THE CABLE
THE CABLE
A Novel
BY
MARION AMES TAGGART
_Author of “No Handicap”_
[Illustration: BENZIGER BROTHERS]
NEW YORK, CINCINNATI, CHICAGO
BENZIGER BROTHERS
PUBLISHERS OF BENZIGER’S MAGAZINE
1923
COPYRIGHT 1923, BY BENZIGER BROTHERS
Printed in the United States of America
Dedicated
ex voto
to
THE LITTLE WHITE CHURCH
of
ST. MARY OF THE MOUNT
at
Mount Pocono
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I Enter Miss Cicely Adair 9
II The Rôle of Perseus 24
III Miss Jeanette Lucas 39
IV Transplanting 56
V The Pinch of Necessity 72
VI Beginning 88
VII Codes 104
VIII Cable Strands 121
IX Atalanta’s Pause 137
X Public Franchise and Private Thraldom 154
XI The Weakness of Strength 171
XII The Strained Cable 188
XIII Darkness 204
XIV Indecision 221
XV Decision 236
XVI Witnessing 252
XVII Good-bye 268
XVIII Orientation 283
XIX The New Year 298
XX The Old Bottle for New Wine 314
XXI The Weaving 329
XXII Entangled Threads 344
XXIII The Next Step 360
XXIV The Beacon 375
XXV Port 390
THE CABLE
CHAPTER I
ENTER MISS CICELY ADAIR
A group of small boys stood on the corner, looking anxiously down the
shaded street. They ranged from eight to twelve years in age; from
grimy hands to universal griminess in uncleanliness; from comfortable
meagreness to ragged poverty in clothing, while in race they were
polyglot, but they were identical in the impatience with which they
scanned the sidewalk, vision-length, and found it empty though there
were frequent passers-by.
“Gee! What’s the matter wid her?”
“Say! She wouldn’t go th’ udder way?”
“Th’ odder way nothin’! Don’t she know we’re waitin’?”
The tallest, but also the raggedest, boy of the group made a fine
gesture, drawing a nickel watch from somewhere between his bagging
shirt and tight trousers. “’Tain’t so late,” he said, displaying the
watch’s candid face. “Twenty to one by mine, an’ I set her by the city
hall when de ball dropped’t noon. She ain’t so late.”
“Whatjer bet she’s got, sour balls ’r peanuts?” asked the smallest boy.
“Pennies, maybe!” hopefully suggested a young Israelite not without
guile; he was saving up for an excursion.
“Git out! She don’t hand ’em out less’n she didn’t have time to buy
nothin’,” a boy scornfully rebuked him. “Didn’ she tell us she hadn’t
no use fer money presen’s less’n she was up against it fer time?”
“I bet she’s got somepin!” declared a round little colored boy. “We’d
ought t’ be gittin’ down town; mos’ in gen’ly she’s here by now, an’
we’s gotter git our af’ernoon ’ditions.”
“Oh, chase yourself, Coony! ’Tain’t near two. Dere she is!”
The last speaker ended in a triumphant yell, wildly pointing down
the street as he jumped up and down, his bare feet thudding on the
pavement; his comrades echoed the yell with Indian War Dance gestures.
The cause of this suspense and final excitement was a slender young
figure, tall for a girl, but looking taller than its actual height
because of its boyish lines, the straight short skirt and straight
loose jacket which clad it.
The girl wore light-weight summer tweed, several colors blended in
its weave to a tone of warm brownish drab. Her gloveless hands were
thrust into the jacket’s side pockets; she wore a sailor hat, pushed
back somewhat from her brow, but even if it had been set on her head
straight, it would not have confined her masses of brilliant hair;
they wreathed her face in lawless rings which had the effect of a halo
worn in jest.
She walked with a free, careless grace, a stride that was businesslike,
yet springing, as of one who enjoyed the business which claimed her.
Her face, which was not pretty, yet was compounded of many irregular
charms, enhanced by a perfectly regular beauty of skin, was bright with
smiles as she espied the shabby, yelling band awaiting her; the smile
displayed an unbroken row of strong white teeth between full red lips.
