PORT
It was settled that Cis was to return to Beaconhite. Mr. Lancaster had
gone back, and immediately there came a brief, warm, characteristic
letter from Miss Braithwaite to Cis.
“You are to come home on any terms you choose, my dear,” she wrote,
“as long as you come; there are no terms to my wanting you. If you
will establish yourself in this house for good and all it will be
transformed. My library is large, but not large enough to fill the
vacancy in my life. Summer is coming, and I shall not be able to keep a
fire on the hearth much of the time; can’t you see how the library will
need your hair in it? I need your radiance, my child; you are a most
vivifying person, Cicely Adair! Other fires than that on my hearth are
burning low; I grow chilled. Anselm tells me that you are coming, yet
hesitate on the heels of the resolve lest you may not make good--isn’t
that the way to put it? Let me judge. You know how fully I speak my
mind; I suppose no one ever is doubtful of my meanings! Then, when I
say that coming to live with me will fulfil several of the corporal
works of mercy--feeding the hungry, comforting the sorrowful, visiting
the sick--of mind, at least--it is strictly true. I am impatiently
waiting for you; come as soon as you can, please. And be sure that I
am not only lovingly, but gratefully, Your grumpy old friend, Miriam
Braithwaite.”
“You are glad to leave me, Cis--and baby!” Nan reproached her.
“You are so completely married, Nannie! And I can’t claim my godson
unless I do away with you and Joe,” Cis replied. “With Jeanette living
in Beaconhite I’ll have one girl friend there. Father Morley will teach
me what I ought to know; he’s truly a great man. You know what Miss
Braithwaite is; I’ve told you as much as can be told about her. Life
in that house is never far off from the greatest, the eternal things,
but it is also overflowing with beauty of books, music, art--and Miss
Braithwaite does so love to play like a child, but a witty, wonderful
child! It’s a beautiful life; I can’t help being glad to live it. But
you know I love you, Nannie!”
Cis took her small friend in her arms to kiss her hard.
“There’s no chance for Tom, Cis?” hinted Nan. “I thought, possibly,
when you sent Rodney Moore away--I know you did send him!--that
maybe--? Mother is so anxious for it; she’s going to talk to you before
you go.”
“Oh, Nan, don’t let her!” protested Cis. “That’s awful; second-hand
wooing! If a girl were beginning to think about a man I’d suppose that
it would turn her off to have his mother come to offer him to her!
Don’t let your mother try that! And help me to dodge nice young Tommy!
Because I’ll never in all this world marry the boy, so why bother
about it?”
“Why, indeed,” sighed Nan. “I’ll try to head off my family. I think Tom
is convinced that he stands no chance.”
“He knows I’m truthful and sure of what I want,” Cis said lightly. “Now
I’m going to talk to Mr. Singer. We’ve everything running in fine shape
down there; it won’t be hard to fit someone into my shoes.”
“I wish Miss Gallatin would take it,” said Nan.
“I wish she could,” Cis said thoughtfully. “But it ought to be someone
younger, more ornamental. Girls forget that sort of woman made
herself what she is by being the right sort of girl; they think they
were always elderly and were born with serious, decorous clothes on,
common-sense shoes, and carrying an umbrella to be ready for storms--a
figurative umbrella against figurative storms, too! Miss Gallatin
is going to stay on in the Lucas household when Jeanette leaves it.
After all, she has a big field there; all those children and an
invalid mother! I wish I could get a Catholic woman into the club of
Bells--that’s what I call it, but Mr. Singer won’t let me use that
nice name. Lots of the girls are the kind of Catholics I was, need the
Catholic woman, and she wouldn’t harm the others! Girls aren’t a bad
lot, but it’s marvellous how crookedly they see and think! I’d like to
furnish them all with folding pocket rules to measure up by!”
Nan laughed, then sighed. “You’d do for a pocket rule for all of them,
if you’d stay here,” she said. “A girl like you can do wonders. I’m
sorry, _sorry_ you’re going!”
