The cable

CICELY had been three weeks in the service of Mr. Wilmer Lucas, four weeks a resident of Beaconhite. Although it lacked three days of being a calendar month the time seemed to her to stretch indefinitely backward into such length, that she had to stop to reckon up how long it actually had been. New experiences were crowding upon her, filling each day with interests so absorbing that the hours sped by, yet left a residue of the effect of more than twice their duration. Cicely was conscious of changes wrought upon herself by these swiftly passing days, changes so far undefined, yet not the less perceptible.

For one thing, her new friendship was proving interesting as none other had ever before interested her. Cicely had had many friends among the boys, and, later, among the young men of her acquaintance, but though they had been “jolly good fun,” as she put it, they were not especially interesting. She was easily the dominant one in every case; the chief interest afforded her by these youths was when they temporarily spoiled her theory of perfect comradeship between the sexes, which was devoid of sentiment, by falling in love with her, but this, although it interested her, displeased her. She invariably swung back into her faith in the possibility of a chum of the opposite sex, but it was annoying to find it so often a theory that failed only in its workings.

In G. Rodney Moore, Cicely had a friend of a totally new sort. He was older than she was, for one thing; he had seen immensely more of the world than she had, for another; he had read more than she had, let alone than any of her previous male friends. Most of all, he had an easy certainty of himself; an amused toleration of her insufficiently grounded opinions; a ready wit; great charm of face, voice and manner, so that, for the first time, Cicely found herself by no means able to hold the ascendency over him with which she had set out dealing with him, which had always, heretofore, been hers in dealing with young men. And, being essentially feminine beneath her boyish ways, she liked the man who dominated, while he admired her. There was much of the excitement of exploration for her in advancing constantly farther into friendship with this man.

Her work was also opening out new vistas to Cicely, daily demanding from her hitherto dormant capacity, skill of hand, but far more quickness of brain, judgment, discretion, all-around intelligence. It was transforming her day by day; although she did not definitely recognize this, yet its effect upon her was to increase the bewilderment of mind with which she was adjusting to new conditions, and to what was to prove the greatest experience of her life.

Cicely had been well educated with reference to practical ends; she and Nan had been superior to the majority of the girls amid whom they were employed; their position in the telephone exchange had been honorable, but not dignified. Now Cicely found herself surrounded by the portentous dignity of the private office of a lawyer who was, at the same time, a bank president, the great man of the city.

Solid men, both physically and financially solid, came to consult Mr. Lucas; Cis was gravely saluted by them as they entered and departed; she heard matters discussed which her keen wits soon showed her were of gravest importance in the money market, even in national affairs. All her former days had been lighted by nonsense for which she found opportunity among her companions; fun and nonsense were as the breath of life to Cicely Adair. Now from nine till four there was not only a complete dearth of opportunity to play, but the mere thought of trifling within those solemn, mahogany wainscoted walls, intruded like a profanation.

Cis was expected to be well-dressed, perfectly groomed—but this was natural to her. She was expected to take down any sort of dictation correctly, even to the dictation that she be elegantly correct in manner, reserved, silent, yet devoted, and this dictation was never given her directly but by the assumption that she was all these things. “I’m getting turned into a regular heavy damask, ten dollars a square inch,” she told Rodney.

It was true that this outward pressure inevitably had an inward effect upon the girl, yet nothing could ever quite subdue her native sense of humor, her frank friendliness to all the world.

“Miss Adair,” said Mr. Lucas one morning, “I have waited till we were mutually assured of your permanence in this office before initiating you into one of its secrets. You are quite sure that you desire to remain with me?”

“If I suit you, Mr. Lucas,” answered Cis. “I’m happy here, but I’m not sure how I’m coming on.”

“Satisfactorily, Miss Adair. On my part there is no question of severing the connection. Are you settled upon continuing?” Mr. Lucas looked at Cicely kindly, and she blushed with pleasure.

“Yes, Mr. Lucas,” she said. “I’m settled upon settling.”

“Ah!” her employer smiled. “Then I am going to ask you to learn the office code.”

“Code?” repeated Cis.