She waved her hand at the lads with a gesture which was like their own
as they waved back at her, a straight-out motion from the brim of her
hat, then flung widely out to the right.
“Gosh, ain’t her hair red!” cried one of the boys, struck by the glow
of the rings under the sailor hat in the sunshine.
“Red nothin’! You shut up!”
“Sure it’s red! What is it, then?” The question in derision, not for
information.
“It’s--it’s hair.” The defender was at a loss, not being accustomed to
define.
“You bet! Red hair! Awful red hair!” The triumphant tone was for
victory, not because there was any desire to disparage this newsboys’
goddess.
“Red hair yourse’f! Your mother’s red-headed!” This was a shot in the
dark; acquaintance between these boys, being confined to the streets,
did not embrace knowledge of family tints.
“Sh’ ain’t! Black!” The wiry little Italian struck his opponent a hard
blow on the mouth with the back of his hand, and, with a growl like two
puppies, they clinched.
The approaching figure broke into a run and came down upon them, the
hair under dispute glowing to the utmost justification of its accuser,
but the girl did not come like an avenging angel; her smile had widened
and her eyes laughed with her lips, though it was a strong grasp that
seized a shoulder of each combatant and swung them apart.
“Here, you young heathens, what’s the matter with you? Fend fighting!”
she cried in a breezy, clear young voice. “Tony Caprioli, slow down!
Mike McGinty, what’s wrong with you? Breaking the law! Fend fighting,
you know, you scalawags!”
“He said you’d got red hair. I said ’tain’t,” muttered Tony, not yet
“slowed down.”
“He hit me first. I didn’t mean nawthin’ but--it looked red.” Mike
delicately altered the statement that he was about to make, implying
that the appearance of the hair was a thing of the past.
The girl threw back her head and the brilliant hair seemed to
scintillate as she laughed a jolly laugh.
“Tony, your name means goat--Caprioli--and I’m afraid you’re it! Shame,
my dear, when you’re doing your best to bleach my hair, but Mike
scores! My hair is red, hot red, and what’s more I’m not sorry it is!
Shake, boys, and stop your scrapping! Red hair is what gives me pep,
and pep is what makes me hustle around--when I’m late, too!--and buy
toffy squares for the crowd! So it’s all right, friend Tony, though
I’m much obliged to you for standing up for me! Catch, fellows! I
bought a box, two boxes, three squares apiece, and good luck to you
all! Hurry up! It’s almost one o’clock, and I’ll have to run the rest
of the way, or the girl I relieve will fight _me_!”
The animosity in the air cleared up like magic under the spell of this
girl’s merry laughter of eyes and lips. She rapidly dealt out sticky
squares of toffy to the crowd, and boyishly, though daintily, licked
her finger tips when the last square had left them.
“Enough of that!” she cried. “Suck it; don’t chew it! You’ll get no
more toffy till cool weather comes! I was a dunce to buy anything
so messy. Balls, or peanuts, or anything neat for mine--and so for
yours!--till September! So long, boys, dear; I’ve got to hustle. Hope
you’ll each sell more than any of the rest! Every last paper you take
out. Good-bye!”
She waved her hand to the adoring group; each boy waved back again and
shouted: “Good-bye!” in spite of the difficulty of enunciation caused
by a large, soft toffy square in the roof of the mouth.
The girl hurried away, not running as she had threatened to do, but
walking so fast that running would have been easier.
The group of boys melted around the corner, in the direction of the
shortest way to the newspaper offices, and the funny little daily
event was over for the time being. The red-haired girl had formed the
acquaintance of this young mongrel band, and it had been her kindly
whim to make for them a daily small joy to anticipate. She varied her
gifts, but she never failed them; that they adored her and exalted her
into an incarnate proof that human trustworthiness and kindness was
truth, not fiction, she was keen enough to see was the best result of
her action.
No one but herself and the boys knew about “this freak philanthropy,”
as she called it to herself; it took but a few minutes of her time
and not a great expenditure of money. “It was worth it,” so she told
herself, “to let her red hair light up the poor little snipes’ noon
hour.”
