ATALANTA’S PAUSE
“The only defect in this sort of a day is that it has to end so early.
It makes things seem thin and flat to pick up and start back on a train
leaving a few minutes past three,” grumbled Rodney, putting Cis into
her car chair and bestowing himself opposite to her, as they had come
up to Pioneer Falls.
“Oh, no, it doesn’t!” Cis contradicted him happily. “Don’t be greedy,
Rory! Greedy and ungrateful. Think what a beautiful day, and--four,
six, ten--it will be more than ten hours long by the time we get home!”
“Ungrateful I’m not; but greedy? Well, why shouldn’t I be? Hungry
people are greedy, especially for the kind of food that best nourishes
them. Philosophy is all very well, but it’s not always a satisfactory
symptom! Don’t you be too easily satisfied, Miss Holly Adair! One
day couldn’t satisfy me; it whets my appetite!” Rodney’s eyes were
literally devouring, his voice sharp.
“Oh, well, Rod!” Cis said softly. “I’m not exactly easy-going. One day
at a time! They sing a silly hymn at church, all about not praying
for anything, not even to be good, except ‘just for to-day,’ when of
course we’re saying all the time: ‘Now, and at the hour of our death,’
and we’re made to pray for final perseverance! But ‘just for to-day’
comes in all right now; this is our day, and a pretty nice one! I’ve
been happy all day long, and we’re still happy, with two hours and a
half ahead, and I love to ride on the train. A whole day happy is a big
thing!”
“Cis, you speak as if you were afraid! There are years of happy days
ahead, my girl! When I first knew you, Holly dear, I thought I’d never
seen a creature who had passed the twenty-first birthday, who was so
absolutely without a thought of the morrow as you were.” Rodney looked
at Cis questioningly.
“Ah! When you first knew me!” Cis breathed the words so softly that
Rodney leaned forward to catch them. “I’m changing fast, Rod; I have
changed; I’m getting tamed. Happiness scares you when you know you’re
happy. Before I came here I was happy, but it was the way kids are
happy. I didn’t know I was happy; just went along as if I was a boy,
whistling. Now--I think about it.” Cis pulled herself up short, then
she added: “They tell you that life isn’t particularly happy when you
get well into it, that happiness is not meant to last. I suppose what
everybody says is true; how can I help being afraid? But it’s a queer
thing: I’m happier when I’m afraid than I was when I wasn’t afraid one
bit!”
Rodney smiled on her, well-content with her unconscious revelations, or
was it that Cis was so trusting, so honest that she was conscious of
revealing, yet did not mind it?
“Do you believe that you will not be happy, Holly dear? That _we_ shall
not be happy? Do you believe all these croakers who try to make you
think life is a dismal thing, and all true happiness is beyond the
grave? That’s religion’s talk! Don’t you heed it. Of course no clock
strikes twelve every hour, but you’ll see what bliss life holds, and
that we’ll keep tight grasp on it, provided you steer straight. Why,
little kid Cicely, you’ve no more notion of what bliss is ahead of
you than a small brown bunny out in those woods yonder! Believe me,
you glowing, gorgeous-tinted Holly, you will laugh at your fears when
you get over the drunkenness of the joy you’re going to have!” Rodney
smiled at Cis with flashing eyes.
Cis smiled back at him, her breath a little short, but her candid
eyes looked into his unafraid. Whatever Cis feared or dreaded, it was
nothing within the compass of Rodney’s control; to him she trusted
herself completely.
She leaned back in her chair, her hat in her lap, luxuriously rumpling
her hair by rolling her head slightly on the chair’s plush back.
Her face grew grave and sweet as her thoughts travelled onward from
Rodney’s promise of lasting happiness to her own conviction that sorrow
must come. It did not matter greatly as long as fundamentals held.
Rodney’s “_we_” destroyed fear. Womanlike, she felt that sorrow that
was shared would in itself hold a sweeter joy than happiness; that if
she could lighten a burden for Rod there would be no weight in the
heaviest burden upon herself. The prescience of the woman showed Cis
the profound meaning of a true marriage; not, first in importance, to
be happy together, but to learn to be happy in being unhappy together.
“Cis, I did not know that you could look like that!” cried Rodney
suddenly. They had been silent for a little space, and he was watching
Cis’s changing expression with awe and wonder, unable to follow her
mental processes, yet guessing their course.
