The cable

CIS spent Saturday forenoon picking up her belongings, packing certain things in a large old trunk, others of more immediate emphasis in a perfectly new, smaller trunk, leaving pictures and the few pieces of bric-a-brac which she owned, to be boxed.

She was entirely cheerful over these preparations, whistling softly between closed teeth, sometimes breaking into a snatch of song; it was evident that change was by no means unwelcome to her.

Nan Dowling, on the contrary, sat on the edge of the bed, avoiding physical comfort as her body dropped from extreme mental discomfort, watching Cis with her hands clasped, hanging forward between her knees; her lips drawn down, her eyes gloomy. She had the forenoon free because she was going on duty at one, Cis’s old time, having made an exchange with another girl who gladly accepted the chance to have an evening off, especially Saturday evening.

“Cis, don’t take everything you own with you!” remonstrated Nan. “Pack a trunk to leave at my house.”

“I wonder why?” said Cis absent-mindedly. “Believe I’ll give this blouse to the waitress. It’s a bit tight for me, though it’s still as good as ever, but that poor little lean thing will like something decent, and she’ll be able to lap it over the way it was meant to go; I can’t.”

She held up a pretty linen shirt-waist, turning it by the shoulders, considering it in the sunshine’s strong light.

“You wonder why you should leave a trunk with me?” Nan persisted, ignoring Cis’s suggestion of the gift. “Because it looks so horridly final when you’ve taken everything with you; you may want to come home again. At least you might let me hope that you will, let me feel I had a link with you.”

“I won’t come back next winter, Nanny; I’ll push on farther if Beaconhite doesn’t appreciate me—or I appreciate it. I don’t say I’ll never come back, but I know I’m going to keep away a while,” declared Cis. “So there’s no telling what I could get on without. And as to that word ‘home’ you used, where’s my home? In those trunks! A girl like me, without kith nor kin, boarding or lodging, hasn’t a home. Of course, I’ll always call this old town home, because I was born here and grew up here, but that’s nonsense, when you come to think of it. You’re the only thing here to come back to; I don’t need to leave a trunk to hitch me up to you, small Person! So your silly Cicely takes all she owns with her. Say, Nan, why do you suppose they didn’t nickname me Silly, instead of Cis? Comes just as straight from Cicely!”

“Oh, dear Cis! You always make me feel as if you were a kite and the rope was slipping through my fingers! You’re the friendliest thing, yet you don’t care one bit for people—unless it is for me?” sighed Nan. “Aren’t you going to say good-bye to Father Lennon? And—and—go to confession this afternoon before you start?”

Cis shook her head hard. “Not time for confession for me yet; not for quite a long while. I’ll turn up somewhere by Easter, maybe at Christmas! Don’t look bothered, good little Nan! I’m going to be honest whatever else I am. I often wonder if I’m honest to go at all. You don’t think God can like us to pretend, do you?” Cis turned unexpectedly serious.

“I think He likes us to hold on hard when we are tempted to let go, and that we can be honest in wanting to hold on, at least,” said Nan slowly. “I’m pretty sure this idea you have of being honest is dangerous. Isn’t it just as honest to receive the sacraments because you know you ought to, as because you happen to feel like it? And there’s more merit in it, so it is sure to earn the feeling for you after a while?”

Nan spoke hesitatingly; she stood in awe of Cis, of her cleverness, her reserves, and also her unreserve, which was likely at any time to shock Nan.

“Maybe, nice Nanny,” Cis assented lightly. “I’m so full of pep that I don’t crave anything that life can’t give, and I don’t think I’m a great sinner, honest! I’m pretty square; I tell the truth; I hate lowness; I don’t harm people, I even like to oil other people’s springs when the going’s hard. I don’t know exactly what religion does mean to me; I’ve got some, at least I’d never be anything but Catholic, but I can’t see why I’m not living a decent life, better than some people’s who are at confession every couple of weeks or so.”

“Of course, Cis, and you’re a peach; you know what I think of you, part of it, anyway. But that’s not all of it. I’m no good at explaining, but all that’s just this world,” Nan faltered; she could have made her meaning clearer, but she shrank from preaching to Cis.

