I’ve told you as much as can be told about her. Life in that house is never far off from the greatest, the eternal things, but it is also overflowing with beauty of books, music, art—and Miss Braithwaite does so love to play like a child, but a witty, wonderful child! It’s a beautiful life; I can’t help being glad to live it. But you know I love you, Nannie!”

Cis took her small friend in her arms to kiss her hard.

“There’s no chance for Tom, Cis?” hinted Nan. “I thought, possibly, when you sent Rodney Moore away—I know you did send him!—that maybe—? Mother is so anxious for it; she’s going to talk to you before you go.”

“Oh, Nan, don’t let her!” protested Cis. “That’s awful; second-hand wooing! If a girl were beginning to think about a man I’d suppose that it would turn her off to have his mother come to offer him to her! Don’t let your mother try that! And help me to dodge nice young Tommy! Because I’ll never in all this world marry the boy, so why bother about it?”

“Why, indeed,” sighed Nan. “I’ll try to head off my family. I think Tom is convinced that he stands no chance.”

“He knows I’m truthful and sure of what I want,” Cis said lightly. “Now I’m going to talk to Mr. Singer. We’ve everything running in fine shape down there; it won’t be hard to fit someone into my shoes.”

“I wish Miss Gallatin would take it,” said Nan.

“I wish she could,” Cis said thoughtfully. “But it ought to be someone younger, more ornamental. Girls forget that sort of woman made herself what she is by being the right sort of girl; they think they were always elderly and were born with serious, decorous clothes on, common-sense shoes, and carrying an umbrella to be ready for storms—a figurative umbrella against figurative storms, too! Miss Gallatin is going to stay on in the Lucas household when Jeanette leaves it. After all, she has a big field there; all those children and an invalid mother! I wish I could get a Catholic woman into the club of Bells—that’s what I call it, but Mr. Singer won’t let me use that nice name. Lots of the girls are the kind of Catholics I was, need the Catholic woman, and she wouldn’t harm the others! Girls aren’t a bad lot, but it’s marvellous how crookedly they see and think! I’d like to furnish them all with folding pocket rules to measure up by!”

Nan laughed, then sighed. “You’d do for a pocket rule for all of them, if you’d stay here,” she said. “A girl like you can do wonders. I’m sorry, sorry you’re going!”

“Let’s hope I’ll shine as a light to girls in Beaconhite; there are girls there, silly Nancy!” laughed Cis. “Nan, I think they named that city expressly for my coming to it! Hasn’t it been a beacon on the height to me?”

“It’s your post graduate college; it’s made you grow up. Oh dear, Cis, I’ve grown up, too, in the same time, but you have grown away from me!”

“Fast friends forever!” Cis corrected her, and pretended to mop tears out of Nan’s eyes with her handkerchief.

Yet when it came to the actual parting it was Cis, not Nan, who cried tempestuously. She realized that this was a farewell that was final, however true it might be that they were, as she had said herself, “fast friends forever.” Complete divergence of paths and interest ends, not the will to friendship, but its actuality. At their age Nan, married and settled, Cis going on to meet life, would pass out of knowledge of their common beginning. She and Nan would contrive to meet occasionally, and, thus meeting, find it difficult to talk together after the first exchange of news items was over. Cis recognized this, and felt it sad, but she attributed her crying to little Matt.

“He will grow every day, and do something new and darling every day, and I shall not see him, and he won’t know me when I do see him! If only babies wouldn’t grow up and begin to go to school so soon!” she sobbed, mumbling her godson’s soft cheeks.

“Mercy!” cried Nan, shocked by the suggestion that her son would soon take his place in the ranks of those in the second age of man’s career.

Miss Braithwaite’s coupé was waiting at the Beaconhite station to take Cis home when she arrived. She jumped into it with a thrill of joy and received Miss Braithwaite’s quiet, warm welcome shyly, yet with high delight. It seemed to her that at last “she belonged,” as she told herself; that this was a true home-coming.

Miss Braithwaite looked tired; Cis saw it after they had reached the house and were settled down to tea-serving by Ellen in the splendid library. At Miss Braithwaite’s age the effects of hard experience take the appearance of physical ills, and often their form; it was less that Miss Braithwaite looked as if she had borne grief since Cis had last seen her, than that she looked as if she had seriously overtaxed herself, her nervous strength.