“We are often involved in cases which would be disastrous to great interests if they were known to the public. The mails are safe enough, and yet, like all human arrangements, they may sometimes miscarry. Mr. Henderson; our senior clerk, Mr. Saunders; our office in Chicago, and Washington, and myself use a code in relation to these affairs known only to the principals in our Chicago and Washington offices, and the three persons in this office whom I have mentioned. We have decided to have you learn the code, to use it when occasion arises in correspondence with our other two offices. Will you learn this code, Miss Adair, and are you willing to give your solemn pledge that under no circumstances, to no human being, will you ever disclose it?” Mr. Lucas explained, and waited for Cicely’s reply.

She looked at him with widening eyes, her brilliant eyes, dark, of a color that was hard to determine, varying with her mood and as the light struck into them.

“Sounds like a dandy detective story!” Cis said involuntarily. “Yes, I’ll learn the code, provided I can learn it, and of course I’ll never teach it to anyone else. How do I learn it?”

“It is set down in a sort of chart; you will study it here, of course; the chart must not go out of the office. There is an alphabet connected with it; I am afraid that you will find it troublesome, but I should like you to master it. By the way, my brother has become a Roman Catholic; his family is brought up in that religion; do you happen to be a Romanist?” Mr. Lucas frowned slightly as he asked the question.

“Yes, Mr. Lucas; I’m a Catholic,” said Cis. “Why, please?”

“Always running to confession? Asking advice of the priest on every known and unknown point, I suppose! What about the code and its secrecy?” said Mr. Lucas.

Cis laughed outright. “Never asked a priest’s advice on anything in all my life; don’t go to confession more than twice a year. I don’t know what you mean about the code, Mr. Lucas,” she said.

“You Romanists are a difficult lot to adjust to,” said Mr. Lucas. “I strongly object to the principle which is fundamental with you, of laying down your liberty of thought, being subject to a man, taking your opinions from an elevated priest over in Rome and acting on them at the dictation of a lot of half-educated common priests over here. Yet when you don’t keep up with the practices of your Church, you are a worthless lot, not often trustworthy. I make an exception of you, Miss Adair; I am satisfied that you are trustworthy, though, apparently, you are what I’ve heard your co-religionists call ‘an indifferent Catholic.’ Perhaps you are on your way out of Romanism? It would be a consummation devoutly to be wished. As to the code and its secrecy, what I meant is this: Suppose a priest wanted to get hold of it—they are great people for dipping their oar into other people’s waters and muddying them! Suppose a matter concerning politics, or the like, were afoot, and a priest heard of our code, in which we should correspond on such affairs—they are great people for finding out things that no one could ever have imagined their knowing! Suppose this priest, as I was saying, heard of our code and bade you in the confessional reveal it to him, what would you do?”

Again Cis laughed, this time with such heartiness, such manifest enjoyment of an absurdity that Mr. Lucas was already answered by her mirth.

“Why, Mr. Lucas,” cried Cis, “you don’t know how funny that is, really you don’t! I go to confession at Easter, usually at Christmas; it’s my birthday, too. And there’s a regular mob; it’s all the priests can do to get them all heard. Imagine one of them holding up the line while he talked code to me! How would he know I was in your office, anyway? I wouldn’t have to confess that; you only have to confess sins, and it’s not a sin to be employed here, Mr. Lucas! Why the poor priests try to get in a word of advice to you, and tell you what your penance is, but they can’t always do much more than say about ten words to you! No fear of the code getting talked over! Honest, Mr. Lucas, that’s funny!”

Mr. Lucas looked as though he were not sure that this was not impertinence on Cis’s part, but he decided to accept it for what it actually was, bubbling amusement over a mistake that struck her as absurd.

“Well, I’ve certainly never confessed,” he admitted, “nor ever shall, but I still think, though my supposition is outside your experience so far, that the case is entirely possible. What I want to know is what you would do if such a demand arose?”

“Hold my tongue, of course; what else could I do?” replied Cis with convincing promptitude. “He’d have no right to try to get it out of me, and I’d have no right to tell him.”

The code was put into Cicely’s hands the next day, her duties so arranged that she should have time for its study. To her chagrin she found it difficult, although her difficulty was usually in learning too fast to be secure of retention, rather than in acquiring her tasks.

