ORIENTATION
“Now, my dear, you must turn toward the east when you say your
prayers,” Miss Braithwaite briskly said to Cis the next morning at
breakfast.
Cis smiled inquiringly, missing her meaning; it was one of Miss
Braithwaite’s highest assets that her meanings were not always obvious;
they stimulated curiosity and held attention.
“I don’t suppose you really mean that I’m to turn to the east?” Cis
said.
“You are to face the coming day, keep your eyes on the rising sun, your
back resolutely turned on the setting day,” explained Miss Braithwaite.
“That is called orientation, and it is your best attitude now. Indeed
I don’t know anyone who can afford to take any other--eyes toward the
orient ‘whence comes the light.’” Cis was considering this hint from
Miss Braithwaite all day.
“Anyone else would tell me to brace up, or let bygones be bygones, or
something of that sort, but Miss Braithwaite gives everything she says
a turn that makes you begin to do what she advises, even while you’re
listening to her,” she thought. “I’ll look eastward! I’ll wear blinders
so I can’t see, except straight ahead! But I’ll be glad when Christmas
is over.”
Miss Braithwaite involved Cis in preparations for a Christmas totally
unlike any that she had hitherto known. There was to be a tree for her
“scalawags,” and it was not hard to interest Cis in this. She went with
Miss Braithwaite to see her little ragged boys, and capitulated to
them at once, as they did to her. It refreshed Cis to play with them,
to talk to them, falling back on the vernacular which she had learned
from her newsboys in those old days, hourly becoming more and more
unreal to her. There was a small, peaked lame little creature of nine
who won and wrung Cis’s heart. She immediately began a glorious warm
crimson sweater for him, on which she knit frantically every evening
when she was not oversewing tarlatan candy bags with bright worsteds,
or assembling and gluing into place the figures for the little, but
perfect “Cribs” which each child within Miss Braithwaite’s orbit was to
receive to take home at Christmas. She would set up a “Bethlehem” in
wretched places, far enough removed in squalor and vicious ignorance
from the light of the Star, the chant of the angels.
Every one of Father Morley’s girls in his club was to receive a book
and some of the useless, pretty things which girls covet.
“It’s downright brutal to give only utilitarian things at Christmas!”
declared Miss Braithwaite. “It’s a joyous time, and who can be joyous
over black stockings and initialed handkerchiefs? The girls must have
nonsensical things; dangling, silly vanity-feeders along with their
substantial gifts from Father Morley, else Merry Christmas would be
mockery said to them.”
She put Cis at assorting these gifts, and, being a girl herself who was
to be but twenty-two on this same Christmas, she enjoyed her task.
Mr. Lancaster often dropped in after dinner, and not infrequently
to dine. They all three drew up before the vast hearth, with
its jolly fire lighting up Cicely’s red hair, turning it to
gold-with-copper-alloy on its surface coils; making a dark warmth below
its surfaces, like a low fire on a forge.
Cis did not talk much, but she listened, and, listening, found new
worlds opening out before her. Both Miss Braithwaite and Mr. Lancaster
had been much about Europe; they knew unfrequented corners of it as one
knows the places beloved in childhood.
“Do you remember, Anselm?” Miss Braithwaite would begin, and then would
follow eager reminiscences of dear, queer, crooked streets; a shrine in
a cathedral; a room in an ancient palace, or, more delightful still, a
sleeping village and the sweet ways of its peasants all informed with
faith, the realization of God, and utter trust in Him.
Or Mr. Lancaster would exclaim: “Oh, Miss Miriam, do you recall that
little wounded kid which we saw the summer you and I met in the Tyrol,
and how its sad-eyed little owner carried it--at such an effort!--out
to the Calvary on the hillside, and laid it at the foot of the
crucifix? There was faith that the God Who suffered to save souls
would also pity His small four-footed creatures!”