“This world it is, Nancy Bell! Where else is our address? I’ve heard about it; you mean what they say in church about ‘natural virtues.’ Well, I’d like to know who created nature, what’s wrong with natural virtue? It’s a nice, natural thing to be jolly, and kindly, and not jealous, or hen-minded—hen-minded and snake-acting! And you’ve got to own up that some pious people are just as jealous and harsh as can be, wouldn’t deal half as decently with other folks as Cis, the Sinner! So that same Cis can’t feel she’s so awfully a sinner! As to saying good-bye to Father Lennon, why on earth should I bother him and myself, now I’m going away, when I never saw him to talk to him when I was here?” Cis flicked a scarf into Nan’s face, adding:

“Smile awhile, Nancy! I may be headed wrong, but I’m not dying, and perhaps I’ll brace up and turn saintly before Father Lennon—or someone else—comes to say good-bye to me for good and all!”

“You’re so big and brave and daring; you’re like a soldier! I can’t bear to have you miss connections, Cis.” Nan said softly. “Not enlist.”

“Nice Nanny!” Cis began again, then held up her hand.

“Footsteps on the stairs, strange ones! Nan, they’re coming this way! Think the company is sorry, and is sending me an appointment in the main office?”

Cis opened her door to a boy who knocked, a messenger boy.

“Miss Cicely Adair,” said the boy, glancing from one to the other girl. “Answer. I wait—R. S. V. P., see?”

“I see!” cried Cis, smiling at the boy in perfect sympathy with his boyhood.

“I’m the lady you seek! Sit down—but for goodness’ sake don’t sit on my best hat! I’ll read, then I’ll write—maybe!”

She tore open the envelope addressed to her in an unknown, feminine hand, an unusual hand, full of character and refinement; she drew forth its contents.

“Well, Nan!” exclaimed Cis. “It’s from Miss Lucas! Here, read it!”

Then she threw on the floor a pile of articles which covered a straight chair’s seat, shoved back other things from the table end, and wrote:

She addressed an envelope, folded her tiny note, sealed it in the envelope, and handed it to the boy, who rose to go.

“You’re one!” he said admiringly. “That’s the kind o’ letter! Don’t have to hurt your eyes over it! Mostly they writes tons. Had the deuce of a time findin’ you!”

“Don’t blame you one bit!” said Cis cordially. “I have an awful time finding myself! But I think it pays in the end.”

“Yeh,” the boy grinned, instantly, like all boys, in perfect sympathy and understanding with Cis. “So long. Much obliged, but it’s paid, both ways.”

“Of course it is, but an ice cream cone does no harm, and that’s outside your day’s wages,” retorted Cis, letting him out. Then she turned to Nan.

“What do you suppose she wants of me? Is it to bless, or to curse me? I’ve got to go, couldn’t refuse and wouldn’t want to, but at the same time if you want to play my part I’ll lend you my clothes, Nan,” she said.

Nan laughed; she would have tripped on Cis’s skirt, short though skirts were, and fallen through her jacket.

“Your clothes are not a good fit for me, Cis, and I’d be less of a fit in your place at Miss Lucas’. I’ll never be able to wait to hear what happens there!” said Nan.

“Pity you’re on duty all this afternoon and evening! But I’m going to Mass to-morrow, sure. If you go to the eight I’ll meet you and tell you all I know,” Cis suggested.

“All right; that’s fine!” Nan’s face brightened. “It’s time I went home to lunch, if I’m to be at the office by one. Remember, you’re to spend to-morrow night with me. Oh, Cis! Your last night!”

“Oh, I don’t know! I look forward to many more nights, Nanny, and some of them with you!” laughed Cis, persistently cheerful.

Cis dressed for her call on Miss Jeanette Lucas with more trepidation than she would have been willing to acknowledge. She looked exceedingly well in setting forth, all in white; plain-tailored linen skirt; fine hand-wrought shirt-waist; a simple white hat of soft straw, with a soft white bow on one side its sole trimming; her masses of glowing, shining red hair emphasized by its snowy setting.

Cis noted her effects in the mirror with approval.