The girl swung into a tall building at a tremendous pace, her hands
out of her pockets now, her arms swinging to speed her action, not at
all breathless, but softly whistling: “Silver Threads among the Gold,”
a little twist around the corners of her lips as she considered how
distant that state of things was from her own radiant locks.
She burst out of the elevator and into the great room of the telephone
exchange almost with one movement, covering the intervening space
between one and the other door on a sort of slide.
“Well, Cis Adair! If I didn’t begin to wonder if you’d get here!” cried
a small, extremely-ornamented young person waspishly, as the boyish
red-haired girl appeared, throwing off her hat and jacket and hanging
them up rapidly, smiling her gay smile at the small person whom she
succeeded.
“Sure--ly, Amelia! Don’t I always get there, whether it’s to work or
to play? I’m only five minutes late, anyway,” cried the newcomer,
harnessing her ears.
“Five minutes is five minutes when you’ve got to get home, eat and
dress. I’ve got a date, I’d have you know, Miss Cicely!” retorted
Amelia.
“Lucky you! Fruit market’s always closed for me; can’t even get a
date, not ever!” sighed Cicely with a pensive droop of the head and an
inimitable little wink at the girl on her farther side. “Sorry, Amelia!
I’ll come five minutes early to-morrow, so get another date ready.
Might I hint that you’d get there sooner if you started, now I am here,
than if you lingered to reproach me?”
The other girls laughed, and Amelia Day flounced away with a toss of
her head. It was recognized in the office that there “was no sort of
use in trying to get ahead of Cis Adair.” Most of the girls liked her,
a few of them were her devoted admirers, so it was only Amelia who ever
really longed to damage her happy-go-lucky confidence in herself and in
all her world.
“Funny little old Amelia!” Cis said after Amelia had gone. “Seems to
disagree with herself so like fury, and not to be able to cut herself
out of her diet.”
“Oh, Cis!” murmured Nan Dowling, Cis’s next neighbor, at whom she had
winked. “You do say such ridiculous things, and such just-right ones!
You ought to write. That’s Amelia all over; she does disagree with
herself--little sour ball!”
“Thought we agreed not to fuss about her,” hinted Cis. “I don’t have
to, as long as my shift follows hers; I don’t have more than a
ships-that-pass-in-the-night, _au revoir_ intercourse with Miss Day.”
“No, but I do! I have her from nine to one, except during lunch, right
in your place! Why aren’t you on all through my shift, you blessed old
duck, Cis?” cried Nan.
“Never could answer whys, Nan; nothing harder,” said Cis cheerfully.
“Be glad you’ve got the chance to sun yourself in the light of my hair
from one to six! And that we don’t get a whole lot of calls on our
wires, usually, till after three, so we can ‘chin.’”
“Amelia is raving jealous of you, Cis, and you know why!” said Nan.
“She’d have your scalp, if she could get it.”
“If she could get it she’d be welcome to it,” declared Cis
imperturbably. “Anyone that lets a person get her hands on her scalp
so she can lift it, deserves to be scalped; that’s what I say! Amelia
can’t harm me as long as I do my work and tend strictly to my own
affairs. If you mean that Amelia Day is still stewing because that
puffy Harold Brown thought he’d enjoy thinking that he thought a lot of
me--” Cis shrugged her shoulders to conclude her sentence. “Stuff!” she
added.
Nan laughed, but she looked anxious. “All the same, Amelia would love
to get you out, Cis,” she said. “Of course you don’t care a rap what
Harold Brown does--”
“Care!” Cis interrupted her. “Ever see a chestnut worm?”
Both girls went off into a spasm of laughter, subdued, not to disturb
their companions. Harold Brown was large, plump, puffy and abnormally
white; nothing was needed to point Cis’s rhetorical question.
“Oh, Cis!” sighed Nan, as she sighed many times a day, in fervent,
admiring delight over Cicely’s high spirits. “Such a Cis!”
Nan had a call just then, but when she had answered it and was free
again, she turned to Cis.
“It’s not only Harold Brown, Cis; you don’t seem to care about any of
them,” she said.
“Meaning boys and men?” asked Cis. “Wrong you are, my Nanny: I love ’em
all.”