“Indeed I could not easily forget it, Anselm! It was so sweet, and
so piteous,” Miss Braithwaite had answered. “I’ve always been most
thankful that you came along just then! I am sure that there is
one young creature in Switzerland who will carry to the grave the
conviction that, together with the guardian angels, Americans are the
instruments of God’s mercy in answer to prayer! What a happy child that
was when you bound up the kid and set its leg!”
Cicely, sitting silent on her side of the fireplace, raised her eyes
and met Mr. Lancaster’s look, like a boy’s who has been found out in
gentleness, always more mortifying to an American lad than detection in
naughtiness--together with her impressions of life amid venerable, yet
vividly existent faith, she was getting the revelation of two beautiful
souls, the elderly woman’s, the twenty-seven years younger man’s, who
knew and loved these things because they were part of them.
Sometimes something came up in these desultory, aimless talks which
made Mr. Lancaster spring up, take a book from the shelves--Miss
Braithwaite seemed to know exactly where to send him for any volume
of the three thousand or so in this room--turn to a passage or a poem
bearing on what had just been said, and read it aloud.
This was almost the best of all. Anselm Lancaster had a beautiful,
flexible voice; he had been an Oxford man and had brought home with
him the perfect modulations and pronunciation of English which Oxford
gives her sons, and he read with the feeling that an artist and lover
of literature brings to a book. Cis, listening, felt that her education
was just beginning; she realized what Miss Braithwaite had meant when
she suggested to her that she should spend this winter in this way.
Heretofore she had learned facts; now she was learning what the facts
stood for, what had called them into being, and no array of facts can
compare with this knowledge. It is the clothing of the dry bones which
are meaningless until the spirit prophesies to them and makes them
alive.
Best of all, though, were those times when Anselm Lancaster went over
to Miss Braithwaite’s piano, standing with its narrow end toward a
book-filled corner, its keyboard toward the room, and, there in the
shadow, played such exquisite music that it obliterated conscious
thought, leaving no room for anything but the delight of harmonies. It
was hard to go on working at these times. Miss Braithwaite’s work would
fall into her lap, her face rest upon her hand while she gazed into
the fire with eyes that seemed to look beyond the bounds of flesh, her
expression unutterably wistful. Cis, who did not understand what she
heard as Miss Braithwaite did, yet was engulfed by it. Never in her
short life had anything so seized her as did this music, yet, while in
the elder woman it woke the longing that nothing on earth can satisfy,
in the girl it called out new resolution to live and to do.
Cis talked little during these pleasant evenings, yet she never felt,
nor was excluded. Miss Braithwaite’s smile was always ready for her;
Mr. Lancaster included her with small services rendered her as she
worked, and his eyes rested upon her as he talked, leaving her free to
reply or not as she chose, and thus she, though silently for the most
part, made a third in the conversation.
On the eve of Christmas Eve Mr. Lancaster came rather later than usual;
Cis had decided that he was not coming and was a little disappointed.
She was restless; it was hard to keep her fingers steadily employed,
her mind off the thought that the morrow would have been her wedding
day. Somewhere Rod was remembering this. She sent a prayer out toward
him wherever he might be, that he might be blessed.
When Mr. Lancaster came in Miss Braithwaite was more than usually glad
to see him.
“Welcome indeed, Anselm!” she cried. “I am glad to see you, I heartily
detest telephoning, but I must arrange the details of our Christmas
with you. You know that the Jesuits have High Mass at midnight? Father
Morley needed persuading to it, but he yielded to our clamor for it. My
ragamuffins have their tree to-morrow, at five in the afternoon--though
I don’t suppose you’d have suspected me of the morning five o’clock! As
you’re to be my Santa Claus, you’ll meet me at the hall, I suppose? The
tree should be all over by seven. Then you’ll come home with us; we’ll
have a cozy dinner--_maigre_, for the vigil!--and quietly wait for the
time to start for Mass. I’ll drive you and Cis; the maids are to be
sent in another car. Then, after Mass, we’ll wish one another a blessed
Noël, and Cicely a birthday of the best gifts, and go our ways to our
well-merited slumber. Do you like my programme?”