“Oh, how good this is! How happy and how good!” Cis sighed dropping her hat on the chair nearest to her, leaning back in the low chair which she occupied and rumpling her heavy coils of hair into a looseness adjusted to the upholstery.

“I’ve been bad, Miss Braithwaite, restless, unsatisfied, not knowing what was wrong, but suspecting a whole lot of things! And the suspicion that it was this house and Beaconhite was right! I wanted to be here.”

“We are going to talk later; now it is tea, then rest, and this evening talk,” declared Miss Braithwaite. “Anselm wanted to come here to-night, but I forbade it; cloister observance for us this first night! Jeanette Lucas is to marry Paul Randolph, and be near by. Are you glad?”

“Indeed I am, only—Well, of course she wants to marry Mr. Randolph,” Cis hesitated.

“Nothing wrong with him; I’d find him a bit dull,” declared Miss Braithwaite. “He’s intelligent, has a nice mind; can’t turn it into currency to pay his way. I like a talker, as you know. But he is truly fine, and that he is nobly good he has given proof. There won’t be lacking those who will say that he recognized his opportunity; that marrying Jeanette Lucas was wise, and that his sacrifice of an income will be made up to him without much loss of time.”

“How contemptible!” cried Cis. “As though there were need of looking beyond Jeanette herself for a reason for wanting to marry her! If Mr. Randolph had that sort of worldly prudence he need not have come into the Church at all! Why are human beings so mean?”

“Because they are human, my dear. People must belittle fine actions when they are small people; big deeds are most annoying to small minds; they take them as personal affronts,” returned Miss Braithwaite placidly. “It really does not matter about the chatter of parrakeets. If you are so partizan of Paul Randolph why did you seem to hesitate just now in approving the marriage?”

“I always hoped Jeanette would marry Mr. Lancaster, you know,” said Cis promptly. “But neither of them ever showed symptoms, so I don’t suppose it’s Mr. Randolph’s fault.”

“Not in the least!” Miss Braithwaite laughed. “I sometimes think it may be another girl’s fault, though. I suspect Anselm of other wishes.”

“How exciting!” cried Cis. “Aren’t you going to tell me? He seems so splendid, so interested in affairs, it’s hard to imagine him thinking of marrying.”

Miss Braithwaite laughed again, but she held up her hands in horror.

“Now heaven forfend!” she cried. “Cis, are you transforming poor Anselm into the hero of the early Victorian novel? Solitary, superior, remote, a demi-god, with the human, half wishy-washy, artificial? Because it’s distinctly unfair of you, if you are! He is thoroughly a human being, but he has made his humanity what God meant a man to be. To my mind he’s forceful, strong and quick in feeling; a vital man. He’s precisely the man to think of marriage, and not to think of it coolly, but to bring to it a great love, such as would honor any woman and make her happy.”

Cis stirred uneasily; she could not have said why she felt uncomfortable, ill-at-ease.

“I don’t think anything of him that you would not want me to think, Miss Braithwaite,” she said. “I don’t know him as you do, of course, but I admire him almost as much. If only you could have seen him with those boys! And Tom said in the station everybody stared at him.”

“Boys? Station?” echoed Miss Braithwaite. “Tell me.”

And Cis told her the story, to which she listened without comment.

The next day Cis spent happily picking up the dropped threads of her Beaconhite existence. She went to Mr. Lucas’ office and received a welcome beyond her expectation.

“Ah, my dear!” Mr. Lucas cried. “Now I shall have you back as soon as I can open the way for you! You were a good secretary; I miss you. But you were also a good confessor of the Faith! Amazing, but it was you who first brought home to me unescapably what I’d been suspecting all along; that there really was something unaccountable on natural grounds in the Old Church. I’m going to be a Catholic at Pentecost, my dear Cicely!”

“Yes, I know; Jeanette told me. I’m so thankful! And I could cry when you say I was the one who set you on!” Cis exclaimed.

“Nothing to cry over! We don’t cry Te Deums, and that’s your theme,” Mr. Lucas smiled at her. “When will you return to the office? As soon as I provide the space?”