“Not so bad, Cicely, my dear,” she said aloud. “Neat, but not gaudy—except your hair! You’re not in the least a beauty, but you look kept-together, and I’m not ashamed to walk out with you, Miss Adair!”

She nodded at her reflection in the glass, sighed as she took up gloves, which she detested, and ran downstairs, dreading her coming call, yet afraid of being unpunctual.

The Lucas house stood back from the street behind its tall trees, screened from its surroundings, although its neighborhood was the best in town. “The old Lucas place” was a landmark, built shortly after the building of the Republic; it had been finished in time to entertain Lafayette when he had returned to see the new order which his youthful love of adventure had helped to establish on the western continent. It had been deemed a pity that the old estate was exposed to the danger of ultimate transformation into a Roman Catholic institution by the conversion of its present owner to the Faith of France, a Faith which might do very well for French heroes, born to it, but did not do at all for unheroic Americans.

It was an unwarranted anxiety that apprehended such a transformation for the stately house; besides Jeanette, his oldest daughter, Robert Lucas had an older married son, three younger boys and two younger girls, so that heirs were not wanting to save the house from a Sisterhood, nor was its neighborhood falling off to bring about a desire on the part of the Lucas family to sell it.

Cis went up its broad front walk to its wide, simply beautiful front door, impressed and quieted by the repose, the certainty of fundamental things, which reached her even on the exterior of the house.

A soft-footed, soft-voiced maid, with perfect manners, responded to Cicely’s summons. She said: “Please come in, Miss Adair. If you don’t mind, will you go right up to Miss Jeanette’s room? She is expecting you, and gave those orders. I will show you the way.”

She led Cis up a long flight of stairs—the house was remarkably high-ceiled—its steps low, mounting at the easiest possible angle, yet with a broad mahogany handrail to aid in progress. There was a deep recessed landing more than half-way up, an arched window lighting it, a splendid old clock standing back against the wall in its corner.

The maid knocked on a door that stood slightly ajar at the rear of the hall on the second floor, and instantly pushed it open.

“Miss Adair, Miss Jeanette. I brought her right up to you as you told me to,” she said.

The maid stepped back and withdrew down the hall. A girl about Cicely’s age arose from a low couch on which she had been reclining, and said, speaking low, lifelessly, as if speaking were an effort:

“Please come in, Miss Adair. You were kind to come. Will you take this chair?”

She drew forward slightly a deep chair, softly cushioned in dark blue, and herself dropped back on the couch, sidewise among its piled pillows, not lying down, but resting on her elbow. Yet, listless though her attitude was, her left hand clutched the corner of a pillow, wrinkling it tautly in a nervous grasp.

She was dark eyed, dark haired; Cis thought that she had never seen anyone so pale; her olive skin, naturally beautiful in tint and texture, was almost greenish in its livid tint; there were great circles under her eyes which looked sunken, as if they had been staring wide open into the dark for sleepless nights. Cis forgot her embarrassment, her uneasiness as to what might be before her because of her share in what had befallen this girl, in an overwhelming pity for the grief which had thus wrecked her loveliness.

Miss Lucas suddenly spoke, clasping and twisting her fingers, her hands thrust forward on her knees, her eyes burning as they stared at Cis.

“I’ve seen you before,” she said.

“I was introduced to you at a benefit for the Orphans; I served cream. I didn’t expect you to remember me,” Cis answered.

“You have a face to be remembered,” Jeanette Lucas said. “We had hard work tracing you. We—I, rather—wanted to find the girl who——” she broke off; her low, husky notes gave way to a strident tone in her voice. She waved her hands as if she were throwing something away. “See here, Miss Adair, we’ve got to talk frankly, as one girl to another. There has been too much between us to beat about the bush, to try for foolish, futile disguises of speech.”

“I never like them,” said Cis.

“Then—why did you do what you did? Do you know—have you ever known—Herbert Dale?” demanded Jeanette, speaking with such eagerness that she could hardly enunciate.

“Never. I’ve seen him,” replied Cis.

“But you knew that night who he was; you knew it was something concerning me nearly, horribly, tragically nearly. How?”

