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diff --git a/old/69450-0.txt b/old/69450-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index e605a90..0000000 --- a/old/69450-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,4455 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook of An Episode in the Doings of the -Dualized, by Eveleen Laura Mason - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this eBook. - -Title: An Episode in the Doings of the Dualized - -Author: Eveleen Laura Mason - -Release Date: December 2, 2022 [eBook #69450] - -Language: English - -Produced by: Richard Tonsing and the Online Distributed Proofreading - Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from - images generously made available by The Internet Archive) - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN EPISODE IN THE DOINGS OF -THE DUALIZED *** - - -[Illustration] - - - - - AN EPISODE - IN THE - DOINGS OF THE DUALIZED. - - -[Illustration] - - “The truth is, a great mind must be androgynous.” - —COLERIDGE. - - BY EVELEEN LAURA MASON, - BROOKLINE, MASS. - 1898. - - - - - CHAPTER I. - - -This was the way it happened. Like all beginnings of things, the roots -were in the dark. Ethelbert Daksha came of a family in which girls -counted for a big half of all that was bright and interesting. - -The Dakshas were a delightful family every way, except, perhaps, in the -matter of money-wealth. That seemed constitutionally lacking, because -you will see yourself that people who take great interest in devising -ways of spending money, and very little in devising ways of getting it -to spend, in the constitution of things are lacking in money-wealth. But -they had everything else except money, and their chief thought in regard -to that lack was an amiable perplexity that it seemed to be such a -desideratum in affairs of society. There was a big but exhausted English -property on the mother’s side; and this strain of high English blood was -mixed with a dash of hard-headed German culture and a few drops from the -veins of a Spanish dame, lady-mother of the Hidalgos. So, you see, when, -ninety years before, a discontent with something in the Old World -society had set the elder Daksha down on American soil, various European -nationalities were transplanted to root as best might be in American -civilization. In addition to all this, as faith in all things high, -bounded brightly in the Daniel O’Connell blood which coursed through -Daniel Daksha’s veins, it was very natural that his daughter Ethelbert, -considering as she did that all nationalities were equally admirable for -different virtues, should be greatly astonished that there should be -quarrels between those of different countries, when the blood of four -nations coursed so amicably in her own veins. If ever there were a girl -who, in the nature of things was a typical American, it was Ethelbert -Daksha, with the race-drift of Europe, Asia and Africa in her individual -veins, as our nation carries it in its aggregated citizenship. - -Mr. Daksha recognized all this. He was one of the dreamers who work, at -whose feet life lays its crown of success; although so far his many -admirable schemes for regenerating society had made him at once the most -serviceable and the most impecunious of mortals. He had abundant means, -but little money; and while it might be stretching a point to say the -Dakshas cultivated a life of beauty on a little oatmeal, yet it would -give a hint at the way in which beauty was cultivated in that simple -home, where oatmeal was the chief of their diet; that is, if you leave -out of the reckoning the best periodicals and old writings of all climes -and ages. These things were really the chief of their diet, and had much -to do with the fact that they, like the old lady who lived on the hill, -were scarce ever quiet concerning the topic of the ideal order of -society which is soon coming to our nation, and through us to the world. - -Life among the Dakshas was like a bit of Greek art transplanted to the -robust civilization of this country, which is trying so hard to -assimilate its many diverse elements. The theory of the elegant Greeks -was: “What the spirit wills, the body must.” This theory had been -practicalized more or less fully by O’Connell, who knew no law stronger -than that of the _necessities_, which he deemed were laid on him as -liberator of his people. The same theory had been the impelling power of -the Spanish proverb which, translated, reads: “In his own soul, and not -in that of another, must the principle of one’s actions be established.” -While the German element, which fills the veins of England’s crowned -family, in quick response to the same idea, cried out: “Let every man -hear for himself, and hearing, then speak.” - -So as you may well suppose, the theory that spirit is master and body is -only the good servant to do the spirit’s bidding, met some rebuffs as -the Dakshas lived it out midst that portion of the newly rich who devote -their energies to saving—not MAN, but money. And so much were the -Dakshas in love with their beautiful ideals that but for their good -common sense they would have become domineering dogmatists; and thus, -properly, would have made themselves greatly disliked, and therefore, -incapacitated for service. - -About forty odd years before this episode the heads of the Daksha family -had settled themselves to the recognition that the inordinate frenzy for -money-making which was deluging its possessors, would insure many low -tragedies in high (?) life; and to the recognition that society was -becoming but like a witch’s caldron with its seethe and bubble of toil -and trouble, and with its inodorous stench of poison things, flung into -it by the witches and wizards, as they carry out their passion-dance on -the old Harry’s pavilion. - -Of course the Dakshas had their opinion of this besotted high (?) life, -with its stimulation of that excitement which wrecks nerve and brain. -But they did not presume to force the virtues of self-culture on persons -whose highest dream of success was TO INCREASE THEIR CHANCES FOR THIS -INDULGENCE IN HIGH OLD TIMES, and who were more than willing to pay for -them, with the after years of that disease, remorse and reek of ill-fame -in which “the name of the wicked rots.” - -Whatever they might choose to _do_ with their knowledge, the fact -remained that the younger Dakshas _knew_ that they, by inheritance, were -rooted in different purposes and back-history than such as this, which -reveals itself in these forms of faith-breaking, love-outraging, -humanity-destroying bewilderments. So when this other kind of girls and -boys, with their mothers and fathers flying around in society’s -whirligig, flitted about them, the Dakshas thought steadily on the truth -as they knew it; and “hearing for themselves, then spoke,” thus giving -their companions a chance to catch on at any point of spiritual contact -which they found available. - -So the roots of Ethelbert Daksha’s life had gathered force and fibre in -wisdom religions known in ancient America, Europe, Asia and Africa; and -the might of this force was now annealed in her nature, and was forming -into a unified strength of character, which to the ignorant seemed like -a thing of very different quality. - -Reginald Grove altogether misunderstood Ethel when first they met; for -he did not so much as know that there were girls in the world with -character-roots so deep and far-reaching. There were two things he -recognized at sight, but character was not one. He knew money when he -saw it, and he thought he knew poverty, too. His father belonged to the -class of people who laugh at “blood,” and worship money. His blood was -made up of such things as a man who lays the reins on the neck of his -impulses can get into his veins, if in his early days his father strikes -a “money lead” and he “a society life”; but then he had a mother, too, -and there came in the difference. - -Since he was seventeen years old Reginald had bought all the high-priced -things that our fast civilization has to offer in exchange for “soul,” -and now the ashes of that past were beginning to grit between his teeth; -for he had a sweet memory of peace, purity and of an harmonious-purpose -which glinted across his mind angelically as the remains of what had -been his baby guesses at real manhood. But this dream, and the sainted -mother who had inspired it, had both been devastated by the ignorant -animalism of the elder Grove. So when the mother-spirit was released -from earth’s control, little Regie’s waiting eyes turned to his father; -and watching, he perceived that his father’s shrewd bargaining instincts -resulted in increased wealth, which made it possible for him to sow a -big crop of gilded misery, and still to pay his son’s bills, while he -did likewise; and that doing all this he was yet flattered as a -millionaire. So you see, beloved as was his mother’s memory and distinct -as had been her teachings to his baby mind, they became but “woman’s -notions” when contradicted by his father’s practices, and by the -licensing laws of paternal government which assure young men they may -sin freely, and yet be wealthy and wise; and healthy, too, if nostrums -will make them so. - -For a time Reginald believed this, seeing the nation’s fathers had by -license laws practically declared it. And as the wisdom of the nation’s -mothers had been placed under silence as deep as the grave, “no cause or -impediment being shown to forbid the banns” between his soul and -corruption, he rushed on in the paths prepared for feet like his. But -lately he did not feel very healthy; and as for his wealth, he feared -that was getting a bit rickety, and his wisdom was hardly at par. - -So these were Reginald’s character “roots.” But it was the one little -radical, or true-life fibre, which vibrated with a thrill when he first -met Ethelbert Daksha. At the instant, it seemed to him as though the -mirage which ever floated up from the fens of his unrecorded life, was -swept away by a breath from over the jasper walls of the eternal city. -That curious look out of Ethelbert’s eyes, so all-comprehending, pitiful -and yet unmoved, held him, as his mother’s eyes had always done in the -past; and he had not a word to say. He felt as such men feel when -conscious of the moral distance between their private lives and the -lives of sweet girl acquaintances. - -As usual he waited for Ethelbert to speak; but as is not usual she, -recognizing his moral state, did not come down and hunt round for -something to say on its level. “The great gulf fixed,” was fixed. She -did not try to cross it; so she escaped falling and floundering therein, -for her pains. Ethelbert believed not in self-abnegation, but in -self-expression. She believed it right to stand squarely on her own fair -heights; that from there, with the hand next her heart placed in -Jehovah’s, she could give her _brain_-inspired right hand to brother man -and then lift! - -“An Englishman dares be silent,” they say, and Ethelbert’s English -quality was in the ascendant, when Reginald looked at her, wishing to -know if those mother-eyes were backed by a brain filled with mother wit -and wisdom. He met silence, and went away from that party with an -unsatisfied hunger in his soul, which proved that that abused thing was -not dead yet. - -After that they met casually often; and Ethelbert, who “pondered all -these things in her heart,” which are brought by “ministering spirits to -those who are _heirs_ of salvation,” knew Reginald better than as if -they for years had talked much self-disguising trash together. - -One summer afternoon when she was sitting on the balcony of the Daksha -home he passed and raised his hat, and she bowed in return, with the -thought in mind and eyes, “that man is inherently a good man.” And he -saw it, and halted, and then with direct purpose, crossed the street and -seated himself on the step, asking no permission. - -“Miss Ethelbert, you always make me wish I were a boy five years old,” -he said. - -“I wish you were,” said Ethelbert. - -This was sudden for Reginald; for though he was willing to recognize the -failure he had made of manhood, Ethelbert’s businesslike way of -accepting the idea was not flattering, and he was used to flattery. - -“Why do you wish it?” he said after knocking his teeth, not agreeably, -with the head of his cane and gazing at her combatively. - -“So that you could cleave to the right. You are so old in your habits -now, so undeveloped in the practice of judgment, and—oh, there is -Bertha! Come right up here, Bertha. I was sitting here looking for you. -Yes, you can have the newly cut lawn grass for your rabbits; but I want -to see you first. I have saved the papers for you. Now, Mr. Grove, this -is one of my friends, Bertha Gemacht; and Bertha, this is one of my -friends, Reginald Grove.” - -Reginald had risen to his feet under this speech, the words of which are -only recorded. The cool, helpful look which she turned on him in view of -his moral mismanagement, and which was not in the least altered as she -looked from him to Bertha, and from Bertha to him again, was as new to -him as it was irritating and fascinating. For Bertha was to him a -hard-looking woman as she laid her sack for holding the grass, down, and -turned on him a look cowed, yet angry, and with another mixed expression -indescribable. - -There was a little odor of whiskey about Bertha, and so there was about -Reginald; and Ethelbert’s senses were as keen in one case as they were -in the other; but she noticed that while Bertha seemed not in the least -surprised that such a man as Reginald was found in a nice lady’s -company, he was plainly indignant at seeing Bertha there; and that he -watched them with disapprobation while they leaned over an illustrated -paper together. - -“Now I would like you to read an account of the two women who took a -homestead of one hundred and sixty acres; and for seven years worked it -so well and wisely that they now have a delightful, valuable home, and -have since added three other women to the household: women who had lost -hope of happiness and honor, but are now becoming healthy and -self-sustained by work,—honest, skillful work. Of course one has to have -health in order to have nice clear brains.” - -“O Bertha, did you read and understand the health journal I loaned you? -And did you think, after all the facts I told you, that you would better -still sometimes use whiskey and—” - -“Indeed, Miss Daksha, I have not taken more than—” - -“Bertha,” Ethelbert interrupted. “Of course you will drink whiskey all -you choose. I was only wishing you would choose not to drink it at all. -Do you think rum drinking makes people healthy, wealthy and wise?” - -Bertha’s face had lighted up under the idea which had lately been -brought to her by this friend, whose unvarying recognition of Bertha’s -individuality, and of the fact that she could make of herself just such -a woman as she chose to make, had opened a world of dignified -possibilities before her. Her large eyes, which often had the look of an -angry animal brought to bay, had now in them a puzzled, wondering look, -full of startled expectancy. - -“Do you think I am healthier than you are?” said Ethelbert. Bertha -nodded eagerly. “Would you wish to be like me?” - -“O Gott in Himmel! Would I not!” said Bertha, and she threw her old -apron over her head; and the wild conflict within broke forth in a -tempest of sobs. - -Reginald sat down on the steps with his back to them both, and looked -out on the evening clouds; and Ethelbert, in that sharp fellowship with -suffering which is part of the price paid by those whose soul-sight -gives them redemptive power with the tempted and fallen, steadied -herself under the pangs of the sudden remorse that had struck the heart -of the man and of the woman anear. - -“There Bertha, now listen,” said she presently. “Let us, you and I, not -do anything which will in the least harm the pure river of life, which, -flowing through our veins, comes first from Jehovah, the fount of all -life. See, Bertha!” - -The girl uncovered her eyes, and awe-struck, looked at Ethelbert as she -bared her arm and showed the blue tracery there, and on her hand, -adding: “See, the beautiful stream in the little river-beds here, flows -on, and up through this big artery in my throat, over my brain. And -Bertha,” she paused, and with a dramatic but perfectly unaffected -gesture full of regnant poise, and with a light in her eyes never seen -on sea or land, she said again, slowly: “And, Bertha, brain rules here! -What the spirit wills, this body must. So my brain has commanded that -nothing shall be put into my blood which shall send poisonous elements -maddeningly up to the throne of reason. But Bertha, if you think it is -wise to do as you do, you may have some good cause for it, that I know -nothing about. Tell me, am I mistaken in my ideas? Shall I go with you -where you went this afternoon, and put into my veins all that you did -into yours?” - -“Gott bewahr! Oh, don’t say, don’t think of such things of your veins!” -cried Bertha, almost throwing her arms round Ethelbert. - -Reginald sprang to his feet and looked at poor Bertha with a loathful -vindictiveness hard to describe. - -“Is it too bad for me? Oh, then, it must be too bad for you,” said -Ethelbert, with a pain intense in her tone. “You cut me to the heart -just so when you violate your blood with things of horror. It is good -German blood, and part of it flows in my veins, and all of it came from -the great Fountain of Life who ‘made of one blood all nations of the -earth,’ and who, in this, our beloved country, is gathering up all the -nations of the earth into the life of this Republic’s inheritance. It is -for women to secure to our nation a heritage better than golden crowns.” - -Ethelbert’s grey eyes were fixed on a floating cloud, and, absorbing -into herself the doings of the beautiful world above, she broke up her -reverie; and turning, looked at Bertha, saying explainingly: “You see -yourself, Bertha, I mean that my parents and grandparents might have -forgotten that I was coming to inherit their blood and their brains, and -might have carelessly filled the fountain of their life with -poison-loving elements. Now, if they had done so, what do you suppose I -would now do about it myself?” - -“I’ll tell you what you would do about it,” interrupted Reginald. “You -would have thought it the best blood in the land, madame, and would have -scorned that girl as much as you scorn me, to whom you are reading this -lesson over her shoulders. She don’t understand a word you’ve said; but -do you think I am a fool?” - -“No,” said Ethelbert simply. - -Bertha looked after him as he walked off a few steps. - -“Is that man your friend?” she said sharply. “I understand not all your -speaking words, but full well I know your wisdom in the thought of it, -and well I know that the body is as a beast if the spirit shall not -command what it will do. He thinks me a fool—too much fool to talk your -wisdom-words. I are not fool. I choose this day. This head shall say, -‘No more of beer and oder tings to my body. It has said so before this -time, many days, but now, _the body must_!’ Now then, I, Bertha, ask -you: Do you think I am a fool?” - -“No,” said Ethelbert. - -“Well, I shall be a fool if I steals away my brains some more.” - -“I think you will never do that any more. Brain force can be lost and -wasted; or it can be treasured up, englobed delightsomely. Now, Bertha, -take this rosebud and try to live as healthfully and sweet as roses do. -Bertha, gather up your grass for the rabbits, and make the little things -clean and happy, and then you can read your papers tonight, and come and -get some more. Here is a pencil, so you can mark any little place you -don’t quite understand, and I will tell you about it. Good-night.” - -“Good-night, Miss Daksha,” said Bertha, looking back enviously at -Reginald, who stood striking the rosebush with his cane, and not yet -dismissed. - -“You can’t put that rose together again,” said Ethelbert. - -“Who cares?” said he roughly. For, as Ethelbert would not flatter him, -he unconsciously proposed not to flatter her. You see he had felt full -of the ashes of the past; and those ashes, like a volatile alkali, -needed only an acid admixture to ensure a sudden fermentation of soul. -The truths which had seemed so sweet to Bertha had been acid to him, and -a foam of wrath was choking him as he sputtered: “Who cares?” - -“That is the question,” said Ethelbert, gathering up the shattered rose: -“Who cares?” - -He gave the bush another cut with his cane; for the fermentation of -ideas within was quite unendurable. He had always supposed that women -were made on purpose to flatter men, and he had always had so much of it -that he was sick of it; but now when he cared a good deal to be thought -well of, he felt it was a bit hard to be made to think of himself as he -had been made to think all that morning. He had until now thought -Ethelbert particularly attractive, because she was so bright; but now he -thought her brightness was so overmuch of a good thing as to be -perfectly detestable. The same hand that in wanton cruelty was whacking -to pieces those exquisite moss rosebuds, would willingly have whacked -out of existence all the high human tests of character which had -stripped his soul bare before his gaze. Something of this, but not very -clearly defined, made him hit the bush again as he looked at Ethelbert, -who, free from a suggestion of reproof or sentiment of any kind, -repeated: “Who cares?” - -“I don’t,” said Reginald; and after a pause: “Do you?” - -“Do I care that I can’t put the rose together again? I don’t aspire to -do that; yet I do very much care to have all the power I can possibly -obtain with which to arrest the destruction of beautiful life and -orderly happiness.” - -“Oh, yes, much you care to make a fellow happy,” said Reginald sullenly. -“Look at the cold-blooded way you sat there and talked to that miserable -thing about me.” And after waiting again, he said with the combativeness -of a man opposed by silence, when instead he longed for a quarrel: “Now -this is all very well, Miss Daksha, but you know that if you -noticed—noticed—well, as you might say—if you smelt whiskey on her (now -you’ve got it), if you smelt whiskey on her, you could—you are sharp -enough to notice—anything, in fact,” said he, stumbling on under her -steady uplifted eyes, “Aren’t you?” - -“I notice many things,” said Ethelbert, like a little truthful child. - -He hit the rosebush again. “You are a queer girl,” he said. “You have no -respect for a man’s feelings.” - -“What are those things?” - -“What things?” - -“A man’s feelings, I believe you called them,” said Ethelbert. - -He came near her, with red passion-flushes patching his face like -Satan’s finger-prints; and stood angrily looking at her. And then he -slashed the air close to her with his cane; but he might as well have -shot glances of rage at a lily-cup, in the hope of arresting the sweet -aura it exhaled. He turned angrily away. “Well, I can just believe you,” -he said. “You neither know nor care what feelings are. You care more -about that old rose.” - -“That depends,” said Ethelbert. “I care for the rose because it is -sweet, orderly life. If a man’s feelings are the same, I care just as -much for them. But character is not a question of feeling. It is a -question of wise action.” - -He muttered a passionate oath, and hit the bush again. For the devils -were “rending him,” and “that kind goeth not out, except by prayer and -fasting.” He was not much of a praying man; and as for fasting, his -habitual diet and incessant brandy quaffing did not come under that -head, nor produce those calming results. Added to this, three months had -passed since Ethelbert Daksha had seemed to him as no woman had ever -seemed to him before; and in those three months he had been afraid to -approach acquaintanceship, because of the infinite distance between -them. This distance he, with all his unpublished record of -demoralization, had decency enough to recognize. And now he had a -feeling akin to hatred toward Ethelbert, that she should have the -impudence to know anything of him except what his “good clothes,” not -bad-featured face, and his hitherto very silent tongue might have told. - -He forgot that he was living in this new age in which something like -occult powers are given to the “pure in heart,” who, seeing God, who is -All, and in all, necessarily must see the truth as to the conditions -which fill society. His spiritual and intuitional faculties were not -dead, but sealed up, and enswathed in cerements of flesh. And so, as he -now himself realized, he had nothing but a man’s feelings, hot, blind -and passionate, to oppose to the percipient intelligence, that, cool and -pure, looked steadily into the seething caldron of his heart. - -“If a man’s feelings are orderly, beautiful life, I care just as much -for them,” she said again slowly. And as he stood before the Virgin -Mother grace in her, an ineffable longing for purity and new creation -took possession of him. He covered his eyes and sat down on the steps. - -“Mine were beautiful when I was three years old,” he said, “orderly, -beautiful life. O good God, yes, they were!” It was a cry of remorse to -his Creator, and Ethelbert understood it so. - -“I believe that readily, Reginald,” she said, simply; “and I have -limitless reverence for them; they were as sweet as this bud.” He took -from her hand the exquisite moss-covered wonder, and sat looking at it, -while Ethelbert laid the mutilated rose, with its upgathered petals, on -a book in her lap. - -“You mean that is about what my life is worth now,” said he, pointing at -the leaves and torn blossom. - -“You choose to do it yourself,” said Ethelbert. - -“Who cares?” was the angry response, for he had often sentimentalized -with girls over his ruined hopes, and had so led up to sweet -flirtations; but Ethelbert’s remark and the level look of her eyes, -nipped that sort of a thing in the bud; and his “ugly” was rising at -about the rate of ten degrees a second, when she said: “I do.” - -“On your honor, do you?” he asked huskily. - -“On honor, yes, I care,” she said. He looked white and kept the bud in -his hand. She wished to help him, but she did not wish to preach nor -sentimentalize. - -“You have abused this rosebud fearfully,” rising and examining one on -the bush. “You have shattered the rose and the leaves. Here is a bud -which you have marred, but—” she stooped to examine it more closely; -“but I see it is not beyond the power of performing good uses still and -of opening to mature life.” - -These kind of analogies were not exactly in his line of thought, but -somehow as with her he looked at this bud, with one side of the moss -stripped off and the wound on the outer leaf, he became very sorry for -the little Reginald Grove who buried his mother, and afterwards so badly -mismanaged himself. For the moment he felt that all he had ever -possessed which was worth caring about, was what he had had when, -environed by mother-love, he grew up in her smiles. It was a presence -about Ethelbert which made that time seem so valuable. He looked up at -the simple house, and then at Ethelbert’s dainty but inexpensive dress. -The fragrance of the rose seemed intoxicating with its story of possible -redemption. Yet every instinct of his better nature told him it was -impossible that his life could ever blend with Ethelbert’s, while also -his best instincts, with an exigency of strong desire, demanded just -that union. He was in a torture of soul, comparable with nothing he had -ever before experienced. Suddenly he remembered his wealth, but it -seemed only an abject thing. Yet presently, for some reason, he said: -“Do you care for wealth?” - -“Immensely,” said Ethelbert. - -He looked up at her as though he could not believe his ears; but in his -heart there was a hope, broken by doubt and darkened by disappointment; -a hope that all-conquering wealth could win even her, but a -disappointment in her if this could so be. After a moment he stumbled -on, saying: “I—I somehow don’t see much good in it. After you have eaten -all you can, and have drunken more than—than you ought, and made a -fashion-block of yourself, and so on; in fact, you know money can’t give -you back whatever there was in those old days,” said Reginald, motioning -toward the rose; “it can’t make the now impossible possible.” - -“That depends,” said Ethelbert. “Money could make the now impossible -possible to many people.” - -He looked at her with that same compound expression on his countenance; -for you know this man, who had never grown to real manhood, being much -bigger outside than he was in,—this man had for years stood on guard -against the many girls whom he fancied wished to marry his money. So he -said, with a dash of the Grove suspicious shrewdness: “Is there anything -now impossible to you that it could make possible?” - -“Yes.” - -He looked at her with lowering lights in his eyes. - -“Do you want that thing very much?” - -“I have set myself to obtain it.” - -“How much would you give?” said he, his heart beating thickly, and yet -he could not look at her because of the mingled sense of victory and -disappointment. - -“I shall give my life for it,” she said quietly. “I have settled that.” - -And while he was looking at her, utterly dazed as to her meaning, Judge -Elkhorn threw himself from his horse and eagerly came up to Ethelbert, -who received him with more alacrity than her still manner usually -exhibited. - -Now Judge Elkhorn was a man head and shoulders above his fellows in much -that makes average manhood. He was very wealthy, too; and Reginald -thought of both these facts as he watched Ethelbert and the judge; and -forty thousand fiends took hold of him within. - -The judge, intent on the object of his visit, had at first given that -casual bow and glance with which one habitually recognizes the presence -of a fellow-being; but the look on Reginald’s countenance arrested his -notice, so that the two men for a moment faced each other with a -well-defined stare; and during this moment Reginald’s countenance -perceptibly grew more red, lowering, and akin to the bulldog character -of expression, and Judge Elkhorn’s more self-poised. - -The next moment Reginald arose with an impulse to get away; but as -Ethelbert had at the very same moment set forward two cane chairs, he -seated himself composedly with a set to his jaw that was not lost to the -notice of his hostess. - -The judge preserved silence with the air of a man who recognizes the -fact that it was perfectly in order that the first visitor should take -his departure; and an air that reminded one that he was suppressing all -knowledge of the fact that this man’s presence was a very questionable -advantage to the lady favored with it. - -Ethelbert, instead of running to the rescue and disguising these men’s -characters from one another and herself by a flood of small talk, sat -thinking faithfully on Reginald’s very best qualities, and looking at -the moss rosebud which he held by the stem in such a way as to conceal -from the eye the flower which was under his half-closed hand. And when -she seated herself a trifle nearer him than to the judge, Reginald -recognized the gentle influence, and with an impulse of some kind, -pinned the bud on his coat lapel. - -The judge seemed absolutely entranced with the sunset clouds opposite -him. His gaze was extremely abstracted, and when he turned it toward -Ethelbert, Reginald really felt that his presence was honestly -forgotten, as the judge, evidently taking up his last conversation with -Ethelbert, said: “Miss Daksha, you are supported in your ingenious -theory by Augustin, as well as others. Augustin says: ‘A knowledge of -the truth is equal to the task both of discerning and confuting all -false assertions and erroneous arguments, though never before met with, -if only they may be freely brought forward.’ I have reconsidered my -attempt to dissuade you from the (as I thought) quixotic undertaking on -which you have set your heart. I was astonished at the self-confidence -with which you virtually promise to give help to the struggling, counsel -to the doubtful, light to the blind, hope to the despondent, and -refreshment to the weary. But I perceive you propose to do this, not by -dictating to others, but by simply setting forth the law of your own -mind, and leaving it to the reasonableness or lack of reasonableness of -those about you to act upon it for themselves. There! Have I stated this -as you explained your plan to me in our delightful conversation?” said -the judge, turning his eyes, with their hard will-power, upon Ethelbert. - -“Admirably,” said Ethelbert. - -“Do you read Petrarch?” - -“Why, really, no, I do not,” said Ethelbert in surprise at herself. “I -suppose I have not yet gotten to it.” - -“I wondered whether it was your memory of that great author, or whether -it were the wonderful reception of profoundest truth which blesses pure -souls in all ages, bringing ever to the intelligent worker those few -_fundamentals_ which relate to our moral natures. See, I copied this for -you, that you might perceive not only that I was wrong in being against -you, but that you have Petrarch on your side.” - -And he passed her a bit copied from “De Vita Solitaria,” which is -substantially as quoted from Ethelbert’s own expression. - -“You remember,” said the judge, “you had said it was your own purpose to -accumulate wisdom and employ all your acquirements and understanding in -just the manner which would best ensure benefit to the people of this -now nearly twenty-first century, and would help to solve the especial -problems of our conglomerate American society. Petrarch substantially -says the same of his efforts for his people in his epoch.” - -Reginald was turning over in his mind something which echoed down from -babydom. He remembered a little book among his mother’s choice few, with -letters on the back. Did he not in childhood spell out the letters there -P-E-T-R-A-R-C-H? And what else was it he “knew about the old fellow”? -Oh, he had an idea now. He dimly remembered many talks with his mother; -but he thought he would let these people talk on with their high themes, -while he sat pulling out his mustache and getting a word or two together -in such good form as would show this snob whom he was. - -“All I have to say then, is,” commenced the little Captain Grove coolly, -“Petrarch is rather coming up in reputation when he finds himself able -to keep up with the thoughts of Miss Daksha. I knew old Pete; he was one -of my mother’s favorites. You know he was mashed on a girl called -‘Laura.’” - -A merry peal from Ethelbert quite cleared the atmosphere; but, in the -sharp, bright handling of the subject that followed, Reginald felt -himself completely stranded again. So he had shrewdness enough to retire -on his laurels, and to take his departure at a moment when a pretty -little sentiment as to his arrested development along very nice lines of -life, had quite taken possession of Mrs. Daksha, as well as of the rest. - -He walked direct from this visit to a bookstore and inquired for -Petrarch’s works, much to the amazement of the man who had hitherto -supplied him with another style of literature. And then in his room in -his hotel he recommenced an acquaintance with that author, or his -mother, or with the moss rosebud which he had placed at his elbow, in a -vase, or with Miss Ethelbert, or with himself. With which, or with how -many of these he recommenced an acquaintance that evening, it would have -been hard for him to say. But when he arose from the long half-reverie -he was in a new frame of mind; and, too, he fancied he had stolen a -march on Miss Daksha in regard to at least one book. - - - - - CHAPTER II. - - -After dinner Reginald seated himself in the office of his hotel. There -were the usual number of men about the place, talking and smoking, and -watching the women who passed through the office now and then. Hotel -life, with its ordinary distractions of seeing and being seen, and -newsmongering and time-killing, was rather a bore to Reginald. But he -had had little idea of anything else, unless it were a big house on -something of the same plan of social divertisement and high hilarity. He -had had spells of the blues, of course, in which he longed for something -indefinable; and now that his nerves and health were breaking down -pretty fast, he had these blues more often than ever. His regular cure -for these attacks was a visit to the bar, and then a couple of cigars -after it, then more blues, and then more cigars; so, of course, a -permanent removal of the cause and the effect did not seem very likely -to be secured. - -There were one or two women at his hotel, acquaintances of his, who had -led the life of dressing, dining, party-going and evening dancing or -riding, for an indefinite number of years; women who had tried every -popular watering-place in the summer and many southern resorts in the -winter, and who were getting stout and flashy, both as to diamonds and -general effect; women who had money enough not to need to marry, and -knowledge enough of the general quality of some of the men about them, -not to care to marry; and such a general sense of loneliness and -dissatisfaction with the dullness, staleness, flatness and -unprofitableness of life, as made them not to care to live, and quite -too keen a certainty of a life to come, to at all desire to risk -embarking on that unknown sea on which diamonds and dinners, whist and -mature old flirtations, could not be taken as cargo. - -Reginald had often wondered as he sat and talked nothing by the hour to -these women, whether he or they were the most utter failures and bores. -When this problem got too deep for him, he usually went to the bar; in -fact, the bar was his grand resort, most of the time. But when these -same questions presented themselves to these women, very few of them -went to the bar or had the bar brought to them. They usually set to -thinking, and then sometimes cried themselves so sick that their suppers -were sent up to their rooms and eaten with the salt of tears. - -Now the difference in these cases of inanity was, that while the first -useless mortal drowned himself in liquor and the second in tears, the -result was the inebriation and steady animalization of the faculties of -the one, while the other certainly escaped being classed with those who -never ate bread in sorrow, and knows not the unseen powers. - -The boarders said that there had been what they called “tender passages” -in history, between Mrs. Mancredo and Reginald. She had soft Italian -eyes, which had cried many passionate hours, but they were always cooled -off and black-leaded up; and then with a little pink to make the -tear-stain pinker still, Mrs. Mancredo never looked much the worse for -the honest but baffled scrutiny which she had made of life in general -and her own in particular. But on the reverse, she looked just so much -the better, as she was for the time less hard and world encrusted. - -At these times, if Reginald had not been too recently to his throne of -consolation, the bar, he felt quite impressed by the element of -womanliness which was visible in her tear-brightened eyes. - -On the evening after he had ventured on Ethelbert’s fuller acquaintance, -and had had that ethical and æsthetic conversation, and the interesting -_tête-a-tête_ with the rosebud, Petrarch and himself, Mrs. Mancredo had -had a good long cry, so-called. - -For a young bride had arrived at the hotel, wife of an invalid person; -and in the good gossip after dinner, Mrs. Mancredo had chatted about -herself (apparently) to this young bride, until she knew all the past -history of the girl, and had a pretty clear forecast of her future -history as well. Then she commenced with being very sorry for the -pretty, ingenuous young thing, and more sorry for herself because of the -years in which she was an unenviable wife, and still more sorry for -herself in her present mature womanhood. So when she came down to supper -she had her pretty round chin well up in the air, while her heavily -leaded eyelashes drooped under the languor of her hard weeping. She had -that strange sort of expectancy of something better, new, and more -satisfactory at last, which sometimes follows on a new discovery of the -great disproportion between human aspirations and the ordinary objects, -which are palmed off upon them as satisfactory food. - -She glanced toward Reginald as she passed his table, and inwardly -ejaculated “Horrid thing! Eternally eating, whenever he stops -wine-bibbing and smoking long enough.” And then with a flutter and flow -of drapery, she permitted the waiter to adjust the paraphernalia of the -occasion, as with a flashing of finger-rings and twittering of the -pendants in her ears, and heaving of the laces under the diamonds at her -breast, she proceeded to practically assert the always conceded fact -that she was a splendid-looking woman. Three or four newcomers -recognized the fact, and the old habitués were as loyal as ever. She saw -all that, while she read and reread the bill of fare, and while the -patient John brushed off imaginary crumbs, and did many useless things -to remind her he still lived, and lived but to serve. Then—“Oh, -anything,” was her order. He had expected that would be all, but he was -obliged to wait just the same for its utterance. - -Mrs. Mancredo meanwhile had not for a moment lost sight of the fact that -Reginald had not once glanced toward her; and also that, though he had -not changed his dress otherwise, the moss rosebud which he had worn -before was gone now. She began to get up a theory about that rosebud. -She had before never seen him with a buttonhole bouquet. Once when he -had asked her for a flower he had only held it for a while; he hadn’t -worn it. In a polite sort of a way, one time with another, she had -snubbed Reginald often; but all the same, if he was going to wear -rosebuds, she was going to know why and whence. So she watched him. He -was not even reading his paper; he was eating, not without interest in -the good things before him: he was not enough far gone in his new love -for that. But he was so abstracted that he—oh, horrors!—he had -deliberately, firmly, kept his clutch on his knife and fork, and, having -struck the butt of the handle of each squarely down on the table, he -held them points upwards in the air, while he industriously masticated -his food and glared, unconscious, into the abysmal beyond. - -“There’s his lineage well defined,” said she to herself, determinedly -watching him; till he with a start looked directly at her, and she -holding his eye, with a quick gesture imitated his attitude, stare and -all; and then sinking back in her chair, fanned herself in a pantomimic -swoon. - -He shook his head across the dining-hall, signifying that he had an -account to settle, for that manœuvre. And when he had picked at a grape -or two for dessert, she significantly moved back the empty chair at her -emptily table, and he came over and sat down with her. - -She sniffed the air as he approached. - -“I smell a moss rosebud,” said she, raising her fibbingly black -eyelashes and fibbing lips towards him. - -Reginald had been getting quite bright that afternoon, and he answered -to her direct gaze: “You have a perfect nose.” And just as she took in -the compliment he went on, explanatorily, “a double-barrelled, -back-action nose; a burglarious, lock-picking nose, that can shoot round -three spiral staircases, down a back hall and unlock a door, all for the -purpose of getting at a moss rosebud that you saw pinned on my lapel two -hours ago, and which you don’t see there now! Do you know why you don’t -see it there now? I’ll tell you. It is because it is in a little vase -beside a copy of Petrarch’s works up in my room.” - -Now she dropped her eyes and pushed her chair back. - -“All right, my poetical friend. I believed all your parables till you -came to a ‘copy of Petrarch’; but there are limits,” said she, and she -looked at him in a way which, with the accompanying words and -intonation, would have meant in a man’s mouth, “You are lying, and I -know it and you know it.” - -Reginald had always taken a good deal of this sort of thing from the -sort of women produced by society (?), some of whom think it persiflage, -and some of whom habitually talk that way because of the habitual state -of unfaith in men, which, with or without cause, fills their minds and -hearts. - -Reginald had never at any time in his life liked this; for with all his -arrest of high manhood, no man could truly accuse him of lying, or of -dishonor along that line toward males. And as a boy he never did lie to -his mother, and as a son he had never lied to his father; and when these -jocular accusations first began to meet him from pretty girls’ lips, he -disliked them much. But when he saw all the fellows had to take it, he -began to think that was “high style,” and that, after all, may be, if -women took it for granted that the fellows lied and were bad, and yet -still petted them and invited them to their homes, badness might, after -all, not be badness, nor lying be lying; and that, may be, one thing was -as good as another, all through the catalogue. At any rate, that women -seemed to think so and that no one fellow could stand against this tide, -even if he wanted to do so. But he always disliked this thing just the -same, and never saw the wit of it. - -The word “parables,” somehow, too, this evening, struck him worse than -it would if she had said “lies”; for “parables,” as they were taught him -at his mother’s knee, were “beautiful words of life”; and besides, -“whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap,” was getting to be a -fact which he was illustrating in himself. - -While he thought of these things he looked so glowering that Mrs. -Mancredo said, lightly, “Now what ails you?” - -“How many times in a week, on the average, do you suppose you tell us -fellows that we lie?” - -“Well, the times I tell you so, compared with the times you do it, are -so infinitesimally small that a body could not be to the trouble of -reckoning them,” said she lazily. - -He looked at her seriously. “Do you think men lie?” he said. - -She answered him in blank amazement: “Why, of course, child!” - -“All men?” - -“Might except a deaf mute or two, if you like.” - -“Will you except me?” - -“Did you say except or accept?” - -“I certainly said except. At this point in our conversation I could not -ask you to accept me, for I can’t imagine what a woman would ever want -of a liar.” - -She shrugged her shoulders and ejaculated: “Hobson’s choice as for -that!” - -She looked as pretty as though she were being real good; in fact, she -looked a great deal prettier. There was an impishness about her with -which Reginald was more fully _en rapport_ than he was with high -goodness. True, she expressed disbelief in him, even on the one point on -which he could somewhat justly value himself; but she looked “sort of -loving” out of her eyes all the time; and Reginald had never resisted -that kind of flattery. - -And so they sat looking at one another; he a silly slave to her wiles, -and crushing back the honest longing he had had for her approbation of -his best virtue; and she, a slave to the conditions imposed on -disfranchised womanhood, and crushing back her longing for his -recognition of her individuality and her right to be of sound use to the -world,—practical, sound use. She could not accuse him of deflection from -that virtue which woman is taught to most strenuously hold herself, and -man’s breach of which most cruelly afflicts her. So she accused him of -lying,—a slave’s vice,—which he, not being a slave, need not lean -toward. Thus they played at cross-purposes, neither helping the other -out of the social tangle. - -When he rose from the table it was with an angry perplexity. - -“What in the mischief has set her to believe that I am such a liar?” he -said to himself. - -And as she went up toward her pretty private parlor she was thinking to -herself: “He is as truthful a fellow, as far as his words and promises -go, as I happen to know. But his fickle passions are what I despise him -for. He really thinks I doubt that he has the rosebud and the poem on -his table. I as good as saw them when he said it. But that means another -love; and that is what he was gazing at, with his knife and fork in the -air like a farmer. I’ve got the idea now. They were farmer’s people when -he was twelve or so. He of course had that habit then, and he was -thinking of his early boyhood and fell back into those rough ways. This -new love, this rosebud flame, has something to do with old times. She -can’t be a very young girl, then.” - -And so soliloquizing, each within self, they walked up the broad -stairway together. - -“Your rosebud took you to boyhood, didn’t it?” she asked, turning square -upon him at the landing, and facing him as he stood on the step below. - -“It is no use saying yes or no; you don’t believe me,” said he, with a -blunt boy-directness that seemed to touch her. - -“You great goose!” she said. “Of course I believe you.” - -“You said