The third day of work on the code left her still uncertain of it when she quitted the office at four o’clock to go with Rodney Moore on a part aquatic, part walking expedition up the river in his boat, out through a lovely wooded country to a knowing little restaurant whither Beaconhite people loved to repair to dine. A letter from Nan had come to add to Cis’s depression; she set forth with a marked diminution of her usual blitheness, although this expedition with Rodney, in the height of the foliage season in October, had been anticipated by her for two weeks. When Rodney met her at Mrs. Wallace’s he instantly marked the shadow on Cis’s face; he was quick to note every change in that variable face which was rapidly becoming the goal of his feet, the image hourly before his memory.

“Anything wrong, Holly-Berry? You haven’t so much of your usual effect of Christmas-all-the-year-around! I thought of that last night, Cis, that you were a sort of perpetual Merry Christmas; your joyousness was probably a birthday gift to you,” Rodney said, pulling her hand through his arm with unmistakable satisfaction.

“That’s nice, Rod!” Cis cried. “I’d like to be a Merry Christmas sort of thing. No, there’s nothing wrong. I’ll tell you when we get to the place where you’re taking me, or while we’re rowing.”

“Tell me exactly how there’s nothing wrong, Holly? I knew your lights were slightly dimmed. How you show your feelings!” Rod laughed with satisfaction in this proof of their intimacy, that he could instantly discern Cicely’s moods.

“Caught me that time! But it’s nothing, truly. That old code bothers me; never tackled anything else that wouldn’t stay by me over night! The alphabet is ridiculous; little scriggles going one way, crossed by little scriggles going the other way—and they’d all look exactly as well, or as crazy!—reversed! I get to wondering why they don’t go the other way about, and then I can’t remember which way they do go! But of course I’ll get them fastened down soon; it’s not worth bothering over, Rory, my pal.” Cis beamed on Rodney, liking his sympathy.

“Rory?” queried Rodney.

“Sure-ly! Rory O’Moore, don’t you know? That’s really your name; it came to me this morning while I was getting ready to go out!” Cis laughed softly.

“Oh, by jiminy, Cis, I don’t care what you call me if you’ll think of me so frequently. It means I’m getting on the inside!” Rodney’s delight was unmistakable. “Are you Kathleen bawn?”

Cis shook her head. “Why?” she asked, then blushed fiercely as the words of the old song came to her: “Rory O’Moore courted Kathleen bawn.”

Before she was called upon to speak, just as Rodney murmured:

an extraordinarily handsome girl, sumptuously dressed, beyond the strict propriety of a walking costume, swung around the corner which they were about to cross and almost ran into Cicely and Rodney.

“Why, Gertrude—Miss Davenport!” exclaimed Rodney.

“Oh, good evening, Mr. Moore; I beg your pardon.” The handsome girl’s glance swept Cis from head to foot. “Glad I wore my pongee,” thought Cis, reflecting with satisfaction on the lines of her tailor-made skirt and gown, its fine linen collar and cuffs with their exquisite hand-wrought scallop and corners.

“Awfully glad to meet you, Miss Davenport,” Rodney continued. “I’ve wanted you to meet Miss Adair. Please waive convention, and let a man give you two girls a street introduction. Miss Davenport, this is Miss Cicely Adair, a recent and great acquisition to Beaconhite. Cicely, this is our city’s pride, which is not at all the same thing as civic pride.”

Rodney knew that he was speaking nervously, and that his would-be cleverness halted at its intention.

Gertrude Davenport nodded, a crisp nod, her head held sidewise, an amused smile on her lips.

“Delighted to waive ceremony, of course. Hope you like Beaconhite, Miss Dare. We may meet again; hope so. I’m not going your way, and am in a hurry. Good evening, Mr. Moore, I began to think you were no more; glad to see you are still in town, alive, you know. I’ve been awfully occupied lately, but I’ll receive you if you wish to come to the house where you heretofore spent practically all your time; dad’s rather grateful for one less to disturb him! He says he’s glad he has only one daughter!” Gertrude Davenport laughed, but her large, full eyes flashed fire.

“He couldn’t hope to have two like Gertrude; his other one, if she’d been born, would have had to wait till Gertrude was out of the way to be visible. Thanks, Miss Davenport; I’ve been waiting my chance, but I’ll get it soon, and you’ll see me disturbing the pater!” Rodney assured her, with an unfortunate note of condolence in his voice.

“Thanks; so good of you! Good-bye!” Again Gertrude nodded crisply, sidewise, without more notice of Cis than another swift, comprehensive glance. Then she went rapidly on in her original direction.