“He called you often; we get used to voices and ways on the wire, Miss Lucas. All the world knew from the papers that you were to be married; that’s easy to explain,” Cis answered gently.

“What was your motive? Why did you connect me with that wire? Did you hate him, or me?” asked Jeanette.

“Oh, Miss Lucas, why do you say that? Can’t you see why I did it?” cried Cis distressed. “I’d been admiring you; you’re so pretty, so fine, so good, so stainless! It made me sick to think that you might be walking into unhappiness, blind, tricked. I did what I’d want done for me in your place; I put you where you could know, and then whatever you did, you’d do with your eyes open. I wanted you to have a square deal, dear Miss Lucas.”

“At first I loathed you, I would have punished you,” cried Jeanette. “But even at first I knew that I could not marry him. I tried to think I could, that I’d be a St. Monica, but no, oh, no! I could not see him; I could not think of him; he was a painted mummy case that held another body, not the body in which my heart was buried. It was not hatred, it was worse—distrust, horror! He was not only wicked, but he was deceiving. Oh, Cicely Adair, when you put me on that wire you killed innocent, poor young Jeanette Lucas! I don’t know what it has done to me; I shall go on, but never again the girl who answered your call that awful night. We don’t lightly break a promise to marry, we Catholics, but Father Lennon said that I could not marry a man from whom I shrank with horror. I am not going to marry. But I’m not blaming you. I have been blessing you through long, black hours of day and night, all alike dark! I should have died if I had discovered that my husband was a liar, wicked. I thought that I should cure his one defect, his indifference to religion. I know now that he was false to all things, to me as well as to God! Cicely Adair, you’re a Catholic girl; remember this lesson when you think of marrying. I am grateful to you, but, oh, I loved him, I loved him, and he never lived! I can’t mourn the loss of the man I loved; there was no such man. You can put flowers on a grave. I myself am the only grave I have: I am dead, but the man I loved never lived. Oh, me, oh, me!”

“Dear, dear Miss Lucas! Oh, I’m sorry!” cried Cis, beginning to tremble.

“No! Be glad! I’m glad; indeed I am glad and grateful that you saved me from worse! My father never trusted Herbert Dale. Mother liked him, but father was afraid. He blesses you for what you did. It was fine for one girl to stand by another, unknown girl like that! I sent for you to tell you this. I hear the company found out, and dismissed you. There was a fearful scene when I gave back my ring and told Herbert that I knew him at last. He guessed—not at first, but after a while; I’m too dull to keep a secret against his experienced questioning—he guessed how I found out. He swore he’d have the girl dismissed who had put me on his wire. I know that he succeeded. I am profoundly sorry. I owe you what cannot be repaid, but—will you let my father help you in some way? He told me to say to you, when I told him that I meant to find you and thank you, that you would be still more generous and unselfish than you’ve already been, if you would let him help you to your feet again. He said he would be honored in recommending you to any position, a girl with such fine kindness and loyalty and true standards as yours are! Will you be frank with me, please, dear? I’ve spoken to you without the thinnest veil over my face!”

“Bless your dear, sweet soul!” cried Cis. “I’m all right. I’m leaving town to-morrow, going to seek my fortune, if you can imagine it!”

“Oh, no! Are you? It’s worse than I thought,” cried Jeanette aghast. “What a pity, what a shame! And all for me, to save me from being a wretched wife! How could you be so kind to me? Indeed, indeed you must let us do something about it!”

“Dear girl,” said Cis, leaning forward, taking one of Jeanette’s burning hands in her firm, cool, shapely ones, “you mustn’t take that hard. I’m a restless fish; I’ve been wanting a change. I could find a job here, but I’ve been wanting to go away. I’m taking the chance the company’s given me to pull up stakes; that’s all. I’m going Monday, to Beaconhite, just for sport, so don’t you worry over it, you dear!”

“Beaconhite? Oh, father could help you there! His brother is the president of the biggest bank in the city, and if you had a letter to him he’d give you something splendid, I know he would! Will you let father give you a letter to Uncle Wilmer? Please, please say yes!” Jeanette pleaded with hands and eyes, leaning forward eagerly.