“You look at me so strangely, yet as if you hardly saw me.”
“I see you, Rod, but farther than in that Pullman chair. How did I look
at you?” Cis asked.
“As if I were a baby, or a bird with a broken wing; I know you’d look
like that at either of those things!” Rodney answered slowly.
“I was thinking,” she said simply. “Then, afterward, I was thinking how
dear and good you were to those forlorn children, and how fine it was
to be good like that, yet strong and brave, and what a lovely day you’d
made for me, too!”
“Sweet Cicely! I don’t believe that you’ve the least suspicion of your
own value!” Rodney cried, sincerely moved by her humility, which was
less humility than the lack of all self-seeing.
He lay back, still watching her, while she looked dreamily out of the
window at the flaming trees rushing past them in units of beauty,
massed into a splendid whole. He was thinking: “She has been utterly
content and happy the livelong day! She will soon get around to
thinking that the day was complete, and completely innocent, without
Mass; I’ll have no trouble turning her away and holding her fast!”
Rodney had a strong reason for wanting to get Cicely to drop her
Church, as he had done; he was delighted to believe that there would
be no obstacle before him there. But Rodney was wrong in thinking that
Cicely was tending toward easy weaning from it. She was remembering
that she had deliberately stayed away from Mass that morning in order
to gratify Rodney; she was determining that she would not do so again.
Hitherto she had not felt any more longing for God than had one of His
young four-footed creatures; she had played in His sight, innocently as
to the actions condemned by man, careless of His service. She had made
her First Communion with awe and faith to a degree, but without the
enkindling of her soul. It did not mean much to her, although she would
have answered correctly any question in the catechism relating to the
two sacraments for which she had then been prepared. She had no mother,
no one to whom her approach to her God mattered vitally, as it must
to a mother whose twofold love for her God and her child breathlessly
watches their compounding. Cis had gone on through her brief years
to the present, sound in mind and body, wholesome and true, but with
not much more spirituality than a kitten. Now she began to grope for
God, afar, dimly; she wanted to find Him to give Him to Rodney. For
Rodney she wanted the best. Like Portia, she began to reach out after
greater values with which to deck herself that she might stand high
in his regard, be fit thus to stand. And she took her first, actually
seeking steps toward God to find Him, the one, all-embracing God in
order to give Him to Rodney. Rod had drifted away; he was not like her;
he had deliberately turned from his Church. Well, she had heard of a
woman, a saint--her name was something that sounded like Money--who had
brought her son into heaven. Surely! St. Augustine, it was, and his
mother, Monica! She, Cis Adair, was by no means a saint, but she might
do that, too, if Rodney loved her well enough. And he did love her!
How he looked at her, with eyes that made her own drop and her cheeks
flush, and then with such gentle tenderness that she could weep. He was
not going to tell her to-day that he loved her; she was glad of that;
she would like to hold off that revelation in spoken words a little
longer. It was so beautiful to look up and surprise its revelation in
his handsome, dear face, and pretend to herself that she had not been
sure that she should see it there! She was a bad girl to have indulged
him by omitting Mass that day, yet how happy it had made him, and how
happy it made her to make him happy! Perhaps it was not so bad, just
this one time! After this she would keep to Mass faithfully and coax
Rodney there with her. Curious that the Beaconhite church where she
went, the one nearest to her boarding place, had no Sunday Mass before
eight! She thought there were always earlier Masses. It was partly the
fault of St. Francis Xavier’s church that she missed Mass to-day; if
there had been one at six she could have heard it before she took the
train. She did not push herself to state in her thoughts whether she
was entirely sure that she should have done so.
“You have not spoken for a half hour, Holly!” Rodney rebuked Cis at
last. “What are you thinking about? We’re getting into Beaconhite, and
you’re cheating me!”
“Thinking--thinking--Oh, about something like the suffrage; woman’s
influence!” cried Cis arousing, puzzled at first how to answer, then
answering with laughter in her eyes, her one dimple playing just beyond
the deep, sweet corner of her lips.
“Great trick not to be precisely a pretty girl, yet look so much better
than pretty ones, Holly!” cried Rodney involuntarily, remembering
Gertrude Davenport and her tiresome perfection of beauty.
“Let’s walk to the house, Rod,” suggested Cis, when they came out of
the station into Beaconhite’s main street.