“Yes, like one of themselves!” retorted Nan. “But not the way they do
you! You’re like a jolly boy yourself, friendly as anything, but you
don’t--And there are lots of them crazy about you! You make them sort
of crazy over you, Cis, with your come-on-stand-off way, and your sort
of--heady charm, like champagne!”
“Oh, say!” protested Cis. “Much you know about champagne, kid dear! You
got that out of a novel; own up! The price of it per bottle, and the
Eighteenth sitting on the bottles, shows that’s a pure flight of fancy!
Stick to facts, Anna Dowling! Me heady! I should say not!”
With that Cicely had a call, followed by five other calls, which kept
her busy plugging in and attending to the time for awhile. When this
was over, a lull followed, and Cis turned again to Nan.
“That was a coincidence, a sort of coincidental run,” she said, “The
first call was Parkway 58--and we know what that is, don’t we, Nanny?”
“Of course; Miss Lucas,” said Nan promptly.
“Neither of us ever thinks of any other Lucas but Miss Jeanette Lucas;
we always forget there are other Lucases, a father, a mother, a younger
sister, and a few boys, too young to matter, scattering along,”
commented Cis. “But it was for Miss Lucas, and what is more, it was her
betrothed calling her. I always know his voice. To be truthful, I don’t
half like it; it’s sweet, cloying, yet it isn’t sweet--sounds the way
maple syrup tastes when it’s just beginning to work. At our house maple
syrup always seems to work before it gets eaten; I don’t know how often
Miss Spencer puts it on the table like that! It’s an awful sell when
you pour it over cakes! Well, about Mr. Herbert Dale’s voice. I’m nuts
on voices; I think they give their owners away more than anything else,
and I don’t like that voice over the ’phone. Hope I’m wrong, because
Miss Jeanette Lucas is a fine girl. I met her once, though she wouldn’t
remember it, probably. She’s a gentle, sweet, ladylike, old-fashioned
sort of girl, and I imagine she’s the kind that loves a man adoringly,
when she gets about it.”
“That’s the way to love the man one marries,” declared romantic Nan.
“No disputing the proposition, but it’s dangerous, because most men are
quite a good deal human,” Cis observed dryly.
“You needn’t talk! If you ever fall in love, you’ll pave the path of
the man with your whole self!” cried Nan.
“Heavens! Not so loud, Nan! That’s nothing to tell a crowd! Besides I
would not!” whispered Cicely.
Then with a swift abandonment of her position, she said aloud, with a
suppressed vehemence: “Well, what would be the fun of loving any other
way?”
“Not much fun, either, when you take it like a fatal disease,” said
Nan. “Where was the coincidence in Mr. Dale’s calling up Miss Lucas,
Cis?”
“Nowhere. But the coincidence was that the rest of those calls I had
were Miss Lucas calling up Oldboy’s store, and a dressmaker, and a
jeweller, and a garage,” Cis explained.
“She would, she does every day. Of course she would, now that she
is getting ready to be married as fast as she can,” murmured Nan,
disappointed that there was no more in Cicely’s mystery.
“Yes, of course,” agreed Cis. “I merely said that she called these
people as soon as her betrothed rang off. Ever notice the way he
calls? I’d not only know his voice over a wire in China, but he gives
the number so peculiarly: ‘I’d like to get 58, the Parkway, if you
please.’” Cis imitated an oily, smooth voice, unctuously used, and Nan
laughed.
“That’s he!” she cried. “You’re a mocking bird as well as a tanager, as
you call yourself, Cis! The paper last Sunday had Miss Lucas’ picture
on the society page, with Mr. Herbert Dale’s, and said they’d be
married on the 10th of next month, in our church, with a Nuptial Mass.
Is Mr. Dale a Catholic, Cis?”
“Not enough to notice, I think,” said Cis. “His people are. The Lucases
are strict; I suspect that sweet Jeanette will make him toe the mark
when it comes to the wedding. Probably she’s got a candle burning all
the time before the Lourdes shrine, and means to make him a saint at
the end of six months. Wish she may! I’m sure I don’t really know but
he’s going that way on his own, but I honestly hate his voice!”