Rodney laughed and tucked Cis’s hand into his arm. He had been weighing in his mind the overwhelming attraction which Cis possessed for him, against the great advantages which a marriage with Gertrude Davenport included: Wealth, social position, solid business connections, through her father; not least a wife so handsome that wherever he appeared with her all the other men would turn to look at her, envying him. But now that Gertrude, in all her splendor of face and form and raiment had suddenly appeared beside Cis, Cis’s irregular, winsome face, her merry kindliness, her clear-eyed purity of heart, mind and purpose so overtopped all Gertrude’s advantages, that he knew at once that there could be no more debate in his mind as to which girl he wanted to marry. Debate! Why, what was gold beside Cicely’s copper hair? What social position beside such a comrade? What regular beauty beside Cis’s charm? As to money, he could earn all that he needed. Rodney knew that his mind was made up for him by the gravity weight of Cicely Adair, drawing him; to do him justice he was suddenly glowing with an unworldly and genuine love for the girl, resolved to win her with such desire that there was no question of sacrifice for that end.

“Miss Davenport doesn’t like red hair, perhaps?” hinted Cis demurely.

“Perhaps not, Holly. Perhaps she likes to do her own liking, solo. But if you ask me, I don’t think it matters to the value of one of those red hairs, what Miss Davenport doesn’t like, nor—which is far more important—what she does like,” Rodney said.

Cis raised her eyebrows; she had not missed symptoms, and she was accurate in their diagnosis.

“It’s a world of changes, Rory O’Moore,” she said. “A wise girl accepts them, and, if she’s still wiser, she looks for the next change.”

“You young sinner! Do you mean—”

“Sinners aren’t prophets, Rod; never mind what I mean,” Cis interrupted him.

Rodney pressed her hand in the crook of his elbow; they both laughed and went on their way rejoicing, Rodney exuberantly light-hearted, as if he had just fallen into a fortune, or had escaped a threatening danger.

Arrived at their ultimate destination, after a pleasant row up the river, Rodney inducted Cicely to the pretty glade of which he had told her, and placed her comfortably upon a low knoll. The blaze of autumn-tinted maples, oaks and sumacs was all around them, so beautiful that Cis caught her breath, then laughed to cover the emotion which dimmed her eyes.

“I wonder how it can be so much more beautiful than we can take in!” she said. “It gives me no chance at all, though; makes even my hair look drab!”

“Drab! I’d say so!” agreed Rodney derisively. “Cis-Holly, how about that code? I’ll help you with it, if you like; I’m a bird at things of that sort.”

“Can’t be done, Rod! I’m under the solemnest, swearingest vow to keep that to myself. I’ll master it by to-morrow; I’m sure it will jump into my brain suddenly when it gets ready,” Cis answered, thanking him with a smile.

“Something else is shading you,” Rodney reminded her. “Said you’d tell me here.”

“It’s nothing to shade me, really; I ought to be glad: it’s Nan,” Cis said slowly.

“Nan? Anything wrong with her?” Rodney asked; he knew Nan by repute.

“No. But there is a youth, quite a nice youth, who has been tagging on after her for some time, and I’ve noticed that he was overhauling her, creeping right up on her. And she has written me that he has asked her to marry him, and she has told him that she would give him his answer in a week; she wants me to tell her which answer to give,” Cis spoke disconsolately.

“Must be a great girl if she has to ask another girl whether she wants to marry a man or not!” exclaimed Rodney. “He’d be tickled pink if he knew it, probably! What shall you bid her say?”

“Oh, as to that, she knows what she is going to say; that’s only a natural balking, natural to Nan, anyway!” Cis smiled. “I’ll tell her to say yes. She’s fond of him, and he truly is all right; ever so much better than most fellows.”

“What do you know about ‘most fellows,’ Holly? Then, if it’s all right, why do you look downcast over it?” Rodney naturally inquired.

“Silliness,” responded Cis promptly. “But I’m fond of Nannie; no girl likes to see her best friend marry. It isn’t grudging her happiness, it’s, it’s,—I don’t know what it is, but it hurts.”