“I think so, Mr. Lucas. Miss Braithwaite would rather I’d stay at home all the time, but I’m afraid that’s a risk for a red-haired girl; they’re not crickets on hearths! Miss Braithwaite promises me all that I can do, though. We’ll see. May I have a few days in which to adjust?” Cis asked. “Now I’m going on to find Father Morley.”

The Jesuit was at home; he received Cis with his cordial, yet appraising look that took an inventory of her days since he had last seen her. He seemed satisfied with what he saw; his eyes softened and smiled approvingly. He recognized in Cicely’s face a new expression of self-reliance, purpose; peace that was not incompatible with the eager, wistful, unsatisfied look which her face also wore.

“Ready for the next thing,” he told himself, “and it’s not far ahead of her.”

But aloud he said: “I am glad, exceedingly glad that you have come back to us, Cicely. Miss Braithwaite is thankful; she is deeply attached to you. You wrote me of that remarkable sequel to your fidelity to God’s law. Do you care to tell me more about it?”

“I want to tell you all about it, Father,” Cis answered. “I might have married Rodney without wrong-doing, but—Father, I couldn’t! Isn’t that strange? I didn’t want to. I’m not a fickle person, but I didn’t want to. He told me that I had been right as to his still being married. He felt that there was no divorce when he knelt by his dying wife. It’s all strange, isn’t it?”

“That isn’t,” said Father Morley. “It is strange, that you were the one who saved that poor creature from suicide to die like a Christian, but it is not strange that her husband recognized the indissoluble link between them. You will find it always true that the supernatural law does no violence to the natural law, but, on the contrary, confirms it, while elevating it beyond nature. To my mind that is one of the proofs of the Church. Heretics have gone contrary to natural laws in all sorts of ways. The Church repeatedly proves that the hand of the Creator is also the hand that founded her. She has sanctified, ennobled, supernaturalized, not contradicted man’s natural instincts and desires. Well, well! You’re not demanding her proofs! Why do I set poor little you up as an heretical tenpin to be bowled over? What is your next step, or do you not know it yet, Cicely Adair?”

“No, Father,” replied Cis wistfully. “I don’t know a step; not the next one, nor any beyond that. Do you think I might be a nun? A Sister of Charity would be more in my line; active, you know. Is that what I’m made for?”

Father Morley looked at her gravely, yet with a quizzical twinkle in his eye, as if he were enjoying with himself a pleasant secret.

“No, my child, I do not think that is your vocation,” he said. “I think that you are meant to be a real helpmeet to a fine man; to do good in the world, bear witness to the value of Catholic Faith and standards, and train up your sons and daughters to carry on that noble inheritance, while they rise up and call you blessed. Perhaps one day to see your son raise his hands before the altar, holding in them the Host, and to kneel, thanking God with tears, that you upheld those hands for that miracle.”

“Father!” cried Cicely, and was silent, tears on her cheeks. “If I might! I’d like that most of all,” she murmured after an instant.

Anselm Lancaster came that evening to see Cis; he announced that his call was wholly for her. Cis saw him come into the library with amazement that his presence so changed it. There was about him a buoyant happiness; charm went out from him, and purposeful assertion, which was far from conceit, sat on his every movement.

“Miss Miriam, Cicely Adair has never seen my house. I was offended last year that you never showed it to her, as much as you drove about, but I hid my wrath. Now I’m out for revenge! I’m going to show it to her myself, and not invite you! Cicely, I’ll be here at half past two to-morrow afternoon. Please be ready to drive with me, out to my house—it’s a shame you’ve not been shown it!—and also wherever the fancy takes us to go. This selfish and unfriendly Miss Miriam shall sit here and languish, eating her heart out till we return!”

“Is it a matter so serious as a heart-consuming?” asked Miss Braithwaite.

She caught and returned the flash of a look which Anselm darted at her.

“I’ll not pretend a virtue I lack; I hope so!” he said.

Cis was ready when he came for her; he helped her into his car, and she cried out, almost reproachfully:

“A new car! Why are men always changing cars? What did you do with that nice one, the roadster?”

“Turned it in; I don’t need two. I thought when Paul and Jeanette were married, and you were here, we’d need the five passenger; we can take Miss Braithwaite, too. But please don’t speak of that nice one; as if it weren’t this nice one! Let me tell you I’m proud of this car!” Anselm said as he shoved out the brake and started.