“Sure I’ll say yes!” laughed Cis. “And then I’ll say thank you! It’ll be great not to be without a plank on a new ocean. But all I ask is that you and your father will quit feeling that you owe me anything. I knew the company would drop me, but that’s nothing! I tell you I’ve been fidgeting lately. Anyway, what’s that beside marrying the wrong sort? I’ve been fond of you this good while, Miss Jeanette Lucas; I’ve taken comfort in making believe I knew you, and that we were friends. Funny, maybe, but all girls have sort of far-off crushes, I guess! Then, when I’d a chance to be a friend to you in good earnest, you’d better believe I liked it! So that’s all there is to that, my dear!”

Jeanette looked at Cis hard and long, then she leaned over to her and kissed her. “Strange,” she said slowly. “You have come into my life deeply with one stride. No other girl is bound up into my life as you are. As long as I live I shall remember you, the girl who saved me. I shall keep your face, your wonderful red hair, in my mind when I am old and feeble—if I live to be so! It doesn’t seem as though I could go on living, but I know people can’t die because they no longer really live. We are friends, dear, and your sweet, queer dream of me came true.”

“I’m so sorry about you, I ache,” said Cis simply. “What are you going to do, what will become of you? Don’t talk of dying!”

“Father is going to take me to Europe for six months. That’s all I know of a future,” said Jeanette. “I’m stunned; it doesn’t seem true most of the time. Then it is the only truth in all the world, and I reel under the feeling that all else, all I trusted and believed, is false. I never knew wicked people, and if the one who seemed noblest, best, is treacherous, wicked, how do I know, how do I know? I’m not easy to transplant, Cicely; my roots won’t take hold again. But your clear, changing, warm, pitying face looks true. My father and my mother are good, good and dear! I must find my way. Don’t you think I shall?”

“Stop brooding over it,” advised Cis, out of her complete ignorance. “There’s not a man born worth worrying over. Set it down to experience, and quit thinking of it.” Jeanette looked at her wondering, then a faint smile passed over her face, hardly more than the shadow of one, but Cis rejoiced in it.

“That’s good advice, dear,” she said quietly. “But if you have poured yourself, all of yourself, your life and all its parts, into one vessel and it is broken—how do you go on, how gather it all up, into what? Tell me this, brave, wise, ignorant Cicely Adair! Don’t love anyone, Cicely; it hurts!”

“Well,” said Cicely, “I hope I sha’n’t. I like people lots, but I never wanted anyone so I lay awake five minutes wanting them. I must go now. You’ve been mighty good to me. I was afraid you might almost hate me. I think I could love you.”

“You could love someone, and find it as hard as I do; you are the sort that can love,” said Jeanette. “I think I’m fond of you, Cicely Adair. I’m too numb to feel anything but the one pain that absorbs me, but I’m sure I’m fond of you. Father will send that letter to you to-morrow. I’m glad it’s to be Beaconhite, where he can introduce you, but I’m sorry, sorry you are suffering through me.”

“Not a bit of it! I love to go, honest! I was brought up by strangers; my mother died long ago; I live in lodgings; what’s the difference? Good-bye, you dear, dear, lovely Miss Lucas! Go to sleep; you look all in. When I think I made you look like that——”

Jeanette shook her head, and took both of Cicely’s hands.

“It was a blessed deed, dear,” she said. “I sent for you to tell you I’m grateful; not to thank you, because I can’t. We are friends, Cicely. We can’t be parting for always; we have been drawn too close. Will you let me know what happens to you, if letters aren’t too burdensome to you?”

“I’ll tell you, if you care,” said Cis. “Good-bye.”

Jeanette followed Cis to the head of the stairs, and rang for the maid to show her out. Cis looked back, smiling up and waving her hand half-way down.

Jeanette leaned over the broad mahogany rail, her soft silken negligée drawn around her, her eyes burning in their pallid setting, her dark hair loosely shading her face, her white lips pitifully pulled into a smile for Cicely.

Cicely, boyish, unscathed by suffering or desire, yet knew that the girl, Jeanette Lucas, whom she had idealized, had died under that surgery by which she had cut off from her what would have slain her.

Cis walked slowly down the street, pondering the mystery of this contradictory truth.