“Well, heaven knows, marriage is a bad thing to go into in half the cases, and at least half of the other half are dragging, defeating, miserable endurance. It isn’t the girl that needs all the pity and anxiety; believe me, marriage is rough on a man, too. The only comfort is that it’s easy enough to slough it off; you can usually get a divorce, luckily!” Rodney spoke so bitterly that Cis stared at him.

“Is marriage so awful?” she asked. “It isn’t because I ever thought that it was such a fearful risk, that I’m sorry about Nan; it separates us more than my coming to Beaconhite does. But divorce is horrible, at least Nan would never think of it; she’s a devout Catholic, and so is Joe Hamilton, whom she’ll marry. Have you known marriages that turned out so bad as you say?”

“Rather!” Rodney’s brevity made his answer more emphatic, and Cis wondered at the grim look upon his face. “Poor Rod, it must have been his mother! I’ve thought that he didn’t want to talk of her,” she told herself. Then, to banish that grimness, she jumped up and cried: “Let’s explore a little, Rod; then we must start back; already it gets dark early, and I’m going to be hungry in six and a half minutes, precisely!”

“You can’t have anything to eat for fifteen minutes!” Rodney laughed, throwing off seriousness and triumphing in Cis’s surprise that food were within a quarter of an hour’s accessibility. “Did you observe that camera, as you thought it, that black case? It holds a light supper, my ruddy Holly, to preserve your life till a solid one is to be had. Now tell me I’m careless of your comfort, am mean, and not a good provider!”

“Never shall I tell you that, Rory O’Moore! I never knew anyone so thoughtful. It’s fun to take a snack out here, but, please, I don’t want to stay late, Rod!” Cis said.

“Will you go out on Sunday for the whole day? Start early? I’ll get up at half past six; we’ll be off before eight—and I can’t give a stronger proof of how I rate the privilege of a day with you in the autumn glories!” Rodney smiled, yet meant it.

“I couldn’t start before—let’s see! Eight, nine—about quarter to ten, Rod. I’d love to go, though,” Cis answered.

“Too late; the train we’d take leaves at 8:20. Why can’t you get off as early as I can? You rise early Sundays, you told me; I don’t.” Rodney looked vexed.

“Well, there’s Mass,” said Cis. “I always go at eight; it’s the first one.”

“Mass!” Rodney fairly shouted the word. “Good heavens, Mass! I never once suspected you of that! Are you a holy Roman?”

“Not holy; just a Roman,” Cis corrected him. “Neither did I suspect you of prejudices, of minding what I was. I used to miss Mass once in a while, but I knew better, and when I came away I promised Nan I’d go every Sunday, unless I positively could not go. I don’t bother much with religion, but I keep inside the Church, sort of on the last step, in the vestibule!”

“Cut it out, Cicely!” cried Rodney. “Drop the thing. You aren’t the girl to let stuff that no one knows a thing about get hold of you. It’s silly to hang on to a chimera, and it’s dishonest, cowardly to be afraid to chuck it. Make a break right here, Cis, and come with me early next Sunday morning. I used to learn catechism myself; I’ve learned now that no one has any right to try to teach it. Chuck that nonsense, brave, free, honest Cis; believe me, you’d better! And it only means being honest with yourself; if you believed in it, you’d never hang around that last step of yours.”

Cicely looked at him gravely, with troubled eyes. Then she said slowly:

“I’ve often thought exactly what you say, Rod; I’m afraid I’m not honest. Then again I think I am honest in trying to keep hold. You know there’s something in the Gospel about there being virtue in the hem of the garment; I don’t like to drop the wee edge I’m holding. It’s something like the code, you know, Rodney dear; I can’t learn it easily, but I’d never think of giving it away—don’t you see?”

“Cis, Cis, Cis, drop it! It’s a danger; it’s your enemy, it’s my enemy! That horrible system will wreck your life! Cis, for my sake, in pity say you’ll come with me on Sunday, and cut out the Mass! Cis, it’s a test, Cis; you must come! Cis, Cis, for my sake?” Rodney spoke quite wildly, crushing her hands in his.

Cis looked at him, frightened, and then a great tenderness flooded her face, a look that it had never worn before.

“All that isn’t true, Rod; it is sheer nonsense, but one Sunday can’t matter. I’ll go with you, if you care so much to have me,” she said gently. Then as if a new fear came upon her, she added: “Dear old pal of mine!” hiding behind a phrase.