“Let’s hope I’ll shine as a light to girls in Beaconhite; there are
girls there, silly Nancy!” laughed Cis. “Nan, I think they named that
city expressly for my coming to it! Hasn’t it been a beacon on the
height to me?”
“It’s your post graduate college; it’s made you grow up. Oh dear, Cis,
I’ve grown up, too, in the same time, but you have grown away from me!”
“Fast friends forever!” Cis corrected her, and pretended to mop tears
out of Nan’s eyes with her handkerchief.
Yet when it came to the actual parting it was Cis, not Nan, who cried
tempestuously. She realized that this was a farewell that was final,
however true it might be that they were, as she had said herself,
“fast friends forever.” Complete divergence of paths and interest
ends, not the will to friendship, but its actuality. At their age Nan,
married and settled, Cis going on to meet life, would pass out of
knowledge of their common beginning. She and Nan would contrive to meet
occasionally, and, thus meeting, find it difficult to talk together
after the first exchange of news items was over. Cis recognized this,
and felt it sad, but she attributed her crying to little Matt.
“He will grow every day, and do something new and darling every day,
and I shall not see him, and he won’t know me when I do see him! If
only babies wouldn’t grow up and begin to go to school so soon!” she
sobbed, mumbling her godson’s soft cheeks.
“Mercy!” cried Nan, shocked by the suggestion that her son would soon
take his place in the ranks of those in the second age of man’s career.
Miss Braithwaite’s coupé was waiting at the Beaconhite station to take
Cis home when she arrived. She jumped into it with a thrill of joy and
received Miss Braithwaite’s quiet, warm welcome shyly, yet with high
delight. It seemed to her that at last “she belonged,” as she told
herself; that this was a true home-coming.
Miss Braithwaite looked tired; Cis saw it after they had reached the
house and were settled down to tea-serving by Ellen in the splendid
library. At Miss Braithwaite’s age the effects of hard experience take
the appearance of physical ills, and often their form; it was less
that Miss Braithwaite looked as if she had borne grief since Cis had
last seen her, than that she looked as if she had seriously overtaxed
herself, her nervous strength.
“Oh, how good this is! How happy and how good!” Cis sighed dropping her
hat on the chair nearest to her, leaning back in the low chair which
she occupied and rumpling her heavy coils of hair into a looseness
adjusted to the upholstery.
“I’ve been bad, Miss Braithwaite, restless, unsatisfied, not knowing
what was wrong, but suspecting a whole lot of things! And the suspicion
that it was this house and Beaconhite was right! I wanted to be here.”
“We are going to talk later; now it is tea, then rest, and this
evening talk,” declared Miss Braithwaite. “Anselm wanted to come here
to-night, but I forbade it; cloister observance for us this first
night! Jeanette Lucas is to marry Paul Randolph, and be near by. Are
you glad?”
“Indeed I am, only--Well, of course she wants to marry Mr. Randolph,”
Cis hesitated.
“Nothing wrong with him; I’d find him a bit dull,” declared Miss
Braithwaite. “He’s intelligent, has a nice mind; can’t turn it into
currency to pay his way. I like a talker, as you know. But he is truly
fine, and that he is nobly good he has given proof. There won’t be
lacking those who will say that he recognized his opportunity; that
marrying Jeanette Lucas was wise, and that his sacrifice of an income
will be made up to him without much loss of time.”
“How contemptible!” cried Cis. “As though there were need of looking
beyond Jeanette herself for a reason for wanting to marry her! If Mr.
Randolph had that sort of worldly prudence he need not have come into
the Church at all! Why are human beings so mean?”
“Because they are human, my dear. People must belittle fine actions
when they are small people; big deeds are most annoying to small
minds; they take them as personal affronts,” returned Miss Braithwaite
placidly. “It really does not matter about the chatter of parrakeets.
If you are so partizan of Paul Randolph why did you seem to hesitate
just now in approving the marriage?”