“Of course you are! They always are! Boys of new knives; men of new cars! They are much alike, aren’t they?” said Cis.

“Knives and cars? Oh, I don’t know; I could always distinguish the differences,” Anselm remarked.

“Boys and men! I never thought you would be stupid!” Cis said severely.

“I’ll prove to you I’m not, if you’ll wait a bit!” Anselm’s remark sounded like a continuation of the nonsense they were happily talking, but his look silenced Cis, and set her nervously wondering why it made her nervous.

The Lancaster house was far finer than Cis had expected to find it. She had known all along that Anselm Lancaster had wealth; he used it generously, and it must have been considerable for him to accomplish with it all that he did. But ocular proof is another thing from hearsay. Here was a house of great dignity, standing in the midst of considerable land, approached by an avenue of old trees. Its solid doors, opening, revealed a stately hall; in the rooms opening from the hall Cis found old furniture, beautiful and stately. Pictures which even her untrained eye instantly knew for good ones, hung on the walls; bronzes, a tall clock, all sorts of beauty which was evidently the slow accumulation by many people with taste and means to gratify it, filled the house.

“How beautiful!” cried Cis. “Why, Mr. Lancaster, it’s what the novels call a mansion! It’s as fine as Miss Braithwaite’s house!”

“They are contemporaries. Her great-grandfather and mine, and each generation since, have been friends. This house was built when hers was. My people were not Catholics, till my grandmother married a Lancaster and brought this house to him; she became a Catholic after she had married him. My father married a saintly woman; it is two generations—I the third—since the Lancaster house became a Catholic home. Now I try to make it a home for converts who are put to too hard a test at first; a temporary home, of course. I’m more than glad that you like my house, Cicely!”

Anselm spoke in a curious muffled voice, and Cis smiled up at him, disturbed, at a loss to account for it, and for the disturbance which she recognized in him. “How could I not like it?” she said.

“Will you come to see my dear mother’s sitting room?” Anselm asked, going toward the stairs. “It is up one flight. It is like a chapel to me; I’ve often wanted to make it into one, but there are necessary sleeping rooms over it; I can’t use it for a chapel. It is the room in which I was happiest as a child, though I was always happy. It is the room where I learned to love books and all beauty, and where my soul was born through the soul of that lovely creature who gave me physical life.”

Cis followed him, wondering, deeply moved. This was not the Anselm Lancaster she knew, yet it was not the contradiction of him; rather it was his efflorescence. He led her into a small, light room, facing toward the sunset, which was not yet, nor for hours, due. Evidently the room had not been changed since it had been used by the mother whom he had so dearly loved. Books, a work-basket, were on the table; a low armchair, considerably worn, stood beside the table. Anselm gently put Cis into it, and stood before her.

“My mother’s chair, dear Cicely,” he said. “I like to see you there. How you would have loved each other! Cis, dear, lovely, glowing Cicely, don’t you know what I’ve brought you here to tell you? Don’t you know? Haven’t you guessed?”

Slowly Cis shook her head, looking at him intently, as if she were groping her way, her mind rejecting the one explanation of his words that it could present to her.

“Why, I love you, Cis! That’s what it is. That’s easy to guess, easier to understand!” cried Anselm.

“No, no, no! It’s impossible to understand!” cried Cis.

“You’re going to marry me, dearest; you’re going to be here in my mother’s place, always. Can’t you love me? I love you so much!” Anselm pleaded.

“I never once thought of it; never once!” Cis cried.

“You don’t have to think of it; just do it!” Anselm said boyishly.

“I think you are the best, the finest—” began Cis, but he interrupted her with an impatient exclamation.

“Good heavens, Cis, stop! That’s nothing to tell me, nor to feel! Love me; don’t admire me!”

“Isn’t it? I think I couldn’t love anyone I didn’t admire,” said Cis, trying to find her puzzled way. “I loved someone; you know that. I was crazy to see him; it made my breath short when he came; I—One doesn’t love again, does she? But I know now that I couldn’t love him last winter because I didn’t admire him.”