“Aren’t you queer, Cis? You don’t often get down on anyone; you’re
pretty sure to give everyone the benefit of the doubt,” cried Nan,
wondering. Then she hesitated, and whispered: “Did you go to the seven
o’clock yesterday, Cis, dear?”
Cis shook her head, her color mounting slightly.
“I didn’t see you at the eight o’clock Mass, as usual,” persisted Nan
timidly, for Cicely looked forbidding.
“Good reason why,” said Cis shortly. “I wasn’t there. And I didn’t go
to Late Mass, so don’t go on to that, Nan; I didn’t go at all.”
“Oh, Cicely dear!” Pain crept into Nan’s words, though they were
whispered.
“Well! Oh, Nan dear!” Cis tried to laugh at her. “Yes, I know I’m bad,
but I was so tired! I was out till after one, danced, and ate such a
supper! I did mean to go to the eight, but I turned over, stretched
and--” Cis made a slight gesture that conveyed the suggestion of a
passage beyond daily affairs.
“Cis, oh, Cis! And you are so fine, so splendid! Why don’t you make it
perfect? You’re a Catholic,” sighed loving Nan, her gentle eyes clouded.
“I’m nothing else, at least, Nanny, but it doesn’t bother me a great
deal, all this that has to do with such far-off things! I’m sorry, nice
little Nan! I will brace up, I promise you, and go to Mass Sundays.
When I get there, it’s hot and crowded, and I’m just there in my body,
and not my mind, and it’s a mighty uncomfortable body, I can tell you
that! I wonder if it makes much difference whether you go or not,
when you go like an oyster? Sorry, Nanny,” Cis said again, seeing how
grieved Nan looked. “I didn’t have your training; maybe that’s it. I
went to public school and high school, and my mother died when I was
eight, and my father was no good, and went off to his own ways when
I was a baby, so I’m kind of a hybrid Catholic-heathen! Sorry, nice
little Nan!”
“You’re the biggest girl I know, the truest and finest, and I’m sure
God will pull you to Him. You’re too great to miss the Greatest,” said
Nan, with such earnestness in spite of her muffled voice, and with such
a light in her eyes, that careless Cicely was impressed.
“Put your candle beside Miss Jeanette Lucas’,” she said, knowing that
the look in Nan’s eyes foretold prayers for her beloved Cicely’s
safety.
“You two girls have talked enough in duet for one day,” remonstrated
another girl, a little distance down the table from Cis and Nan. “We
like a whack at Cis ourselves, Nan Dowling!”
“Won’t get much more chance to talk, duet or chorus,” said Cis. “Half
past two, and the afternoon buzz is beginning.”
It was a particularly busy afternoon in this uptown exchange. Nan went
off duty at five, but she waited that night to go out to supper with
Cis, whose hours did not end till ten at night, and who supped in
the restaurant on the top floor of the building, and returned to the
exchange to finish her eight-hours’ shift.
Cis did not know what fear was; she went about the quiet streets after
ten o’clock at night, when she was returning to her boarding place,
with the same careless assurance with which she walked the streets at
ten o’clock in the morning. There was that about her carriage, her
free, graceful walk, her faultless complexion, her glowing, abundant,
striking hair that made her a conspicuous figure; yet there was also
in her entire effect that indifference to notice, that light-hearted
frankness, that absence of self-consciousness, which reveals the
Una-like girl who walks the earth fearing no man because she seeks no
man’s admiration.
It is the glory of our American curious compound, that such a maidenly
girl is rarely molested if she keeps within decent neighborhoods at not
too-late hours, and Cicely Adair went and came as safely as if she
were a child playing in her father’s garden.
“I hate to leave you, Cis, but nothing ever does happen to you,” said
Nan, after they had supped, and Cicely was preparing to return to the
office and Nan to go home.
“You wouldn’t be a mighty protection, small Nan,” laughed Cis.
“Nonsense, child! I’m off by ten, and that’s only an hour after nine,
and nine is curfew hour, so that’s all right! I’ll go back to the
office and join up the rest of the world on wires, and go home as I
always do. Don’t you know, no one would dare molest a red-haired girl?
I fly a danger signal on top, and they turn out for me!”