“I always hoped Jeanette would marry Mr. Lancaster, you know,” said
Cis promptly. “But neither of them ever showed symptoms, so I don’t
suppose it’s Mr. Randolph’s fault.”
“Not in the least!” Miss Braithwaite laughed. “I sometimes think it may
be another girl’s fault, though. I suspect Anselm of other wishes.”
“How exciting!” cried Cis. “Aren’t you going to tell me? He seems so
splendid, so interested in affairs, it’s hard to imagine him thinking
of marrying.”
Miss Braithwaite laughed again, but she held up her hands in horror.
“Now heaven forfend!” she cried. “Cis, are you transforming poor Anselm
into the hero of the early Victorian novel? Solitary, superior, remote,
a demi-god, with the human, half wishy-washy, artificial? Because it’s
distinctly unfair of you, if you are! He is thoroughly a human being,
but he has made his humanity what God meant a man to be. To my mind
he’s forceful, strong and quick in feeling; a vital man. He’s precisely
the man to think of marriage, and not to think of it coolly, but to
bring to it a great love, such as would honor any woman and make her
happy.”
Cis stirred uneasily; she could not have said why she felt
uncomfortable, ill-at-ease.
“I don’t think anything of him that you would not want me to think,
Miss Braithwaite,” she said. “I don’t know him as you do, of course,
but I admire him almost as much. If only you could have seen him with
those boys! And Tom said in the station everybody stared at him.”
“Boys? Station?” echoed Miss Braithwaite. “Tell me.”
And Cis told her the story, to which she listened without comment.
The next day Cis spent happily picking up the dropped threads of her
Beaconhite existence. She went to Mr. Lucas’ office and received a
welcome beyond her expectation.
“Ah, my dear!” Mr. Lucas cried. “Now I shall have you back as soon as
I can open the way for you! You were a good secretary; I miss you. But
you were also a good confessor of the Faith! Amazing, but it was you
who first brought home to me unescapably what I’d been suspecting all
along; that there really was something unaccountable on natural grounds
in the Old Church. I’m going to be a Catholic at Pentecost, my dear
Cicely!”
“Yes, I know; Jeanette told me. I’m so thankful! And I could cry when
you say I was the one who set you on!” Cis exclaimed.
“Nothing to cry over! We don’t cry Te Deums, and that’s your theme,”
Mr. Lucas smiled at her. “When will you return to the office? As soon
as I provide the space?”
“I think so, Mr. Lucas. Miss Braithwaite would rather I’d stay at home
all the time, but I’m afraid that’s a risk for a red-haired girl;
they’re not crickets on hearths! Miss Braithwaite promises me all that
I can do, though. We’ll see. May I have a few days in which to adjust?”
Cis asked. “Now I’m going on to find Father Morley.”
The Jesuit was at home; he received Cis with his cordial, yet
appraising look that took an inventory of her days since he had last
seen her. He seemed satisfied with what he saw; his eyes softened and
smiled approvingly. He recognized in Cicely’s face a new expression of
self-reliance, purpose; peace that was not incompatible with the eager,
wistful, unsatisfied look which her face also wore.
“Ready for the next thing,” he told himself, “and it’s not far ahead of
her.”
But aloud he said: “I am glad, exceedingly glad that you have come back
to us, Cicely. Miss Braithwaite is thankful; she is deeply attached to
you. You wrote me of that remarkable sequel to your fidelity to God’s
law. Do you care to tell me more about it?”
“I want to tell you all about it, Father,” Cis answered. “I might have
married Rodney without wrong-doing, but--Father, I couldn’t! Isn’t that
strange? I didn’t want to. I’m not a fickle person, but I didn’t want
to. He told me that I had been right as to his still being married. He
felt that there was no divorce when he knelt by his dying wife. It’s
all strange, isn’t it?”