“Only an ingrate could say no, Miss Miriam,” cried Anselm Lancaster.
“I’ll do my best to fulfil my part of it. I’ve an idea! Do you mind if
I costume as St. Nicholas, instead of Santa Claus, and tell the boys in
a few simple words who I am, what I’ve always done for children, and,
in a word, what a fine thing it is to have a saint for their friend,
instead of a fake? I think I can get it over to them, and it’s rather a
chance to steer them toward realities. What says the great little lady?
And her lieutenant?”
“The great little lady highly approves, Anselm; it takes you to see
chances to bolster up faith and morals incidentally to a frolic!” cried
Miss Braithwaite.
“And--?” hinted Mr. Lancaster, waiting for Cis. “The lieutenant?”
“If I’m the great little lady’s lieutenant, she thinks it’s fine,” Cis
said. “It will be good for me, too, because I don’t know much about
St. Nicholas, except that somehow he stood for Santa Claus’ portrait,
and it didn’t come near the original. Queer, but I never liked Santa
Claus as well as other children did; he’s too fa-stout! I hated that
line that told about his shaking when he trotted around! Maybe I’d
have liked him better if I’d been one of a family, and a lot of us had
got acquainted with him together, waiting for him to come down the
chimney.”
Anselm Lancaster looked pleased at this unusually long speech from Cis.
Sometimes Cis wondered if he knew her story and were sorry for her.
She did not mind if he knew, nor resent his possible pity. He was so
simply and truly a fine gentleman that no knowledge that he possessed
of another could ever seem like an intrusion.
“Good! Then St. Nicholas appears, _permissu superiorum_!” he cried.
“Miss Braithwaite tells me that you are to sing, Miss Adair; out of
sight, impersonating an angel, probably. I didn’t know you sang.”
“I don’t; I’m just going to do it,” Cis laughed. “If I impersonated an
angel I’d be out of sight, that’s sure!”
“In a slang sense?” suggested Mr. Lancaster. “Will you sing now what
you’ll sing then to the children, please, Miss Cis!”
“Oh, goodness!” sighed Cis, but she promptly arose. “All right; I
will. It’s the quickest way to prove I can’t! But I can’t play; Miss
Braithwaite plays it.”
“Not when Anselm is here,” said Miss Braithwaite. “Play ‘The Snow Lay
on the Ground’; play it in F, and harmonize it beautifully, because I
intend you to play it for Cis to-morrow night.”
Anselm Lancaster sat down before the dark instrument that reflected the
fire and electric light in its shining case. He struck a few chords
meditatively, then he went on to play the simple, lovely air over and
over, surrounding it with new harmonies, varying it, not as a fantasia,
but by holding to its simplicity, its lyric pathos, enriching it with
all the possibilities of a choral.
Cis stood listening, entranced.
“Isn’t that wonderful?” she sighed. “It’s all there, and yet nothing is
there till you bring it out! I love that hymn!”
“There’s a pretty allegory tucked away in what you just said, Miss
Adair, if you look for it. Now will you sing it for me?” said Mr.
Lancaster, softly touching the keys.
Cis sang, and Anselm Lancaster for the unnumbered time in his knowledge
of her, applauded Miss Braithwaite’s wisdom. Cis had a fresh, true
young voice, round and sweet, with the quality in it of a boy’s; she
had no method whatever, but sang as it had been given to her to sing,
yet no artist could better have conveyed the effect of an unearthly
narrator, telling the story of the First Christmas. It was a song
like the flow of a mountain spring, or the shape of a northern pine,
translated into sound.
“My dear Miss Adair, that was most beautiful!” Anselm cried sincerely.
“It is exactly what it should be. You sound like one of the shepherd
boys who sing that hymn on the mountains beyond Rome, or even like one
of their pipes! And you speak every word so that the dullest boy will
get it.”