“Let’s walk to the restaurant first of all!” Rodney amended her
proposal. “I’ve no notion of being conveyed to the hospital on an
ambulance call, perishing in the street from inanition!”
Accordingly they walked briskly toward the small hotel in a cross
street, several blocks from the station, where, Rodney affirmed, “there
was the most decent chef in Beaconhite.”
They came upon a block where there had been a fire; cordons were
stretched across the sidewalk, into the road; within them a blackened
mass of still smoking débris was all that was left of what that morning
had been a block of small houses, each house divided into four- and
five-room tenements at low rentals. Just as Cis and Rodney came up
there emerged from the side street, evidently coming around from the
rear of the burned block, a tall, thin figure in a long black coat; Cis
instantly recognized Father Morley, and as quickly he recognized her,
at least for one whom he had been seeing at the eight o’clock Mass. He
possessed the natural gift of retaining faces in his memory, a gift
heightened to the highest degree by the training of his Order, and his
intense interest in the soul behind each face.
Cis, meeting his deep-set, keen, gentle eyes, bowed instinctively. The
priest instantly returned the bow with a smile that lit up his ascetic
face as if a light had been thrown upon it, but in this case the light
came from within, outward.
The Jesuit stepped up to Cis’s side, taking it for granted that he was
welcome.
“Good evening, my child,” he said, and his voice, which always thrilled
Cis when he preached his five minutes’ sermon from the sanctuary, was
still more moving heard in conversational tones at her elbow. She saw,
too, that his face, thin, ascetic, worn, as she had seen it at the
distance intervening between the church pews and the sanctuary, was
more deeply graved with fine lines than she had seen; he looked like
a man who had found life a serious matter, and whose bodily health was
not the best.
“Good evening, Father Morley,” Cis replied.
“I do not know your name, but I know that you belong to me,” said
Father Morley. “I am sure that I have not met you. I see you at my
Mass, at eight o’clock. Have you been long in Beaconhite?”
“No, Father. I came early in the summer. My name is Cicely Adair; I am
Mr. Lucas’ private secretary. You never have spoken to me before,” said
Cis. “Father Morley, this is Mr. Rodney Moore.”
“Glad to meet you, Mr. Moore,” said Father Morley with a quick,
comprehensive look at Rodney. “English More, or Irish Moore?”
“My people on the Moore side came from Ireland,” said Rodney, uneasy,
and omitting the courteous title at the end of his reply to Father
Morley.
“That’s good!” said the priest, as if Rodney deserved credit for his
ancestry. “Though, to be sure, the English More once meant great
things, when the lord chancelor bore the name who would not betray his
God to save his head! Not that we would not all reckon martyrdom a
splendid prize for which to hold out! You are in another parish, not
St. Francis’? I don’t recall your face.”
“I’m in the St. Francis Xavier parish,” said Rodney shortly.
The fine face of the priest changed slightly as he correctly
interpreted this answer.
“I missed you this morning, Miss Adair,” he said. “You know, a priest
gets into the way of unconsciously looking for familiar faces when he
turns to give the notices and read the Gospel; you are weekly in the
same place. I am glad that you are not ill.”
“No, Father,” replied honest Cis, making no excuse to gloss her
absence. “I did not go to Mass; I wanted to take an early train.”
“Good for her; coming straight out, no cringing!” thought Rodney,
misinterpreting Cicely’s honesty.
Father Morley shook his head. “And not make the effort required to go
to six o’clock Mass first, or even to the Mass at two? It is worth
considerable effort to keep from offending God,” he said.
“Six o’clock? The eight o’clock Mass is the first one, isn’t it?” cried
Cis.
“No, indeed! Who ever heard of such a late hour for the first parish
Mass in such a large parish?” exclaimed Father Morley. “We have a Mass
at two a. m. for the newspaper men and other night workers, trolley
men, railroaders, all those people. The next Mass is at six. Then ours
is not the only church in town! There are nine churches in Beaconhite,
all told.”
“Bad influence, danger ahead!” thought the wise priest. “I like the
girl!”
“I could have made the six o’clock at St. Francis Xavier’s; I might
have asked if there was one, but I didn’t,” Cis looked straight into
the priest’s keen eyes. “I’m a careless girl, Father; I never thought
so much about these things as Nan--that’s my friend at home--did.”