“That isn’t,” said Father Morley. “It is strange, that you were the one
who saved that poor creature from suicide to die like a Christian, but
it is not strange that her husband recognized the indissoluble link
between them. You will find it always true that the supernatural law
does no violence to the natural law, but, on the contrary, confirms
it, while elevating it beyond nature. To my mind that is one of the
proofs of the Church. Heretics have gone contrary to natural laws
in all sorts of ways. The Church repeatedly proves that the hand of
the Creator is also the hand that founded her. She has sanctified,
ennobled, supernaturalized, not contradicted man’s natural instincts
and desires. Well, well! You’re not demanding her proofs! Why do I set
poor little you up as an heretical tenpin to be bowled over? What is
your next step, or do you not know it yet, Cicely Adair?”
“No, Father,” replied Cis wistfully. “I don’t know a step; not the next
one, nor any beyond that. Do you think I might be a nun? A Sister of
Charity would be more in my line; active, you know. Is that what I’m
made for?”
Father Morley looked at her gravely, yet with a quizzical twinkle in
his eye, as if he were enjoying with himself a pleasant secret.
“No, my child, I do not think that is your vocation,” he said. “I
think that you are meant to be a real helpmeet to a fine man; to do
good in the world, bear witness to the value of Catholic Faith and
standards, and train up your sons and daughters to carry on that noble
inheritance, while they rise up and call you blessed. Perhaps one day
to see your son raise his hands before the altar, holding in them the
Host, and to kneel, thanking God with tears, that you upheld those
hands for that miracle.”
“Father!” cried Cicely, and was silent, tears on her cheeks. “If I
might! I’d like that most of all,” she murmured after an instant.
Anselm Lancaster came that evening to see Cis; he announced that
his call was wholly for her. Cis saw him come into the library with
amazement that his presence so changed it. There was about him a
buoyant happiness; charm went out from him, and purposeful assertion,
which was far from conceit, sat on his every movement.
“Miss Miriam, Cicely Adair has never seen my house. I was offended
last year that you never showed it to her, as much as you drove about,
but I hid my wrath. Now I’m out for revenge! I’m going to show it to
her myself, and not invite you! Cicely, I’ll be here at half past
two to-morrow afternoon. Please be ready to drive with me, out to my
house--it’s a shame you’ve not been shown it!--and also wherever the
fancy takes us to go. This selfish and unfriendly Miss Miriam shall sit
here and languish, eating her heart out till we return!”
“Is it a matter so serious as a heart-consuming?” asked Miss
Braithwaite.
She caught and returned the flash of a look which Anselm darted at her.
“I’ll not pretend a virtue I lack; I hope so!” he said.
Cis was ready when he came for her; he helped her into his car, and she
cried out, almost reproachfully:
“A new car! Why are men always changing cars? What did you do with that
nice one, the roadster?”
“Turned it in; I don’t need two. I thought when Paul and Jeanette were
married, and you were here, we’d need the five passenger; we can take
Miss Braithwaite, too. But please don’t speak of _that_ nice one; as
if it weren’t _this_ nice one! Let me tell you I’m proud of this car!”
Anselm said as he shoved out the brake and started.
“Of course you are! They always are! Boys of new knives; men of new
cars! They are much alike, aren’t they?” said Cis.
“Knives and cars? Oh, I don’t know; I could always distinguish the
differences,” Anselm remarked.
“Boys and men! I never thought you would be stupid!” Cis said severely.
“I’ll prove to you I’m not, if you’ll wait a bit!” Anselm’s remark
sounded like a continuation of the nonsense they were happily talking,
but his look silenced Cis, and set her nervously wondering why it made
her nervous.
The Lancaster house was far finer than Cis had expected to find it.
She had known all along that Anselm Lancaster had wealth; he used it
generously, and it must have been considerable for him to accomplish
with it all that he did. But ocular proof is another thing from
hearsay. Here was a house of great dignity, standing in the midst of
considerable land, approached by an avenue of old trees. Its solid
doors, opening, revealed a stately hall; in the rooms opening from the
hall Cis found old furniture, beautiful and stately. Pictures which
even her untrained eye instantly knew for good ones, hung on the walls;
bronzes, a tall clock, all sorts of beauty which was evidently the slow
accumulation by many people with taste and means to gratify it, filled
the house.