“I want them to know what it tells them,” said Cis, and Mr. Lancaster
noted that she made no disclaimer of his praise, as she made no pose as
a singer. She did what she was asked to do as best she could; there it
began, there it ended.
“Of course they can’t understand the Latin, _Venite adoremus Dominum_,
but they are all baptized, and I think we catch a little Latin then,
don’t you? It seems to stick to us. I know Latin never seems like
something I don’t understand, even when I’m not understanding it, and
at high school it never bothered me a bit.”
“Do you know the Missal?” asked Anselm Lancaster, interested in this
Cis, suddenly friendly toward him and at ease with him.
“Miss Braithwaite has been showing it to me, and all about the colors,
and the vestments’ meaning; I’m so glad that she has!” cried Cis
eagerly. “It’s so splendid, so beautiful, so big and so old! It’s as
if I’d been a miserable little scrap of a beggar girl and someone had
taken me into a palace with rooms and rooms, and told me it was all
mine! Do you know, Mr. Lancaster, it’s scandalous to confess it, but
I always thought there was just one Mass; every day the same, three
hundred and sixty-five times a year. And here all these collects and
prefaces--mercy!”
Cis waved her hands as she ended; her delight in recovering her
inheritance was unmistakable.
“Now I know what Santa--I mean St. Nicholas!--must bring you!” cried
Anselm Lancaster, exchanging a glance of pleasure with Miss Braithwaite.
Weary, but triumphant, having brought “her ragamuffins’ Christmas tree”
to a successful conclusion, Miss Braithwaite took her guests home in
her coupé to dine on Christmas Eve. It was another Cis from the one of
the night before who sat, pale, with drooping eyes, in her golden gown
with its slender line of brown fur, opposite to Mr. Lancaster, talking
little, eating indifferently, her face grave, rather than sad, her
smile sweet and ready, with a kind of friendly patience new to Cis.
Miss Braithwaite saw that Anselm watched her, and she, also, watched
her covertly. The girl was changing fast; she was growing, deepening,
expanding. At this rate she would soon be a gracious, attractive and
valuable woman.
A thought new to her mind occurred to Miss Braithwaite, but she
instantly dismissed it. Anselm Lancaster had seen many lovely and
lovable women, in many lands; Cicely Adair could not attract him beyond
his sympathetic interest in a girl who had done what she had done, had
been faithful to the cause nearest his heart.
And if Cicely had been capable of attracting such a man as the
scholarly and accomplished Anselm Lancaster, he was so far from her
thoughts in this regard that she would never put forth the innocent
wiles which are every girl’s for the man whom she feels may love
her, by which she awakens and feeds his attraction, according to the
plan of the Creator Who made them male and female. Cis withdrew from
Mr. Lancaster as a rule, as from one outside her orbit, and when she
approached him it was with that admiration and trust that frankly
announced her sense of remoteness. Yet it was a sweet, a womanly Cis,
with new depths in her eyes, and strength and goodness being graven
upon her pale face, who sat so quietly across from Anselm Lancaster in
her golden, brown-furred gown that Christmas eve at dinner.
After dinner, as usual, Miss Braithwaite repaired to her library fire.
The night was cold; a sleet rain was falling, turning to ice as it
fell; the fire was welcome, its warmth and its cheer needed.
“Anselm, before you begin to smoke, will you call the garage? I detest
telephoning. Tell Leo to put the chains on my car, and not to fail to
have it here by half past eleven; I will not drive faster than ten
miles an hour to-night. Then you may light your cigar, and draw up to
be agreeable to us,” Miss Braithwaite commanded her guest. “Cicely,
dear, is it to be for you an order that keeps perpetual silence?”
“I’m afraid no order, of any sort,” said Cis arousing herself. “Fancy
me not talking! But we went to confession, you see, and after that
I can’t say much for awhile. I’m thinking about Nannie, married
to-morrow, and wondering what my birthday resolutions ought to be.”