“Cis, dear,” began Anselm, sitting on the edge of the table as if he meant to argue it out, “I think we don’t love again in that same first way; it’s the dream of youth. I had it, too, but I was only a lad of seventeen when I fell madly in love. You were older than I when it happened to you but you were not much older, and you were no more experienced, and experience is what counts in these things. There is a glamor over everything that is part of that time of life, and we have our first love hard. But, dear, it’s not in the same class with our later, mature love. Do you imagine I felt for that little fluffy girl of twenty whom I loved when I was seventeen, anything like what I feel for you? Nor was that first love of yours, which you so bravely conquered for God’s sake, the love you’ll feel for your husband, who will be one with you in all things of soul and body. Cis, honestly—though it may sound conceited—I am sure you love me. Will you be sure of it? Father Morley, Miss Braithwaite, Jeanette, hope for it.”

“Oh! Do they all know?” gasped Cis.

“That I love you? Surely. Blind little Cis not to have known it yourself! But now that you do know it—”

“I couldn’t so much as think of marrying you!” Cis hastily interrupted him. “Why, I’d be—what would I be? One of the people brought into a country to serve it, then deserting its flag—a traitor! That’s it! Miss Braithwaite imported me to live with her, be almost a daughter to her. Much good I’d do her if I—”

“Now, Cicely, can’t you trust Miss Miriam to me?” Anselm interrupted in his turn. “Do you suppose we haven’t discussed my hopes? Haven’t I just told you that she wanted them fulfilled? Good mothers do not want to mortgage their daughters’ lives; they want them to find their own places and happily fill them. Miss Braithwaite shall not lose you if I win you, dear one! She is most anxious for this marriage, Cis. ‘Cis must come to me, Anselm; then you shall woo her at your best. She shall be in her home, the home that holds you part of it, and I hope that will incline her to harken to you. But if not, then at least she is still in her own home; the dear child will be made secure however she decides.’ That is what she said to me, Cicely beloved, before I went away to try to bring you back. Marry me, then there will be another besides ourselves happy; Miss Miriam the third rejoicing.”

“I don’t see how you can possibly mean that you want to marry me!” said Cis slowly abandoning Miss Braithwaite’s cause. “Don’t you think you mean someone else?”

“I distinctly think that I mean no one else!” cried Anselm. “Do I strike you as positively feeble-minded? There’s no difficulty in telling you from all others. I can tell you apart literally, quite apart from all others created! And I’m not grave and settled down; I’m only thirty-eight, darling! Are you thinking of me as solemn, serious, almost elderly? No, no; I’m not! I’m your lover, Cis, and he loves you more than he can tell you. Will you come here, Cis, desire of my heart? Will you help me in the beautiful schemes we’ve discussed? Take my mother’s place, but fill only your own place, my wife’s place, my helpmeet’s place—and more; a thousand times more!”

“You are meant to be a real helpmeet to a fine man.” Cis heard Father Morley’s voice again saying these words to her. He had known when he said it that Anselm meant to ask her to marry him; he wanted her to marry Anselm, though Anselm was a great man, while she was only red-haired Cicely Adair!

It came upon her with an irresistible rush of conviction that she did love Anselm, that she had been loving him and had not known it. For how could she ever have thought of his loving her? Yet this was why all other things, Nan, her old home, Rodney Moore seemed insufficient to her; this was why she had been restless, longing, unsatisfied. What a life it was that opened out before her in this house, the wife of this man, his helpmeet, his beloved!

Distrust of herself, the magnitude of the joy stretching out before her drove her into the true woman’s dalliance with yielding to this unforeseen bliss.

She must hold off for a little while the glorious submergence of herself out of which she knew would arise the truer, greater self which would forevermore be Cicely.

“Take me home,” Cis said rising. “I cannot answer yet.”

Obediently Anselm followed her toward the door, but he looked bitterly disappointed. Cis halted, wavering, on the threshold, as her heart smote her for this look. This was Anselm’s mother’s room, the sanctuary of his childhood, the shrine of a tender love. It would be sweet to make him happy here; he had brought her hither for this.

She was a generous Cicely, albeit a frightened one. She turned fully and faced Anselm.

“I think I do. Love you, I mean. I’ll come,” she said.

He caught her, reverently, gratefully, yet most lovingly in his arms and kissed her flaming hair, her white brow, her closed eyes, and at last, with the bridegroom’s kiss, he kissed her sweet lips.

The great cable which had held her fast, had also drawn Cis safe into port.

THE END

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