“How beautiful!” cried Cis. “Why, Mr. Lancaster, it’s what the novels
call a mansion! It’s as fine as Miss Braithwaite’s house!”
“They are contemporaries. Her great-grandfather and mine, and each
generation since, have been friends. This house was built when hers
was. My people were not Catholics, till my grandmother married a
Lancaster and brought this house to him; she became a Catholic after
she had married him. My father married a saintly woman; it is two
generations--I the third--since the Lancaster house became a Catholic
home. Now I try to make it a home for converts who are put to too hard
a test at first; a temporary home, of course. I’m more than glad that
you like my house, Cicely!”
Anselm spoke in a curious muffled voice, and Cis smiled up at him,
disturbed, at a loss to account for it, and for the disturbance which
she recognized in him. “How could I not like it?” she said.
“Will you come to see my dear mother’s sitting room?” Anselm asked,
going toward the stairs. “It is up one flight. It is like a chapel to
me; I’ve often wanted to make it into one, but there are necessary
sleeping rooms over it; I can’t use it for a chapel. It is the room in
which I was happiest as a child, though I was always happy. It is the
room where I learned to love books and all beauty, and where my soul
was born through the soul of that lovely creature who gave me physical
life.”
Cis followed him, wondering, deeply moved. This was not the Anselm
Lancaster she knew, yet it was not the contradiction of him; rather
it was his efflorescence. He led her into a small, light room, facing
toward the sunset, which was not yet, nor for hours, due. Evidently the
room had not been changed since it had been used by the mother whom he
had so dearly loved. Books, a work-basket, were on the table; a low
armchair, considerably worn, stood beside the table. Anselm gently put
Cis into it, and stood before her.
“My mother’s chair, dear Cicely,” he said. “I like to see you there.
How you would have loved each other! Cis, dear, lovely, glowing Cicely,
don’t you know what I’ve brought you here to tell you? Don’t you know?
Haven’t you guessed?”
Slowly Cis shook her head, looking at him intently, as if she were
groping her way, her mind rejecting the one explanation of his words
that it could present to her.
“Why, I love you, Cis! That’s what it is. That’s easy to guess, easier
to understand!” cried Anselm.
“No, no, no! It’s impossible to understand!” cried Cis.
“You’re going to marry me, dearest; you’re going to be here in my
mother’s place, always. Can’t you love me? I love you so much!” Anselm
pleaded.
“I never once thought of it; never once!” Cis cried.
“You don’t have to think of it; just do it!” Anselm said boyishly.
“I think you are the best, the finest--” began Cis, but he interrupted
her with an impatient exclamation.
“Good heavens, Cis, stop! That’s nothing to tell me, nor to feel! Love
me; don’t admire me!”
“Isn’t it? I think I couldn’t love anyone I didn’t admire,” said Cis,
trying to find her puzzled way. “I loved someone; you know that. I was
crazy to see him; it made my breath short when he came; I--One doesn’t
love again, does she? But I know now that I couldn’t love him last
winter because I didn’t admire him.”
“Cis, dear,” began Anselm, sitting on the edge of the table as if
he meant to argue it out, “I think we don’t love again in that same
first way; it’s the dream of youth. I had it, too, but I was only a
lad of seventeen when I fell madly in love. You were older than I when
it happened to you but you were not much older, and you were no more
experienced, and experience is what counts in these things. There
is a glamor over everything that is part of that time of life, and
we have our first love hard. But, dear, it’s not in the same class
with our later, mature love. Do you imagine I felt for that little
fluffy girl of twenty whom I loved when I was seventeen, anything
like what I feel for you? Nor was that first love of yours, which you
so bravely conquered for God’s sake, the love you’ll feel for your
husband, who will be one with you in all things of soul and body. Cis,
honestly--though it may sound conceited--I am sure you love me. Will
you be sure of it? Father Morley, Miss Braithwaite, Jeanette, hope for
it.”