“Difficult to think too much of things which are unending,” commented
the priest. “I approve of Nan and am glad that you have so good a girl
friend.”
He smiled, with a slight sigh, and walked onward in silence beside
Rodney, taking it for granted that they would continue together as
their ways lay in the same direction. Rodney was at once uncomfortable
and angry, angry that he was uncomfortable. There was a silent power in
this priest that he felt and resisted; it annoyed him to see that Cis
felt it and did not resist it. It was impossible to say wherein it lay,
but it was there, strong and as unmistakable as it was indefinable.
That it was the manifestation of the sum total of the gifts of the Holy
Ghost did not occur to him, nor would he have admitted it, but just as
those recorded in the Gospel cried out against that Power to which they
would not yield, so Rodney in his heart cried out against this quiet
person, walking beside him unintrusively, saying nothing remarkable,
certainly nothing in direct rebuke. Yet every fibre of Rodney’s being
rebelled, and he felt that Cis was accepting and readjusting to that
implied reproach.
“Must have been quite a fire,” Rodney said, trying to introduce a topic
that was indifferent.
“Indeed it was, a shocking fire,” Father Morley corroborated him. “It
was a gasoline fire in a tenement; could anything be worse? The young
daughter of one of the tenants was cleaning gloves, I understand, in
a room which was dark, using a lighted lamp, and there was not much
air in the stuffy place. She did not realize how far the fumes would
draw to heat where there was so little oxygen. Not only that tenement
burned, but the entire block. Most of these people had kerosene oil
in cans. Ah, it was a frightful fire! The firemen saved every life,
but several people were badly burned, dangerously so, and a child was
nearly trampled to death. One of the firemen was hurt; I came to anoint
him and one or two others, but none will die--thank God!”
“Well, I suppose ‘thank God’ is the conventional phrase, but it doesn’t
always fit,” said Rodney with a bitter, short laugh. “I suppose, too,
that all these people had palm in their houses, blessed especially for
protection against fire, lightning and general violent catastrophe!”
The Jesuit frowned slightly; Cis looked half-amused, and he saw it.
“‘Thank God’ is appropriate to whatever befalls those who trust
in Him,” he said. “I would imagine the blessed palm was in those
tenements, since, in spite of carelessness and ignorance, against which
we cannot expect protection from their lighter consequences, no lives
were lost. I am glad that you recognize the Providence that intervened,
Mr. Moore; many people miss the province of its workings.”
“I think that I recognize its province precisely, Father Morley,”
Rodney said. “It is distinctly limited. I would say that, if there be
a God, He sets things going, and then leaves them to themselves. I am
not a Catholic, though my people were.”
“I would hardly have mistaken you for a Catholic, my poor son,” said
the priest quietly. “You have left the Church of your fathers? Better
come to confession; remove the impediment to faith, and faith will
revive. Strange to throw away that treasure to acquire which so many
sacrifice everything earthly! My father, for instance, was an Episcopal
clergyman. He came into the Church and suffered actual want, besides
the cruel persecution which only near and dear kindred can inflict, in
order to possess the Truth and the sacraments. But you are young and
God’s arm is long; you will come back. A good friend can do a great
deal for us!”
The priest smiled at Cis, who looked up at him with a smile in return,
yet a troubled look.
“A _good_ friend can, Father, but lots of people don’t have _good_
friends--like Nan!” she said, with emphasis on the adjective.
“All goodness is comparative, my child,” Father Morley said. “I see
that you regret your own deficiencies, which is a most healthful
symptom! It is everything to be honest, and more than everything to be
humble!” He laughed at his intentional clumsiness of word. “It must be
a little lonely for you, a stranger here? You say you are Mr. Lucas’
secretary? I know Mr. Lucas’ brother.”
“It was he who gave me my letter to Mr. Wilmer Lucas,” cried Cis
eagerly.
“Really? He is a noble man; I don’t wonder that Mr. Lucas welcomed
you,” Father Morley looked pleased; he was beginning to feel cordial
liking for Cis, with a perceptive anxiety for her safety. “I know Mr.
Lucas, this Mr. Lucas, but he is not my friend, as his brother is.”
Father Morley did not explain that he had instructed Mr. Robert Lucas
and received his submission to the Church, and that this new instance
of the Jesuit wiles had made Mr. Wilmer Lucas cross the street from
that day to this whenever he saw Father Morley coming.