you didn’t.” - -“Well, what of that?” - -“A good deal of it,” said he, indignantly. “I believe you when you tell -me a thing.” - -“More goose you!” - -He stood and looked at her like one dazed. He was trying so hard that -day to bring his life to firmer foundations; and she stood there -laughing at him as though lies and truths were all jokes together. “Good -heavens, what do you mean! Do you mean that you lie?” - -“Yes, that’s what I mean; always do,” said she. - -“Then you are lying now?” - -“Of course.” - -“Oh, then, if you are lying when you say that you lie, you would be -telling the truth then; only if you are telling the truth when you say -you lie, then you are lying.” - -“You need to go to sleep and clear your head,” said she coolly. - -“Look here now, tell me once, are you truthful?” - -“Yes, I am full of truths of one kind and another: oppressively full. I -should like to unload.” - -“And yet you say you are a liar?” - -“Oh, yes. Now let us go right over and over it again and again; it is -only quarter past eleven,” said she, laughing at his eagerness. - -“You call this a great joke, don’t you?” with passionate intensity. - -“Perfectly convulsing,” she answered, with a look as if her patience was -about gone, and as if, should he dare to browbeat her any longer with -that look in his eyes, she would establish her claim to a new line of -ability. This possibility was so evident on her countenance that he -said: - -“I believe if you can lie like this, you can do anything.” - -“I seem to feel some undeveloped ability stirring within me myself,” -said she; “nothing of course in the chewing, drinking, sweltering -animalism line. But let us say some skillful, intellectual achievement, -which might rid the world of a few thousands like yourself, and make -room for a new race,” said she with a deliberate consideration that had -in it the _savoir-faire_ of a society woman, wrought up beyond much more -endurance of the life she had been forced to lead,—a life now coming in -sight of the convincing truths of this liberalizing age. - -Poor Reginald stood actually aghast. His lower jaw had fallen and his -eyes protruded, as, with his third finger pointed to his breast, he -stammered: “Me! Rid the world of such as me? What have you against me?” - -She looked at him with fury suppressed; and at last, when she had -controlled herself enough to speak, said, in a low tone, full of the -sense of insult and degradation which our false social conditions have -forced on thinking womanhood: “I have just that against you, which you -would have against me, if my character, through and through, was a -facsimile of yours. Sir, that is what I have against you!” - -He looked at her dumb. “I don’t understand, I—” - -“Oh, well, take the night to it! Think your life over, every step of the -way up, since you have entered young hoodlumism; and just fancy that a -twin sister of yours had kept with you all the way, step by step, in all -your paths—where would she—” - -Reginald had leaned against the balustrade perfectly white. “You are a -very fiend,” he said; and then he pulled up stairs as a man gropes who -has been struck by blindness. - -Mrs. Mancredo was frightened. She wanted to help him up. “You—you’ve -done enough,” he said thickly, without looking at her. And she went into -her parlor and he went up to the next flight. - -When Reginald had closed and locked his door and mechanically thrown -himself on a sofa, he lay there for some time—not thinking, yet not -unconscious. The room had been quite shut up, and the bud, now half -opened, had filled the air with its exquisite fragrance. He sensed this -fragrance, and, in the half stupor which had come to him, he felt the -presence of tender, soothing hands passing, not over his head, but near -the very brain substance within his head. His mind seemed reëchoing the -speech he had made about Petrarch’s Laura, on which he had prided -himself. And as it repeated itself, there were withdrawn all gross -elements, until the spiritualized worship which Petrarch had for his -paragon of true virtue, seemed to enswathe his being with a heavenly -marvel of pure love. A mellifluous rapture of mind, all separate from -the senses, overflowed his highest being; and then, as clearly as ever -he felt the sun’s rays, he felt his own mother’s presence, and knew, or -thought he knew, that he was falling down and down serenely into her -care, with an ecstasy of the annihilation of self, and all self-burdens. - - * * * * * - -The next morning Mrs. Mancredo took an early breakfast, and then stayed -in the parlor a while, looking about. She breakfasted three times that -morning, and then asked if any one had seen Mr. Grove. It was discovered -that no one had. Then Mrs. Mancredo, remembering how he had groped up -stairs, followed the matter through. The result was, they found him -insensible in his room, and one glance at him told it was no inebriate’s -sleep. - - - - - CHAPTER III. - - -A partial paralysis had befallen Reginald Grove. At his first stage of -consciousness, Mrs. Mancredo noticed that when a servant in clearing the -room took up the withered rosebud, his heavy gaze followed it. She -replaced it, and then bending over him said: “Do you want to see her?” - -The eagerness of his attempt to respond showed his wish. Mrs. Mancredo -ordered her carriage for a drive past the gardens of the town, on the -lookout for moss roses. - -“She must be a widow,” she was saying to herself, when her thoughts were -interrupted by the sight of a rosebush, much beaten down on the side -next the house-steps; and on the other, in the full glory of its mossy -beauty. - -“Turn round, John, and go slowly back, and then come to this spot and -on, till I tell you to stop.” - -As they passed the house the second time, Mrs. Mancredo had a good view -of the roses, and of a young woman whose every nervous motion meant -purpose, watering the bush. Mrs. Mancredo stopped the carriage and -descended. On approaching Miss Daksha she looked at her steadily a -moment, and then presented her card. - -“I came—I came to look at your moss roses, and to talk about them. What -has happened to this bush?” she said abruptly. - -“It has been abused.” - -“Did you ever live on a farm?” said Mrs. Mancredo then, after a long -pause. - -Ethelbert turned and looked at her, and then drawing chairs into the -shade, said with a strange, sweet smile: “No, I never did. Now please -sit here and I’ll sit with you, and you shall tell me what you really -want to know.” - -Mrs. Mancredo was a bit overwhelmed; but she sat, and wheeling her guns, -said as suddenly as possible: “Reginald Grove wants to see you.” - -“Is he ill?” - -“You know him, then?” - -“Why don’t you say whatever you have to say?” said Ethelbert simply. - -“If I did, I should say that you gave him a rosebud and loaned him a -volume of Petrarch’s ‘De Vita Solitaria,’ and that he loves you, and is -sick, paralyzed, dying!—and wants to see you,” she said with Italian -impetuosity, leaning more and more toward Ethelbert, trying to shock the -secret out of her, with each added word. “You know him, you gave him the -rosebud—the book?” - -“I spoke to him for the first time yester-morn. I have seen him several -times. I gave him the rosebud; I did not loan him the book.” She laid -her cool hand on this woman’s burning hot hand, saying: “He is nothing -to me more than any and every human being is. Any child five years old, -with beautiful possibilities, is more interesting.” - -“Then why pin a rosebud on his coat?” - -“He pinned it there as a sort of symbol of his lost sweet childhood, -which he wishes he could regain, and which I think he could.” - -“O, this is stupidity!” said Mrs. Mancredo in quick Italian. “We all -know that can never be done! What is he, that he should have his -childhood back again, more than I should—more than thousands? No! he has -made his bed, and there he shall lie upon it, a paralyzed idiot, for -what I know. He is a bad man! Do you understand what that means? And he -is a rich bad man, and his visits to this simple house and to you mean -no good! Do you understand that?” - -“I understand you,” said Ethelbert, rising and looking down upon her -visitor, “but you don’t understand me, and cannot. Till you have known -me a long while, you will misinterpret everything I say or do.” - -“How old are you?” was the next angry question. - -“Ages old. I am able to help you and this sick friend of yours. I am -sorry for your trouble,” said Ethelbert, with a divine pity in her voice -and look, and an uplifting power going forth like a cooling shadow -displacing the glare and scorch of passion; until, in the cool of it, -the tears which, unshed, had burned Mrs. Mancredo’s eyes ever since she -had seen Reginald groping upstairs the night before his shock, came -forth, relieving her spirit. - -Then altogether perplexed, but believing Ethel’s every word, she said: -“Can you come down to the hotel and see if you can ease him? The doctor -says that his paralysis comes from the ‘functional disorder of the -nervous centers,’ whatever all-that-is.” - -“That is hemiplegia,” said Ethelbert, “and means ‘I strike one-half,’—so -he is paralyzed on one side. If that is it, one corner of his mouth will -be drawn a little, and one cheek will look in a sort, withered and -drooping. If it is that, his mind will be curious.” - -“You are a cold-blooded thing, any way,” said Mrs. Mancredo, frightened -and angry. - -Ethelbert opened her eyes reflectively. - -“Forgive me,” said the excitable woman, “and get into my carriage and -come now.” - -“In a minute,” said Ethelbert; and in about that time she came back with -her hat and her mother, whom she introduced, saying: - -“My mother will go, too.” And cutting some fresh roses she followed the -two elder ladies into the carriage, and they drove away to the hotel. - -Reginald was awake when they entered; and Ethelbert had given the -flowers to Mrs. Mancredo, who walked with them to the sick man. He -smiled that strange half smile, which was contradicted by the paralyzed -muscles on the other side of his mouth. “He will get on in a way, you -know,—in a way,” said the physician. “He will perhaps be talking and -about again, in a way, you know,—in a way.” - -“I found her, Reginald, she is here,” said Mrs. Mancredo, and she -motioned to Miss Daksha to approach. A look of heavenly rapture -overspread his countenance. In a strange, full voice he cried out: “My -mother!” - -With an exclamation the physician started forward, but fell back, as -Ethelbert said all motherly: “Yes, Reginald.” - -He looked at her with consuming eagerness. “You have been gone so long,” -he said, a little thickly. “Where is Cousin Alitza?” - -A muffled shriek from Mrs. Mancredo thrilled through the room. - -“You know what he means!” asserted Ethelbert, looking at Mrs. Mancredo, -who, with a perfectly bloodless face and a shrinking, stealthy step, -approached. Reginald Grove looked at her puzzled, and then said -fretfully, lifting his eyes to Ethelbert: “You have all been gone so -long; see how she has grown.” - -There was an oppressive hush of bewilderment. The doctor was held back -by the unmoved air with which Ethelbert kept her post, giving way to her -as if she were the physician of the occasion in whom he trusted. She -stood, gently stroking Reginald’s head. He raised his other hand and -patted hers languidly, as a pleased child would do, and so presently -fell asleep. Then the other physicians came in, and a little apart -discussed the case, perplexed. - -“He called you Alitza. Your card was marked Corrinne,” said Ethelbert; -and after scarce a moment’s halt Mrs. Mancredo said with truthful -rapidity: “I am—I was—Alitza Corrinne Roccoca, his cousin. I have seen -him but twice since I was seventeen, until I met him in this city. He -loved me when we were children; he hated me when I was older. He never -dreamed that Mrs. Mancredo was—is—Alitza.” - -Ethelbert was silent; she was thinking of his perplexed words: “You have -all been away so long; see how she has grown,” and of the childlike -manner in which he had clung to her and called her “mother.” She -remembered a curious case of mental-aberration of which she had read. -“Doctors,” she said, “your patient’s mind has become blank, back to the -time before his mother’s death. Don’t you see? He thinks I am his -mother; and his mother passed away when he was five years old. He is a -child again; that is all.” - -“Yes, but a paralyzed one,” said the physicians. - - - - - CHAPTER IV. - - -The doctor motioned them all to come with him to an adjoining room. And -then Mrs. Mancredo told all she knew about the rosebud which had become -associated in Reginald’s mind with his early life, and of the -conversation which had taken place between them the night of his attack, -adding: - -“I was in the family when he was a little fellow, before auntie died. We -parted after that, and only met a few times when I was a tall, thin, -sallow girl; and—and he did not know me when we met again here at this -hotel this summer, in my robust maturity. He isn’t quick, Reginald -isn’t, and I’ve puzzled him my share, one way and another. He has been -getting in a bad way, poor Regie, and here’s the end of it.” - -And to this the doctors agreed. This was the end of poor Reginald Grove; -and as his fate seemed settled, the older Mr. Grove, when he arrived, -accepted the statement that Reginald was a wrecked man, body and mind. -And when Mrs. Mancredo had made herself known to Mr. Grove on his -arrival, in a softened state of feeling toward both the father and son -she found herself promising more in the way of help and responsibility -than she at first realized, or afterwards wanted to perform. And the -elder Grove (deeply interested in speculations in Mexico, and interested -in his own approaching third marriage) was well content to turn this -responsibility over to Mrs. Mancredo, with (it was popularly said) the -promise of all the money necessary for Reginald’s needs or fancies. It -was not until Mr. Grove had steamed away to Mexico that Mrs. Mancredo -really began to look about her; and then she did it with some disgust at -her own stupidity, as she was pleased to name the sympathy that had -overwhelmed her and swept her on to undertake, in an indefinite way, all -that the care of Reginald involved. - -One warm day in the late fall she brought Reginald in her carriage down -to the Dakshas. He was urgent to go there every day, and was often -brought down and placed in a long-chair out on their piazza, where, with -his volume of Petrarch (from which he was inseparable) he passed many -pleasant hours. His facial disfigurement was not as marked as at first. -But he was paralyzed through one arm and leg, and the sense of taste, -touch and smell seemed deadened. His hearing and his sight were not -perceptibly injured, and the childlike alertness of his questions seemed -to show that the gray matter of the brain, like a galvanic battery, -still generated the electric current sufficiently to produce and -accumulate nervous force for the few demands which the partially -deadened coarser part of the brain now made upon it. There was evinced -by Reginald an utter deadness to the passions of fear, desire, etc. The -central ganglia, which serves to do the drudgery of the brain, leaving -the gray matter free for higher, more difficult kinds of work, was -injured; thus overthrowing the balance of power between the highest -meditative, spiritual faculties, and the seat of those practical -faculties which insure energetic daily activities. - -It was as if the partial paralysis which had befallen Reginald Grove had -sent a partial sleep to the abused and overtaxed faculties of his animal -being; while the higher hemisphere of his brain, so long crippled by -inaction, now arousing from that lethargy of disuse, put forth dormant -strength. Whether true or not, this was Ethelbert’s theory of the case, -and her study of developments confirmed her in it. He was, in a sense, -helpless and forceless; yet the childlike, placid clearness of his -ideals, and the exhalation of sentiment in view of nature’s beauties, -were so inherently clear-cut and rare, that, broken and disorganized -though he was, Reginald Grove was now a less disagreeable person to -Ethelbert than he had been on his first tumultuous visit. He was seldom -pettish or unmanageable when with Ethelbert; but to Mrs. Mancredo his -talk was unendurable. She called him a miserable fellow, blaming him -passionately to Ethelbert. - -“But I don’t think he is miserable,” said Ethelbert, in her quiet way. -“He was miserable, when in other moments he loathed himself for his -self-mismanagement. He acted like a soul in torment the first time he -was here; and I fancy he was not then at his worst.” - -“I am sure I can’t understand your notions. Do you mean, you think he is -less miserable than before?” said Mrs. Mancredo, looking toward -Reginald, who sat reading the book from which he was inseparable, as a -very little child reads. The sight of that book made her wild with -nervousness. There seemed something uncanny in the way he had identified -himself with the personages and ideas there. And his numerous polyglot -questions asked in regard to things she could not explain, and his -weird, childlike shrewdness of imagination as to some unseen world of -mind and spirit, were getting to be the horrible thing to Mrs. Mancredo. - -From what in the apparently stolid, noncommittal old Reginald, this -spirit of occult divination of the purposes, powers and results of -Petrarch’s struggles, had evolved itself, she could not fancy. And she -was getting so nervous at the steady illumination of his eyes that she -would have given half she was worth to have removed from her memory all -knowledge of his existence. Whether he had become absolutely foolish, or -uncannily wise and weird, she did not know. But her refuge was -Ethelbert; and Reginald’s unaltered fancy for calling Ethelbert -“mother,” seemed to favor Mrs. Mancredo’s dawning hope of a way to get -rid of him helpfully. And as she so thinking stood there, down in the -garden, looking back at him up on the piazza, he called out: “Mother! -mother!” and they both walked quickly to him. - -“Let’s have a nice read about ‘of such is the kingdom of heaven,’ and -about the poor boy out of whom the devils were cast. I want to know -about those mighty works, and how power did them.” - -Mrs. Mancredo, with an ignorant person’s horror of what may result from -irregularity of mental action, felt it was awful that a man who had lost -the gustatory appetites which render nice food a pleasure to the palate, -should yet, as Ethelbert said, feast on the high thoughts and things of -the unseen realms. For Ethelbert believed he did not _think_ in the -sense of concentrating attention; but, instead, she believed his mind -simply reflected back to his attention what passed in the realms of life -above and anear him, as a lake reflects all that shadows itself upon its -surface; and this she explained to Mrs. Mancredo, adding: - -“It is for this reason that I wish he could be always cared for by some -discerning person, who, dwelling unmoved in that beautiful realm which -now has hold on his mind, and who, reading his very thought, would thus -sustain him at peace there, as a student under these angelic teachers, -and so educate him for a real manhood which he would thus yet attain. Do -you understand?” - -“No, I don’t understand,” was the blunt response. “All I know is, he has -played out his little play on the stage of life, and has made a tragedy -or farce of it, common enough in this age. He makes me wild with -nervousness sometimes. What do you want me to _do_ with him, for -heaven’s sake?” - -“You are right. It is for heaven’s sake that I want you to do it; for -there is a heaven, and it belongs on earth,” said Ethel, slowly. “I -believe it is only the organs at the base of his brain which are -exhausted; and as they are nearly deadened, he seems like a fool to -people who can only use their lower brain, which is the seat of the -senses and passions—but—” - -“Do you mean that as I am not alert on those spiritual planes which -arouse themselves in this ghostly way with him, and as he cannot use his -common-sense faculties, which are alert enough in me, I probably seem to -him to be as much of an idiot as he to me seems to be?” - -“I mean you have no common ground to meet upon just now. Not, however, -that you are unspiritual, but because your nature is so closely knitted -up, that you act and think as a well-constructed entity, dealing with -entities, not with fragments.” - -“Well, we never did have any common ground,” said Mrs. Mancredo, just as -Judge Elkhorn came on the scene. And then her mind took hold of the fact -that if she could not get along with Reginald as a whole, she certainly -did not want to deal with the ghastly fragments of him which seemed -left. And this she told Ethel. - -“He never has been mentally whole,” said Ethel. “He is gathering up his -fragments;” said Ethel. “Don’t you want to help him?” - -Then Mrs. Mancredo gave Judge Elkhorn a crude version of the story, -appealing from Ethel to him, concerning the whole business, in a way -which some women have; not because they are going to act on the advice -they may receive, but because they understand themselves better after -hearing themselves “talk out the whole problem.” - -Judge Elkhorn was a bright man in many regards, and had had an ambition -to electrify the world with a theory which would give a new basis for -action in reforms; but in dealing with such a case as this, he had -certain serious limitations. For he prided himself on never going beyond -the common-sense recognition of objects which he could taste, touch, -feel, smell and see. But here was Reginald with the common-sense plane -of mind (that is, the plane of mind on which practical people live -externally and meet each other) terribly damaged, and with three out of -five sense-avenues to knowledge, shut up. And yet Miss Ethelbert claimed -he was living in a rather select sort of world of his own, after a -tranquil fashion; not devoid of certain startling gleams of -intelligence, nay, wisdom. But as for an unseen world, and “an education -beyond the grave,” Judge Elkhorn was pleased to say, “he hoped he had -left all faith in that sort of thing along with fear of spooks and the -dark.” He was willing to call Reginald’s state “a curious phenomenon.” -For the rest, he would have liked to have relegated this man to the -obscurity of some asylum. For if he disliked Reginald when he was well -(?) and obtrusively at home on Ethelbert’s balcony the day they first -met, he disliked him vastly more now that he, as a child, was ensconced -on Ethelbert’s attention. - -Judge Elkhorn thought the whole thing preposterous; and notwithstanding -his fine humanitarian theories for helping misery in the mass, he would -have liked to take prompt steps to hinder its being served up in -individual cases, in polite society. He quite laid down the law on this -subject to Miss Daksha, and interposed his particular likes and dislikes -as if they were the code of the Medes and Persians. Ethel let him -proceed. But she held to her faith in the final rehabilitation of -Reginald, and expressed it. - -So, in language of his own, Judge Elkhorn at last reassured her that her -concern for this case was really unfitting. - -“Who being judge?” said she. - -“I shall have to be judge of your conduct, if you desire to retain my -friendship and respect.” - -“But that is _not_ my desire. My desire is to get Reginald Grove well,” -she said quietly, holding Judge Elkhorn steady in the light of her -self-directing intelligence, until, without more words, he himself saw -that he had supposed her general friendliness for him was identified -with an enfeebling dependence on his approbation. - -Then— - -“Mrs. Mancredo, what will _you_ do for this man?” Ethel cheerily asked. - -“What can I do?” - -“You could take Reginald away from the hotel-life which you dislike, and -which you find so injurious to both of you; and you could get a nice, -rightly adjusted home. And then, from the pure potencies of your -splendid being, you could second nature’s recuperative forces in _him_; -and they, unthwarted and assisted thus by you, will build him up again -into health of body, by giving him a new affluence of mind. Then _mind_ -will recreate the body. To accomplish this would perhaps take years of -real mothering-wit and wisdom. But—” - -“Years, Ethelbert? I should be an old woman by that time, near my -fifties. What is a woman worth then? And what would this rejuvenated -young scholar care for me? I mean—this is nonsense; and yes, _what would -I be by that time?_” - -“You would be a woman who at least would have achieved one defined -object in life. You are now sick of existence. Money spending, dressing, -dining, and days spent in wishing that things and men were different, -have given your active imagination and non-concentrated powers no -comfort for years past. Neither could you get much good by running up -and down the world, trying to get an audience to listen to your -theories. Absolute, concentrated personal work, done well, on the spot -you stand on, will not fatigue you any more than does the toil of mere -self-exhibit and self-protection from the inroads of others on your -property and yourself. You say twelve years hence you will be a woman in -the fifties, if you give these years to work. How old will you be twelve -years hence if you don’t?” - -“There are always asylums and skilled people,” she suggested, trembling -with alarm, not so much at the work, as at undertaking to settle herself -to a twelve-years’ job for him. She was very pale, and looked toward the -man with a shrinking, like that in the eyes of a dumb creature being led -at last to the altar of final sacrifice. - -“Yes,” said Ethelbert, “there are always asylums; and they are getting -fuller and fuller of people who know so ill how to deal with time, that -fearing, faltering and fightings have landed them there to die, while -their friends outside, fearing, faltering and fighting against their -fears, soon need asylums, too. This man’s trembling intellect would be -ruined by a few months in the average insane asylum. You say you would -be an old woman at fifty if you tried to save that man; tell me, then, -what will you be if you don’t?” - -“Mother! mother! please call little Alitza; she can read me the story of -the little leaden soldier; he didn’t fight well; he fell in the gutter.” - -Of course that was Reginald’s voice speaking out in good English this -time, which was enfibred by the childish ring of a perfectly carefree -mind, when it is filled with blithe imaginings. - -Judge Elkhorn looked at him with startled attention, and Mrs. Mancredo -shuddered, half whispering: “We used to read ‘Comte d’Andersen’ in the -French, with his mother. He was such a pretty little fellow, and took up -French so easily. I learned it, too, though Italian was my baby tongue. -My father was French. O dear, my life has amounted to nothing after all -my efforts!” - -“How would it do, then, to cease efforts, and in a home be easily -useful?” - -“It would make a scandal.” - -Ethelbert unconsciously drew herself up, till it seemed as if the -universe did not contain air enough to fill her expanding lungs as she -said: - -“‘Don’t talk of scandal. Needs break through stone walls. Take counsel -of your own soul, though all the world should be scandalized thereby.’” -And then, turning at the repeated call for “mother,” she went to -Reginald, who could not be satisfied without a caressing touch of her -health-giving hand. But then, contented, he went on with his reading, -caring for the attention only as a petted child cares for an accustomed -endearment which is hourly, perhaps, received. - -Yet Judge Elkhorn looked not incapable of striking the paralyzed -creature. But the Italian, with an instant’s sharp scrutiny, saw only in -the act that Diana-like integrity of purpose, which like a light -reflected, beautified her own face, too, with the mother-tenderness that -filled Ethelbert’s being, as she said: - -“Will you go to Alitza’s house, or stay with mother?” - -“Of course I shall stay with my mother. Alitza may come when she -chooses,” said the invalid again in English. And Elkhorn, with arms high -folded, looked on, forgetful of all else but the simple intelligent -purpose which made radiant these workers. Was it that passion by them -had been triturated into the high potency of a god-like vigor, which was -sent now through the earth to bring redemption to universal man, and (at -their hands) to this individual, by the way? - -“Yes, yes, take him, keep him here,” said Mrs. Mancredo. “Do as he says, -Miss Daksha. He is coming to seem such a dreadful responsibility—guarded -by angels, that—” - -“Oh, if this is the style of doing things which women are going to put -on the world!” the judge exclaimed, “asylums and criminal courts will -get to seem more devoted to miracle-working than the churches now are; -and every idiot will become a center for spiritually scientific -endeavor.” - -“They never should have been anything less. In fact, idiots don’t -belong. They are transgressions of law, as much as criminals. They, with -hundreds of other things, are but the results of women’s unnatural -relation to the university-education, which must be by _her_ bestowed on -man,” said Ethelbert, leading them away from proximity to Reginald. -Because even though he seemed unobservant of what was going on about -him, she thought that when he was not directly _addressed_ he (as if in -echo) heard what was said to or about him. This manner of dealing with -him rendered his visible presence in this world of effects a means by -which those who were about him in this world were partially introduced -to the other. - -The judge and Mrs. Mancredo stood drawn together, looking back at this -alienated mentality. Then she half whispered: - -“They say at the hotel that he ought to—well—not be at the hotel, no -matter what big bills I am willing to pay, and all that. So many people -are in a rickety mental condition themselves, that—instead of _studying_ -a case like this, Miss Ethel, as _you_ do, it alarms them, and—and—well, -I don’t know myself what it does to them—yes, and to me, too. I will -confess I dislike sick men. And it sometimes seems to be not Reginald at -all, but a ghost which has arisen out of his childhood—sort of waiting -to have another try at what he can make of life.” - -“Yet there are hundreds of such men everywhere, and we can’t afford to -use our brains over them. Why should women spend their lives doing such -jobs? Men choose to go the pace that kills, one way and another, and -will not hear one word from women till they drop down dead weights on -the shoulders of—” - -Mrs. Mancredo broke forth into convulsive weeping. This was too much for -Judge Elkhorn. He took sudden leave, assured of one thing: that was, -that Mrs. Mancredo saw the cleansing work which would have to be done in -society’s augean stables if women took up the business of turning these -stables into ‘the home of the brave and the free.’ And he saw that the -idea that she _ought_ to save this man, now had a hold on Mrs. Mancredo, -and he knew that when a strong woman thinks she _ought_ to do a thing, -the ship of state may as well clear its decks for an encounter from all -the guns hitherto known or unknown in moral combat. For he had learned -that women are constitutionally brave as well as educationally timid, -and that they set no limits to their daring when once they enter the -lists to do the thing that must be done. - -After he was gone, Mrs. Mancredo stood watching Reginald’s happy, -superintelligent look. Then— - -“What have you done to him and to us all?” she said. “It is as if—as if -we were watching by the hallowed dead.” - -“I think it is wonderful myself,” said Ethelbert. “I have concluded that -the core of Reginald’s nature is the love of truth; and that this core -of his being has not yet been ruined by social abuses; and that this -love of truth is a radical root, from which a resurrected life will -arise. There is hope of a tree, though it be cut down, that it shall -live again if the roots are healthy. The roots of his life are better -than the visible growths that have appeared,” said Ethelbert. - -“Oh, let me come here, too! Let us both come!” cried Mrs. Mancredo, -after the strange, tremblant silence; “I can’t keep away from here. I am -so much happier here than I have ever been in my life; I feel so broken -up and stripped of everything, somehow. Let me fetch down a few things. -You can crowd together a little and give me two rooms; or better still, -throw out an addition across the house. You can make new parlors—so—with -a veranda round them, and give Regie the sunny half, and—and take me in -and educate me, too. You’ve tossed me all up, somehow. At the rate I am -going on I shall be a selfish old woman at fifty, and have done neither -Regie nor myself nor anyone any good. But really, you know, he don’t -deserve a bit of this at my hands. Do you know the night he had the -shock, I felt as though—as though—” - -She stopped and looked at Ethelbert’s impassive face. “You have never -asked me what there was between Regie and me,” she said. “Sharp as you -are, you must have known I hated him. Well, yes,” hesitated Mrs. -Mancredo, “in a sort, I hated him. Have you never wondered what there is -between us? You don’t look as if you cared now.” - -“I should be sorry to have anything between him and his best -development, or you and yours. All the rest does not amount to much -either way at this terrible social crisis,” said Ethelbert, as she gazed -down the long ages which had been leading on to this stage of general -social, chaotic development, which is but an outward sign of the -particular state of the aggregated individual. “And instead of feeling -frightened at wickedness, and planning a punitive reform, the simple -thing to do is to recognize these conditions as _stages_ at which the -fomentation takes place, which always precedes clarification. A thorough -clarification of society is at hand, the outcome of which will be, ‘the -new order of the new age.’” - -“I begin to think so myself,” said Mrs. Mancredo, after a long pause, in -which she had watched the thought-gleams in Ethel’s eyes. Then, vexed at -her own perplexity, she said uneasily: - -“I wonder if anything would interest you that was not purely -metaphysical or psychological? I mean—in fact—I want—that is—I wonder— - -“Oh come, tell me. How far _would_ your ideas of old-fashioned duty -carry you? Would they make you interfere with another person’s business? -Would they make you make a body tell you all she knew about herself, and -make you bring a body right down to the grindstone of confession, and -bind her to your dictatorial law of ways and means of repentance?” - -Ethel laughed amiably, saying: “If you want to know my character, you -would better glance at my life.” - -But still, with an alarmed, distrustful, quizzical look, the outgrowth -of her experiences, Mrs. Mancredo said at last: - -“Do you think you can take better care of Reginald than I can?” - -“I can do my duty better than you can do my duty, but I cannot do yours; -but on my way to do mine, if you are with me you ought to get some view -of what your duty is, as I shall get new views from you regarding _my_ -work. That seems to be the whole of the affair,” said Ethel, taking Mrs. -Mancredo’s hand cordially. - -“Is that so? Would you not dictate to me, nor talk to others about me, -nor flinch from your duty if I neglected mine?” - -“I only know,” said Ethelbert after a pause, “whatever comes to me to be -done, I shall do, but I shall accommodate my actions to new -circumstances which may arise, for I should be sorry to have anything -come between Reginald and his best development, or between you and -yours. The development of the individual is the point; all else is -inconsiderable.” - -“Now look at me,” said Mrs. Mancredo, taking her hand tightly, and -looking her straight in the eyes. “Remember what you have said, for I -shall not forget it. Listen: I am Reginald Grove’s wife.” - -Ethel caught her breath, for this she had not foreseen. - -“Now, then, how far will you practice your personal liberty principles? -How much will you leave me in perfect freedom to choose my own duty? -Remember, you have said you would be sorry to have anything come between -Reginald and his best development, and me and mine, and that all the -rest amounts to little either way. - -“Now, then,” she continued, starting off again after a little pause, “if -you don’t want anything to come between me and my best development, you -will let me give up my life there at the hotel, and you will make the -changes in your house that I suggest, and let me pay you the hotel -prices, and bring along my carriage and servant John, and take me into -the family on the ‘personal liberty principle’ with which you four -heavenly mortals control or don’t control each other’s lives. And you -will angelically mind your heaven-appointed business of evoking Regie’s -lost angel, and leave me to evolve my own as best I can.” - -By this time Ethelbert’s beryl eyes were looking into Mrs. Mancredo’s -black ones, as if this arrangement were a simple plan for a lawn party. - -“Why don’t you look disgusted at a woman who passes as rich Mr. -Mancredo’s widow, and who is really Reginald Grove’s wife, and has never -been any other man’s wife, nor anything like it, in any way to anybody!” - -“Disgust must be too unpleasant a feeling to take on one’s self -prematurely,” said Ethelbert, with her rare sweet smile, as she took -Mrs. Mancredo’s hands in hers and sat looking way down through the -turbulent surface of her eyes, into the sorrowful depths beneath; then: -“When I learn all, I am sure I shall have reason to congratulate you, -that with all your temptations and perplexities you have done so well.” - -“How well?” - -“I only know that you want nothing between you and your upward path; and -that is well, absolutely well.” - -“That is true; and I have never wanted any evil thing, and I really -doubt if anyone really wants evil things. Shall I tell you my history -now?” she continued. - -“I don’t see why you should.” - -“Have you no curiosity?” - -“Not of that kind. I am curious to know just how Reginald’s brain looks, -and if his tranquil, happy life is accumulating force in the superior -brain faster than he is using it. I would like to see if recuperative -energy can be stored up like money in a bank, ready for a heavy draft, -and—” - -“If you weren’t so interested in all that, you would be more interested -in my affairs.” - -“Yes, if I were not so much interested in life _as a -religiously-scientific-problem_, I would be more interested in gossip, -and would now bid you good-by, and immediately would set the town alive -with a little romance; which, instead, you will tell me much later, and -will tell the rest of the world when you choose.” And with a long grasp -of the hand, Ethelbert moved away as she spoke. - -“Don’t you care to know?” said Mrs. Mancredo, following her up. - -“I don’t care to know anything except the resurrection-truth that you -can still make your life as beautiful as you choose. You are thirty-five -years old; you have forty-five years to live in this world,” said -Ethelbert. “Think of that, and fashion circumstances accordantly with -the result you would like to see.” - -“Well, I declare, I never thought of that way of doing,” said Mrs. -Mancredo, after a pause. Then: “Do you really mean to say that you take -me on trust?” - -“I do,” said Ethelbert; “and ‘equal exchange is no robbery.’ You take me -so, too, do you not?” And a hand-grasp, peculiar and vitalizing, sealed -the compact. And this was the last reference made to that matter till -years afterward. - - * * * * * - -The house had not only been promptly enlarged, and Mrs. Mancredo very -promptly domiciled there as she desired, but also within two years other -developments had taken place. Mrs. Mancredo was now “one of them,” and -participated in their many other lines of work, an account of which in -the limits of this little booklet will not appear. This is but an -episode in the doings of the dualized, and it must suffice to say that, -under the best health conditions, physical and psychical, Reginald so -improved that strangers recognized him but as a lame man, who had been -paralyzed, but who was a person of winsome, gentle manners. His speech -was inconsequent, and often polyglot and startling in its sudden -outbreaks into good English concerning unknown themes related to realms -unknown, and intangible to those who could not comprehend his mental -movement. - -The home of the Dakshas was more than ever like themselves; or it would -be truer to say, was as much as ever like themselves, since the changes -which had developed were but outward signs of the average spiritual -state of the occupants of that home. - -The house eventually was greatly enlarged. For Mrs. Mancredo and her -servant having come to stay, the sustained condition of spiritual -attraction necessitated a steady extension of the outward buildings. - -As, for instance, when Bertha Gemacht (whose life was a romance) had -first heard of Reginald’s attack, and of Miss Daksha’s intention of -restoring his faculties, she had presented herself to Ethelbert, -internally necessitated to explain her relation to the problem in hand. -For the memorable scene and conversation on the balcony had left with -her a fixed belief that the vital force of vein and brain is the vigor -of Jehovah in us; and that those who reverence it according to the law -of right use, having englobed that vital force, are thereby enriched, -and fitted for a great order of service. For that this wealth of vein -and brain is wealth, indeed, of an absolutely empowering sort; and is, -in itself, _power_. And she had fully learned that by its inherent -_empowerment_ it naturally introduces its possessor to services which -can only be carried forward on the plane of superordinary intelligence. - -Bertha had taken to this philosophy as naturally as she had to -breathing. But her heart had lately become very sore with the fear that, -as the workers were to be “the pure in heart” who see good and God, she, -for cause known to herself, might not be considered “pure in heart,” and -so might be rejected as not fitted to help even in the humblest way, in -the splendid work here opening up. The bitterness of this dread had -filled her mind for weeks,—yes, from the first. And the bitterness was -none the less bitter from the fact that the very _circumstance_ in her -life which she felt would be taken as ground for her rejection from this -work for the new age, was in her good judgment the circumstance which -had educated her to well do one line of work, that ought to be a -collateral to the rest of it, as carried on here. - -So one day she came suddenly to see Miss Daksha, appearing at the -sunlighted stretch of rooms, the abutting tower-end of which was -connected with Reginald’s suite. She glanced furtively at him, halting -as she knocked, and Ethel, understanding all, said at once: - -“Bertha, I call him—not bad, but bewildered; not sick, but being healed; -not lost, _but in process of finding himself_. His helplessness now -exists because Mother Wisdom Divine has _arrested_ him, by putting to -sleep certain of his faculties, in order to the better releasement of -his higher nature. As we understand this matter, he is mentally in -communion now with saintly spirits. And if your angel and mine can but -wisely conspire with angels higher yet, he will be safely carried -through this crisis; and in a few years he will have forgotten all of -the evil things of the past, and will be ready for a new life. And then -all will go well, if but only people will then not remember against him -his follies and transgressions. - -“For Bertha,” Ethel said, curiously looking into the steadfast German -eyes, as if showing her a sight of “those invisible things of God, which -are clearly seen, being understood by things which are made.” “Bertha, -Reginald ought not to die yet physically. Dying as he now is would but -necessitate that at his next incarnation some other woman would be -tortured to give birth to perhaps an unchanged _distracted_ being, with -the same self-destructive tendencies as those evinced the day when, -years ago, he was beating the rosebush to pieces. - -“All that unfortunate waste of mother-pain can be prevented; for we here -will now take up for him, and others, the work of being spiritual -mothers, who will very simply, in this home, supplement the work of the -other poor mothers who have had to give birth to ill-conditioned -children, without being properly accoutred, with the time, money, and -education requisite to enable them to teach these children the ways of -life. - -“That day on the balcony when he was destroying the rosebud, his -mother’s spirit touched mine (as mine now touches yours), and she urged -me (as I am now urging you) to bring this child out of his state of -arrested development into harmony with righteousness. She informed me -that in the bonds of matrimony, as well as out, Bertha, mothers often -endure abuse which no creature but man thrusts on his mate; abuse which -devitalizes and poisons the fountain at which, born and unborn, the babe -is fed; and which weakens the nerve substance of the child, by draining -the vital forces of the mother, in a way more ruinous than would be a -sword-thrust. - -“This mother with spiritual insistence urged me to keep her son in the -body, and to carry him through this valley of the shadow of death, so as -to enable him to attain a resurrection to newness of life in this body.” - -Bertha’s eyes were raised in soul-flaming sympathy with the sufferings -hinted at. Such violence had been done her. For years she had been -hurled into wraths and torments, and into the dangers of that moral -defeat from which she had been delivered by Ethel’s comprehension of her -inward righteousness, as opposed to the outward conditions that had been -thrust upon her, and as opposed to the reputation which she had unjustly -been made to bear. - -And of all this she thought. But Ethel’s stated recognition of the -_commonness_ of the outrages put on woman as maid and mother, now -aroused her intelligence as to the _general_ need for a general -enlightenment. But her wrath was inexpressible, and she cried out -suddenly: “O, but he is a fool, that Reginald! If he had treated me well -I could have done him great good. I hate him! I wish he would cease to -live in any world,—could be blasted, blotted out of all worlds, and made -into nothing at all, with a lasting ache of shame to it! For he is a -fool. Miss Ethelbert, it’s—it’s him! That’s who it was!” And she covered -her face, stretched and distorted with loathing, and whispered -dreadfully: - -“Let him die as the fool dies; withhold your breath of life from him. -Dead he would be but for the vitality you exhale upon the upper realms -of his being. Let him die! Let him be damned, as he has damned my poor -Waldemar into being! I do hate, hate fools!” - -Just so had Mrs. Mancredo said: “I do—dislike sick men.” - -And Ethelbert, well knowing that woman’s dislike of folly and sickness -would turn men away from both, if woman were free to rise to her own -heights, said calmly: “It is precisely because you hate fools that you -will conspire with me, his mother, and other angels of God, to -annihilate the fool and evoke the man. Two children, Waldemar and -Reginald,—is it not so? Your Waldemar is your son, and better born than -Reginald. For after that assault you were deserted by your assailant, -and lived in virginal conditions through all the time of the coming of -your son to this present incarnation. You have lived since, loathing -evil, seeking the good and pursuing it, and—in an humble sense—pondering -these things in your heart, as did the mother of our Lord; and—” - -“Aye, I hate him! I would gladly have been like the Virgin Mother, -reverently treated, by the spirit-of-life in some good man,—if not by -the Angel of the Annunciation. Mystery and unfathomable mystery as it -all is, I claim I should have had the highest and best. I am a good -girl; I am from a good family. I love that story; I love the mystery as -the good Father in our mountain village in Germany taught it. I meant -always to be like Mary, blessed among women. Reginald betrothed me; and -betrothal is almost marriage in my land.” - -She turned, and gazing again back toward Reginald’s chair, said again: -“Aye, I hate him! Beast, brute! I think—I think I must kill him! I do -hate him! What will my Waldemar think of me! I hate that _man_!” - -“Who?” said Ethelbert. - -“That man,” said Bertha, with a point of her finger, like a -sword-thrust. And Reginald, as if shocked by an electric charge, sent -forth a cry, springing forward as if galvanized; and Bertha, frightened, -heard Ethelbert say, steadily: - -“There is no man there,—a crippled child, an absent spirit, a wraith, a -wreck, a ghost, a ‘remains’ of the criminal who was arrested in the act -of killing a citizen of this nation, called Reginald Grove; that -‘remains’ is there; nothing more. A child waiting to come forth to the -business