“Oh! Do they all know?” gasped Cis.
“That I love you? Surely. Blind little Cis not to have known it
yourself! But now that you do know it--”
“I couldn’t so much as think of marrying you!” Cis hastily interrupted
him. “Why, I’d be--what would I be? One of the people brought into a
country to serve it, then deserting its flag--a traitor! That’s it!
Miss Braithwaite imported me to live with her, be almost a daughter to
her. Much good I’d do her if I--”
“Now, Cicely, can’t you trust Miss Miriam to me?” Anselm interrupted
in his turn. “Do you suppose we haven’t discussed my hopes? Haven’t I
just told you that she wanted them fulfilled? Good mothers do not want
to mortgage their daughters’ lives; they want them to find their own
places and happily fill them. Miss Braithwaite shall not lose you if
I win you, dear one! She is most anxious for this marriage, Cis. ‘Cis
must come to me, Anselm; then you shall woo her at your best. She shall
be in her home, the home that holds you part of it, and I hope that
will incline her to harken to you. But if not, then at least she is
still in her own home; the dear child will be made secure however she
decides.’ That is what she said to me, Cicely beloved, before I went
away to try to bring you back. Marry me, then there will be another
besides ourselves happy; Miss Miriam the third rejoicing.”
“I don’t see how you can possibly mean that you want to marry me!” said
Cis slowly abandoning Miss Braithwaite’s cause. “Don’t you think you
mean someone else?”
“I distinctly think that I mean no one else!” cried Anselm. “Do I
strike you as positively feeble-minded? There’s no difficulty in
telling you from all others. I can tell you apart literally, quite
apart from all others created! And I’m not grave and settled down; I’m
only thirty-eight, darling! Are you thinking of me as solemn, serious,
almost elderly? No, no; I’m not! I’m your lover, Cis, and he loves
you more than he can tell you. Will you come here, Cis, desire of my
heart? Will you help me in the beautiful schemes we’ve discussed? Take
my mother’s place, but fill only your own place, my wife’s place, my
helpmeet’s place--and more; a thousand times more!”
“You are meant to be a real helpmeet to a fine man.” Cis heard Father
Morley’s voice again saying these words to her. He had known when
he said it that Anselm meant to ask her to marry him; he wanted her
to marry Anselm, though Anselm was a great man, while she was only
red-haired Cicely Adair!
It came upon her with an irresistible rush of conviction that she did
love Anselm, that she had been loving him and had not known it. For how
could she ever have thought of his loving her? Yet this was why all
other things, Nan, her old home, Rodney Moore seemed insufficient to
her; this was why she had been restless, longing, unsatisfied. What a
life it was that opened out before her in this house, the wife of this
man, his helpmeet, his beloved!
Distrust of herself, the magnitude of the joy stretching out before
her drove her into the true woman’s dalliance with yielding to this
unforeseen bliss.
She must hold off for a little while the glorious submergence of
herself out of which she knew would arise the truer, greater self which
would forevermore be Cicely.
“Take me home,” Cis said rising. “I cannot answer yet.”
Obediently Anselm followed her toward the door, but he looked bitterly
disappointed. Cis halted, wavering, on the threshold, as her heart
smote her for this look. This was Anselm’s mother’s room, the sanctuary
of his childhood, the shrine of a tender love. It would be sweet to
make him happy here; he had brought her hither for this.
She was a generous Cicely, albeit a frightened one. She turned fully
and faced Anselm.
“I think I do. Love you, I mean. I’ll come,” she said.
He caught her, reverently, gratefully, yet most lovingly in his arms
and kissed her flaming hair, her white brow, her closed eyes, and at
last, with the bridegroom’s kiss, he kissed her sweet lips.
The great cable which had held her fast, had also drawn Cis safe into
port.
THE END
PRINTED BY BENZIGER BROTHERS, NEW YORK.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
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Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
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