She spoke softly, sitting close beside Miss Braithwaite, but Anselm
Lancaster heard her low, yet resonant voice.
He hung up the telephone receiver, and came back to the hearth. As he
slipped into his waiting chair he laid on Cicely’s knee a package;
evidently a book.
She untied the cord and disclosed a translation of the Missal, bound
in tooled red leather, three ribbons hanging from its pages.
“Oh!” cried Cis rapturously. “Oh, Mr. Lancaster, how fine, how
beautiful! Is it--” She checked herself, but, fluttering the leaves,
her arrested question was answered. On the fly page was written in the
close, small hand of one who wrote and thought much: “Cicely Adair. Her
Lord’s birthday and her own. Christmas 1922.”
“Oh, thank you, thank you!” cried Cis. “You can’t know how much I
wanted it! Nor how I thank you! Truly, Mr. Lancaster, I’m so grateful I
can’t say it. To think of your bothering with me.”
“Oh, but, my dear Miss Adair! I protest! _Bothering_ with you! How
dreadful! And not _grateful_, you know! Aren’t we friends? You must
not be grateful to a friend! But I hope you’ll like your Missal; of
course you will! Now I’m talking nonsense, too! I wanted you to have
it for the Midnight Mass. You told me you’d never been to a midnight
Mass! It’s supremely beautiful; the _Adeste_, and that fourth stanza at
midnight: ‘_Ergo qui natus die hodierna_.’ Will you say one tiny prayer
for the Missal-giver?” cried Anselm Lancaster, so boyishly that Cis,
as well as Miss Braithwaite looked surprised, and Cis said with the
greatest friendliness, out of her own boyish side:
“I’ll say a big one! I’ll put you in with Miss Braithwaite and Nan. I’m
going to receive for Nan; to-morrow is her wedding day. And someone who
needs it most of all. I’ll put you into my intention, and if I mayn’t
be grateful, Mr. Lancaster, I’ll be entirely ungrateful, but I’ll think
you’re so good to me that I would be grateful if it weren’t terribly
wrong to be anything but ungrateful!”
Anselm Lancaster threw back his head and laughed aloud, and Miss
Braithwaite joined him. Cicely’s nonsense delighted her watchful
friend; it was a symptom of health. Anselm Lancaster had never seen her
mischievous; he found it delightful.
The church of St. Francis Xavier was crowded, but pews were held till
ten minutes after midnight, and Miss Braithwaite had brought her two
guests thither ten minutes before midnight tolled out from the clock on
the adjoining house and school building.
The Mass was beyond words solemn and beautiful: the vestments of cloth
of gold; the myriad lights; the scent of forest and incense; the great
organ, the hundred choristers, the sublime music, the _Adeste Fideles_,
sung with such fervor that all over the church people were sobbing with
love for this inexpressibly dear hymn. With this the Mass marched on
to its supreme moment, the greatest, the most inconceivable, the one
infinite action of finite man, which encircles all creation, from Adam
to the last born at the consummation of the world, performed in time,
going on eternally.
Cicely was wrapt into something like ecstasy. The Christmas eve which
she had dreaded had become the highest hour of joy which she had ever
known. She was swept beyond herself into the rapture of the angels who
first sang this Gloria to which she listened.
God had tested her; she had not failed Him. Now He was rewarding her
with a reward beyond her comprehension. She received this communion
with her face wet with tears of joy. At last, at last she knew in Whom
she had believed, blindly, yet faithfully believed.
The rain had ceased when Mass was over; the congregation came out into
starlight and an ice-clad world, shining under the light.
“Oh, Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas, dear, dear Miss Braithwaite,
Mr. Lancaster!” cried Cis turning back on the lower step of the church
with radiant face. “Merry, merry, merry! For it’s blessedly merry to be
a Catholic on Christmas and to be at Mass when the little Lord comes
down!”