of making one more try at self-management, is there.” - -“You were right,” Ethelbert continued, not unobservant meanwhile of -Bertha’s alarm at the effect of the electric-battery which her finger -had fired at Reginald, and at the flush which had mounted Reginald’s -face. “You are right in saying there are too many born and buried. Let -us not bury him (this ‘remains’), but let us electrify him into newness -of spirit, and then he will not need rebirth of the body. Give him -another chance. You and Waldemar shall have yours.” - -“No; for if he gets well you will be making him marry me. All the good -ladies try to make those kind of men do that. And the men hate us, and -we hate them; and even when they are of our own class, they always think -we are worse for what was as bad for one as for the other. And they -think they have done us great honor; and we keep on, never able to do -anything that will make the wrong right; and all that comes of it is -hate, hate, hate; and more babies are born, all of them full of hate; -and the mothers can’t take care of so many; and it’s all nothing but -hate, hate, hate. And the mother dies hating, and the children live -hating; and it’s all foolishness and misery. You are my enemy if you -make him marry me; and you can’t be my friend if you are his.” - -“Now, then, is he going to stay here?” - -“He will stay here,” said Ethel. - -“Then I must go.” - -“Must you?” - -“Yes madame, you would not have two such people under your roof!” - -“The clear dome above us is the roof I live under,” said Ethelbert, “and -it covers all sorts of acting people. A few boards nailed together -neither roofs life in nor shuts life out. People who are separated are -separated by partitions thin as glass and strong as adamant, and -repellant or death-dealing as a live electrical wire. Go or stay, as you -choose. But, dear child, you need never fear that I should make Captain -Grove marry you, or make anybody do anything. Liberty is the law of -life. But I see your perception that you are to Reginald a part of a -dreadful dream, the same as he is to you, may be true. A hundred -marriage services would not in themselves unite you. All you say of the -disaster which comes from these unintelligent methods of compelling -legal-unions between persons who are abhorrent to each other, is true. -You need have no fear of any compulsion. - -“We are living in a revolutionary epoch. My family believes marriage is -the great sacrament of life. But we do not perceive, however, that all -legal marriages are so formed and sustained as to render them -sacramental to the parties concerned. Yet we do think that the highest -type of marriage is symbolic of the kingdom of heaven. But I will tell -you this: If your case were mine, I should not try to right up the wrong -I had done by going on to do more wrongs under the shelter of legality. -If you consider that Waldemar was damned into being (that was your term, -not mine, I should not use it; I do not think he is), your next care -should be to bless him out of that condemnatory state, by giving him -such instruction and such simple joys in life as will secure him against -perpetuating any form of wrong-doing. Put away sadness, Bertha, and -remember not wrongs against your brother Reginald. Correct the past by -dealing sensibly with the present. Truth and right living will bring -good results to the future. - -“A large proportion of morals and manners today are unintelligent. Yours -have been. But all that ceases today. Excessive emotional wrath at those -who have blundered with us, does not help either them or us to better -intelligence, nor to the best adjustment of results.” - -“Unintelligent? What a niddering word for, for—” - -“Yes, unintelligent. A fuller intelligence will render all the mysteries -and miseries of life intelligible. For whatever is in the past, you are, -with others, responsible. Now waste no more brain-substance in grief, -shame or wrath, but conserve all your nervous force for your work. -_Assume the motherhood_ which you _pre_sumed upon. Your mind is crowded -with artificial distinctions. A few simple principles, held to amiably, -will make all your life sweet and intelligent, even now. - -“You love purity. That characteristic is rooted deep in your nature. You -are ethically valuable to the kind of work that must be done in this -age, because of that characteristic. I will tell you five points of -faith that abide with me. Then you will see why I say that any methods -_of abusing the brain-substance is unintelligent_, and why I say that -fuller intelligence concerning woman-nature and possibilities will -render _intelligible_ the past miseries and mysteries of life, and will -displace them with the spontaneous joyfulness of wisdom’s way of living. - -“Do you understand?” - -“Certainly I understand. Tell me your five points of faith,” said -Bertha, clear-headedly. - -“One is, that purity is natural and inherent in humanity. Next, it -consists in an invulnerable ability to garner up the vital force within -the seven nerve-centers ready for use, just as the electric current is -captured and held by the electric dynamo, ready to be put to use in a -scientific and purposeful way; in order that great things may be -achieved for the race, by means of its light-giving, heat-supplying, -weight-lifting and propelling power. Next, I believe purity is a -profitable, satisfactory personal possession. For it fills the nerves -and brain with a reserve force which is a tremendous reconstructive -energy. The possession of purity is always back of that steady -brain-building which goes on, with its incessant increase of mental -grasp and power of intuitive perception. So that those who have large -reserves of the _wealth_ which _purity_ brings, can lay hold on the -history of past ages, taking possession of such history in great blocks -of time and events; and they can apprehend things which are to come, in -time to prepare for crises, one after another, in such a way as to turn -what would have been disaster into success. Purity gives one -self-possession, and creates a simple, unsullied self, well worth -possessing. - -“It enables people to dare to state themselves in unqualified correct -terms. For their unmixed simple purposes bear each other out in the long -run. And I say, Bertha, if all women were legally upheld in being what -men delight to be called (that is, Right Honorable,) the sons of such -women would be by nature ‘Right Honorables.’ I will uphold you in being -right honorable, Bertha, and Waldemar shall be Right Honorable.” - -“Gott be danken.” - -“There cannot be a more profitable and satisfactory possession than -purity. It fills one with courage and truth, and makes honor easy. Its -joys fade not away. Its hopes are fulfilled, and I believe if we were -all possessors of this type of purity, and understood how to live -according to its law, the social result would be, that humanity would -become like the angels of God: right, bright, agile and light; with -probably less marrying and no divorcing; because of the well-poised, -well-contented lives to which such men and women will have attained. If -all possessed this type of purity, there would be an end to these -inordinate desires which now make some people to be self-tormented -monsters, and others to be their victims. When this type of purity -exists, then family life, worthy the name, will be established on a -plane of health-giving-comfort to all concerned. While those who, St. -Paul says, ‘do better than to marry, though to marry may be to do well,’ -will be able, Bertha, to coöperate together in simple, unsullied service -to the world, which always needs such service. - -“When people come once to know the buoyant delight way down to old, old -age, which is ushered in by a scientific life of purity, they will never -thereafter rack themselves with the disorders and maniacal nervelessness -which comes, Bertha, one way and another, from the abuse of vitality. - -“It is doubtful if people, as a whole, will ever learn life’s true and -refined joys until women are legally upheld in their own work of -carrying out that law of liberty to all as opposed to license in any; -which law enables the evolution of such a joyous love of decency, and -such reverence for the God-power in the blood and brain of each, as -shall secure health, wealth and vivacity to individuals and the nations -throughout the earth.” - -“It is all true, true,” said Bertha. “But that comes from beliefs which -are all one. But yet you said five points of faith, and I shall learn -them all. So you would better name the fifth, by telling me what is -purity. You say it is natural and inherent to humanity. And you tell me -it is profitable; and what the social result would be if we all -possessed it and lived according to its law. But what is it, what does -it consist in?” - -“To be pure, the dictionary tells us, is to be unsullied, unmixed, -genuine, unqualified. Purity is free from a burdensome sense of shame, -and is full of an invigorating courage which is wide away from all -necessity of making and loving those things which the Bible calls -‘lies.’ Because a robust healthfulness fills with courage those who -habitually practice the scientific law of purity. So that, in the -character of a Right Honorable, purity, courage and truth knit each -other up into a triuned power against which nothing can prevail. Purity -knows how to deal in an offhand way with its own nature and needs, being -full of the courage of its own convictions as to what it wants to do and -be. - -“The courage of purity is full of simplicity and high achievement; quite -the opposite of that bravado which, attached to inordinate desires, is -full of duplicity and failure. Purity is not timid, for it is its own -protector. It is genuine, unmixed God-power, and makes its possessor a -partaker in omnipotent omniscience. This fact all can prove for -themselves who enable themselves to do so. - -“It consists in an intelligent use of the vital element of blood and -brain; and this intelligent use is religion itself. For, Bertha, the -vitality within us is the divine creative power of Jehovah, and should -be reverenced with awe. I repeat it, I distinctly believe this elusive, -thrilling gladness-element of mind and nerve, is the joy-power, the -intellectual vigor of that Vital One, the being whom we call God; who is -the breath of our lives, and of whom we are competent to know more and -more eternally. - -“Now the only real _class_ distinction between people is—not that some -are rich and some are poor, not that some are university graduates and -some are not, but—that some have cultivated and _know_ their -possibilities of garnering up this vital force within their own nerve -centers, ready for use, just as the electric dynamo captures and garners -up the electric current, that it may be in readiness to achieve great -results for this great age. - -“Those who have this order of self-sovereignty have what the world -cannot give and cannot take away. Those whose self-sovereignty is -founded on this unimpregnable purity of brain and nerve have entered -into a permanent delight in life. And no matter to what retreat their -humble duty calls them, they are among the rulers of the age. - -“Ach, Himmel! It is the secret of the sanctuary!” said Bertha. “We of -the high mountain regions are taught it, in the old fatherland. Nothing -can be wanted, if Waldemar and I have and hold this, and give it to the -world.” - -So thus came Bertha into the home of the Dakshas. - - - - - CHAPTER V. - - -As Bertha left the room Daniel entered it. Then, as do saints on the -other shore when dealing with those who have come up out of great -tribulations, so these two looked each into the eyes of the other, and -met there, love-full-of-wisdom. - -In the silence they stood for a moment, thinking of the “foundation -stone” on which the “builders build,”—a foundation stone which supports -that gate of opulence which is coeval and consonant with the temple of -life. A foundation stone, diamond-like in its adamantine strength, and a -radiator of shafts of that light which has lighted every man who has -come into the world. Rays of which, mingling with rays are emitted now -everywhere, till the dispelling of all darkness is at hand. - -“I have heard from the Landseers,” said Daniel. Then, as if that -statement were but in continuance of the thoughts which had swiftly -glanced from mind to mind, he added: “The work of individual spiritual -construction moves on so fast in the world today, that soon no man will -question his neighbor, ‘Know ye the Lord?’ for all shall know that all -others, too, do know him; and shall know _who_ he is; for they shall see -him as he is, and know that he is He-vaw. It is becoming well understood -that the pure in heart see He-vaw, and seeing He-vaw as he is, become -like He-vaw. But we need for _use_, institutions for training our young -men in this art of life.” - -Words were few and powerful in which Daniel and daughter treated the -mysteries at stake in the swift transactions taking place under their -roof, and under the broad dome of the blue above. - -As has been said, the Dakshas were what today’s people commonly -recognize as “old, old souls.” So though by many this will be -unbelievable, their opulent minds kept always in circulation the -_thoughts to be uttered_. And their eyes and ears conveyed and received -suggestions, information and impressions as swiftly as the electric -current receives and carries messages. For “the wheels” which some joker -declared were in the Daksha-brain, were there, and what is more, “the -spirit of creative life was in the wheels.” But if (as it was said -jocularly) there was a buzzing in their bonnets, the bees that buzzed -there were all honey-makers for humanity. - -But Judge Elkhorn not only lacked all such activity of brain-substance, -but was an inherent pauper concerning this order of social opulence. -Moreover, he did not believe any one could have what he did not. So the -wit about the wheels in the heads of the Daksha family and the buzzing -of the bees in their bonnets was the judge’s own. Meanwhile he wished -for their power. For he was a man as painfully curious to know -everybody’s past, and the whys and wherefores of all that they did, as -he was anxious to reservedly shield his own past, present and future -plans from inspection. - -So, as Mrs. Mancredo did not explain to him her affairs, he only knew of -them what had been reported at the hotel; namely, that she was an -adopted sister of Reginald Grove. He knew that one of the women under -the roof claimed to dislike Grove as a disagreeable sick man, and -another had declared that she hated him as a furious fool. But as to -Miss Daksha’s sentiment toward the man whom she was said to be saving, -he could discover nothing. And therefore that matter uncomfortably -occupied his mind. For, in his conjectures concerning Ethelbert, he had -nothing to go upon but a more or less murky form of concluding that the -acts of _all_ women were based upon some emotional, self-seeking -foundation. - -He was not to say “a nice man,” this Judge Elkhorn. But of curiosity, -persistence and “prod,” he had no lack. He had some things in stocks, -some things in banks, and some things in mortgages on farms out West; -but his poverty was extreme and corrosive. One form of it that was -eating his vitals this day, made him peer sharply through his glasses -and thrust his head forward in a way which caused his Adam’s apple to -choke up against his collar; and that resulted in making him pitch his -very hoarse voice up very high in the effort to get it, if possible, a -bit higher than that collar, and so on a level with his greatly -heightened curiosity. - -For this curiosity took form in the desire to know what conditions could -have existed which made both Mrs. Mancredo and Bertha Gemacht look at -Reginald as they had looked at him in the judge’s presence. For in the -look of both was repulsion, dread, and distinctly a look of enslavement -to him, to which was added a portrayed sense of angry restiveness under -that enslavement. What is more, he had twice noticed how invariably they -turned away from the sick man, and gazed appealingly (it could be called -nothing else) into the eyes of Ethel. And he had seen that her -superordinary manner steadied them, and correlated them with strength. -For strengthened they were, as all are strengthened who are released -from