“I have a club of fine girls, all self-supporting, a jolly, delightful
lot, they are! How would you like to come to one of their ‘open
nights’? That’s what they call the nights when outsiders are admitted.
You’d enjoy them, and they’d take you right in. No need of being
lonely, my child! Let’s see: Thursday, Holy Hour; Friday the League;
Monday night their private, members-only night; Wednesday! That’s it!
Come on Wednesday, and see my fine girls!” Father Morley beamed at his
triumphant conclusion.
“Thank you, Father,” said Cis, and meant it. “I’m not lonely. I am
happy in Beaconhite; I don’t have much spare time. But you are good to
ask me.”
“Not a bit good!” said the priest. “The club is for girls, isn’t it?
And you are a girl, aren’t you? I turn off here. Good night. Good
night, Mr. Moore.”
He held out his hand and Rodney unwillingly took it.
“God bless you, my poor lad,” said the priest gently. “Help and bless
you.”
He turned to Cis with great kindness, a sweet gravity, a steady look
that told her that he fully understood her situation and recalled her
to her duty with something of the infinite pity of God and His love for
souls which grope. She knew that the priest saw that she loved Rodney,
and that his prophecy of the outcome of that love would not accord with
Rodney’s own forecast of her perfect bliss.
Father Morley held out his hand and Cis put hers into it, lifting her
eyes to the deep-set ones above her, which rested upon her as if they
would draw her up through their light into the Highest Light.
“Good-bye, my child. Remember that we hear confessions at St. Francis’
regularly on Fridays and Saturdays, afternoon and evening, and at any
other time when we are called out, and that a mortal sin should not
rest an hour upon the soul. Come to see me in the house; I should like
to know you,” he said, ignoring Rodney, whose anger flamed into crimson
in his cheeks and flashed in his eyes.
“Thank you, Father Morley,” replied Cis, ill-at-ease, conscious of
Rodney’s annoyance, devoutly wishing that “Father Morley wouldn’t,” yet
responding to his summons with a half perception of its value to her.
“I shouldn’t know how to call on you; I never knew a priest, not that
way. And I don’t get time, really.”
“And you are not lonely now, and would rather not have an old Religious
bother you, my dear? Very well; but remember that when you need him,
Father Morley is waiting, and, when things get too hard to bear, or the
strain is too strong for your young hands to hold back on the ropes,
come to him and he will help your feebleness. Don’t forget, Cicely
Adair, that I shall be watching for you.”
So saying, the Jesuit raised his hat with a courtesy that included
both the young people, and went off down the side street with a long,
striding gait, his hands thrust into his coat-sleeves, his shoulders
bent forward like a man so accustomed to meditation that the instant
that he was released from talk, from attention to the needs of others,
he was off and away to other realms than this.
“The old meddler!” exclaimed Rodney. “Don’t you go near him, Cis!
They’ll make you into one of their idiot women, crazy for novenas and
church work, always lighting candles and trotting around to ask a
priest whether roast pork really is indigestible, or whether all-wool
flannels are better than half-wool, or whether it is a sin to use a mud
worm for bait, because it looks like flesh, and the fish eats it, and
we eat the fish on Friday! Idiots! I’d beat a woman, if she belonged to
me, and got feeble-minded in that particular way!”
Cicely moved slightly as if she were awaking; her eyes were fixed on
Father Morley’s retreating figure; she had not heard Rodney’s diatribe
against piosity.
“He is good,” she murmured. “I feel as though the statue of St. Joseph
in the church had been talking to me! He’s like that, like something
that looks like a man, but is ’way beyond one. And he’s kind, like St.
Joseph; he must have been kind! And he’s ready to do anything for you,
but he never could be common human! I wish----” Cis checked herself.
“Oh, Rod,” she said, turning to him with a flooding blush upon her face
and clutching his sleeve as if she feared to lose him, “Oh, Rory, dear,
you are hungry; you said you were! Let’s get a supper for you; I’m not
hungrier than a box-of-crackers supper!”
“Crackers nothing!” growled Rodney, but he tucked Cis’s hand into his
arm. “That restaurant is right around the corner. The old chap has half
spoiled my appetite! Come along, though, Holly, and hang on to me; I’ll
feed you well!”