fear, and allied to that power which comes as direct from -All-that-is as water comes into a basin from a reservoir to which its -conductors are attached. - -Judge Elkhorn knew, too, that Mrs. Mancredo, her carriage and coachman, -John Sullivan, and a North American “Indian-rubber,” as she called him, -were all long since settled in the Daksha family. And he knew that the -man Fleetwood liked himself very much; and often said: “We are the -ancient people, and we know the laws of the spirit of peace and purity, -and our medicine men deal with medicine of a secret sort, for those who -can take it in faith.” Elkhorn also knew that there had come into the -family a Madame Roland, a _religieuse_ in heart, and a companion of the -toilet to Mrs. Mancredo in practice. He knew, too, that Robert one day -had imported into the family a Japanese gardener and a Chinese -laundryman. At last in answer to Elkhorn’s urgencies, Daniel Daksha -provisionally admitted him to the family, under the promise to withdraw -within two weeks unless he was asked to extend his stay. He was an -expansive liberal-leagued man; but he did not like servants to forget -their places, as he had told Robert. Then Robert had explained that, as -their household was based on the principle that “a true aristocrat was -one who best served the greatest number and asked least for self in -return,” Ethel, Daniel and Althea were preëminently the servants of the -family. But as for himself, Robert said, he did not pretend to live up -to that ideal as yet. - -In this way Elkhorn learned that this conglomerate household was -distinctly trying to practicalize the royal law of liberty; and that -under that law, one person would no more force chains on any other than -he would consent to wear chains himself. This sounded well to Elkhorn, -until Robert, who did not stay his tongue, added: - -“It takes the age-long development that comes to the true old aristocrat -(like Aristarchus) to carry out this ideal in a really royal way, -because ordinary selfishness and self-conceit are unequal to the task.” - -Elkhorn did not like that. But then Robert didn’t wish him to like it, -as he objected to having Judge Elkhorn come into the family at all. -For he considered that Elkhorn had roots of character which rendered -liberty for him, an unattainable glory. Because his progenitors had -been through so much fighting and persecuting in trying to obtain -liberty for their _own_ consciences and for Calvinism, that, though -the tendency to persecute and fight remained with Elkhorn, liberty was -neither yet obtained by him for himself, nor was it by him permitted -to others. But this was exactly what Judge Elkhorn did not realize -about himself. He figured as a liberty league man; but of late was -beginning to realize it is a mighty acquisition to really be in league -with liberty.... Meanwhile, Daniel liked Judge Elkhorn for many -reasons. For though Judge Elkhorn got as excited over his negations as -his progenitors had gotten over their affirmations of immortality, and -though he became irascible at the suggestion that there was a realm of -life beyond the ken of those senses called common; and though he got -very angry with people who insisted on a knowledge of “the unseen -world,” “invisible powers,” and the theory of a moral accountability -beyond the grave, yet Daniel liked him, as a make-weight against the -top-lofty theories of people who lived more in the unseen world than -in the seen. And Daniel knew himself to be one of these last-mentioned -people. And, too, Daniel knew the peculiar fact about Robert was, he -at this time knew a terrifying amount about the unseen world, and was -receiving as much from the psychical realm as he could support without -becoming a maniac. And Daniel knew Robert did not relish having -Elkhorn come into the family; for Elkhorn’s prowess consisted in -trying to annihilate the popular and private reverence which the -people of this nation have for their several partial-statements of -religious truth. Meanwhile Robert knew it had never been Daniel’s way -to say, “We—‘us and you’—will chum together against the rest of the -world. We have uttered the last word.” But Robert also knew that the -fact that Elkhorn was on the warpath against almost everything, had -but caused Daniel to think his presence in the family might act as an -antidote against any tendency to any form of unity which, when based -on indolent, ignorant acquiescence, results in not unity, but -_nullity_. - -Daniel comprehended the crisis which Robert was facing. Poor Robert, who -had been singled out from the Daksha family by the not flattering title, -“Robert le Diable.” Not that he was so really wicked, but because the -singular goodness of his style of wickedness made the excessive -wickedness of some good people’s goodness look very wicked, indeed. - -To this nearly overwhelming rush of contending forces, Robert at times -submitted quite unresentingly. He knew appearances were certainly -against him. He also knew that there was never a crisis at which liberty -of individual action was to be more demanded by men and women than at -this crisis at the end of the nineteenth century. Only those can -understand Robert’s troubles who are touched with a feeling of that -infirmity under which a brain staggers when the inflow of psychical life -is to the full, as much as even the rapidly expanding braincell can -carry. For he was still trying to keep his place in the outer world, -while passing through such stress of mental weather as is better borne -in seclusion, if such seclusion can anywhere be found in these too -public times. For only those can carry this inflow of mental afflatus -who have been taught to know that this pressure on the brain-cells will -but happily result in an increase of the brain’s capacity to -commodiously entertain the life that comes into these cells, if but this -inflow of mental afflatus can be met with heroic faith and fortitude, -_well instructed_. - -Daniel was his helper, and had told him that persons who were rightly -taught these scientifically-religious facts do not fear, but on the -reverse, _exult_ in this brain-cracking-pressure; being upheld by their -faith that the pressure, endured as a good soldier of the cross should -endure it, will but result in the upbuilding of more brain-cells, which -will then serve gloriously as enlarged receptacles for the incoming of -more brain substance; with the further result that as this development -goes forward these good workers will construct a brain-building fitted -to carry on an order of cerebration, finer and inconceivably swifter and -more reliable than that which is now dreamed of by man as possible. - -But well assisted though he was by the dear old Daniel (who had walked -that way before him), Robert was at a crisis when he was getting all the -inflow of spiritual afflatus that he could carry. And he decided if -Elkhorn were to be at the little evening “conversations,” dear to the -Dakshas, this judge should not be allowed to badger him into discussing -psychical matters, about which the judge was as uneasily curious as he -was unenlightenable. For Daniel knew that such “growing pains” as -afflict men whose mentalities are being adapted to the psychic burden -they have to bear, are, to men devoid of these higher inspirational -benefits, the unknown quantity in the problem of life. And he considered -these experiences used to be called “strivings after God” and -“visitations of grace” by Christians of the true spiritual type of the -older time. And he believed that in turning his back on all forms of -religion, Elkhorn had turned his face away from the very facts of -spiritual development which he was yet curious to dissect now, as a new -psychical scientific development. - -But Daniel knew that was a time (as it is even now in 1898) when a -pressure was being brought to bear on the Committee of the Judiciary at -the National Capitol, by a steadily increasing number of men, who -(engaged in a religio-politico pull, year after year,) were trying to -thrust on this country a creedal-constitution, by putting in a -compulsory-religion amendment. Though the National Constitution -distinctly provides for the exercise of liberty of conscience, and for -the full right of the individual to self-government and self-expression. -He believed intelligent, alert persons all knew that the insertion of -the proposed words would not amend but would _annul_ and abrogate the -National Constitution of this American Republic; a Constitution whose -preamble states, that we hold it to be self-evident that men are born -free, and have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; -and whose whole tenor is to protect the individual in freedom of thought -and self-expression, and to protect every one from being politically -discriminated against on account of religious or non-religious views. - -Daniel knew that at a recent hearing at the National Capitol, the -Chairman of the Judiciary had said to the man who was editor of a paper -called the _Christian Statesman_, and the maker of the little “Christian -Manual,” in conformity with which he more or less modestly expected to -have our American constitutional-liberty annihilated: “I see you refer -to God the Father and to the Lord Jesus Christ as Ruler of the Nation? -Why not to the Holy Spirit?” And in reply to this, the _Doctor_ of -_Divinity_ had made answer: “It is not revealed to us that the _Holy -Spirit_ has relations to nations.” - -So after such an answer as that, of course Daniel was sure that while -people might not blame the man who, as a subject of the British lion, -was little likely to have had it revealed to him that a HOLY _Spirit_ -has relations to nations, yet that their common sense would recognize -that the ignorance which an unfortunate-national-environment had brought -upon this Doctor of Divinity did not very specially fit him to go about -trying to wipe out other people’s Constitution with his little “Manual.” - -Daniel knew that lofty souls from Africa, Asia, the nations of the -Mediterranean and the islands of the sea (represented here as voting -citizens allegiant to our National Constitution) had age-long been -taught that life, _Life Itself_, is dependent on that Holy Spirit—the -feminine in Deity—which continuously broods all-that-is into order; and -he claimed no government but the one dominated by that desecrator of -womanhood, Henry Tudor, and his followers, would wish to thrust the Holy -Spirit out of “relations to nations”; and that _that_ government (?) -whose hand is against every other knows well that if it can but starve, -evict, stupefy and slay our people through annihilating their national -money, their national lands, their religious liberty and (that once -protective agency) their patriotic navy and army _made up of American -citizens_, it can then easily entrap what is left into the present -religio-politico-pull, which is bent on establishing on earth that -particular form of hell that riots wherever that plundering, preaching, -prostituting government (?) makes its lair. - -It was a wild epoch. And the increasing ecclesiastic assumptions of a -new influx of salary-seeking teachers (?) was on the way to injure the -simple purity of faith with which the religiously-philosophical science -of the evolution of man had previously been bettering American society; -and some men’s hearts were failing them for fear. - -But Daniel Daksha, who had been a simple-souled, devoted man from his -cradle-days upward, and who had suffered many things for the truth’s -sake, had no fear. For he was a prophet, and had known that in the last -days it would come to pass that “the mountain of the Lord’s house would -be exalted and would be established in the top of the mountains, and -that all peoples would flow up to it.” He believed this was “the Woman -Age,” and he was not among the men whose hope of existence lies in -swamping women’s power, either by its subjection to animal-abuse in the -home or in the shambles; wherein he believed the new movement was -putting woman up as a licensed article, sellable for revenue to the -would-be on-coming government of the brute, by the brute, and for the -brute,—a would-be on-coming style of government which, in its nature, -counts woman out of it, because she is human; and the brute-rule has set -itself to consume her, when having annihilated her individuality, -religiously and politically, it shall then have turned her into a -“commodity,”—a commodity to be bought and sold in marriage and out, for -the consumption of that brute-rule, to whom “it is not revealed that the -_Holy Spirit_ has relations to nations.” - -In view of all these things, the Dakshas were more than content to have -at their home not whist-parties and dancing-parties, but free -discussions of these things. - - - - - CHAPTER VI. - - -One evening after Judge Elkhorn’s arrival in the family when many guests -were present, he opened up his warfare with Robert against credulity. - -Robert with a glance laid the discussion in Ethel’s hands, and then she -said: “But if you should succeed in annihilating the reverence which -people have for their different forms of religion, and should get them -to believe they have nothing to do but eat, drink and die and decay, -would they not so eat, drink and be merry as to decay before they died, -and yet live long enough to multiply what you call ‘dangerous classes’?” - -“O!” said the judge, “I would enforce temperance, because I believe -people get more happiness out of life by being decent.” - -“But suppose others think they get more happiness by being indecent, -what then? What more has your belief to do with their affairs than the -belief of religious people has to do with your affairs?” - -“Well, of course, as to that,” said the judge, with honest hesitation, -“freedom given to the ignorant and passionate would annihilate society, -and reduce countries to conditions of carnage. The problem is difficult, -because ignorance is so brutish that brute force has to be used to -repress it.” - -“Don’t repress it, enlighten it,” said one Paul Palmer, swiftly. - -But Elkhorn, lifting his voice a little, swung on: “And so it comes -about that we have to control brutishness by brute force, or we have to -make a compromise with it, by regulating it through license laws so as -to repress its encroachments on law-abiding people.” - -“Where do you get your law-abiding people?” said Palmer; for Elkhorn -spoke with the high air of one who has uttered that “last word” which so -many are struggling to put forth in these last days; and had turned a -crushing gaze on flippant Paul Palmer. - -“What!” said Ethel, “license evil so as to gain freedom from it? A -liberty league man must know that liberty granted to all women and men -is based on such freedom for each, that no one is accountable to any -other, and therefore no one is empowered to either forbid or grant any -act to anyone. Therefore, liberty is inherent only in—” - -“Oh, you’re getting on fast,” the judge interrupted. “On such grounds as -that we should have anarchy. Besides, leave out all religion when you -talk to me.” - -“——inherent only in the real individual. Therefore we want to secure -that simple form of education to all, which will create a citizenship of -real individuals,” said Ethel, with an amiable but marked imitation of -Elkhorn’s manner of riding on serenely to the end of his subject;—a bit -of _esprit_ which amiably amused him and them all, without distracting -attention from the argument. And she continued: - -“Judge Elkhorn, if you believe in granting license, you believe in -stultifying liberty. For liberty to all leaves no man to grant or forbid -anything to anyone. License is the antagonist of liberty. For liberty is -the use of law, and license is the abuse of law. - -“Briefly then, in this country, where everything consistent with the -right of others is already constitutionally conceded to each one, the -attempt to give anything more to anyone, is an encroachment on liberty. -For it is plain that if among ten people everything is granted to each -one which is consistent with the liberty of the other nine, then to -grant more to five of the ten is to encroach on the other five, and at -once converts the favored five into masters, and fixes the status of the -other five as slaves. This has been done. The result is, liberty has -been dethroned, and licentiousness is set up in her place.” - -“But,” said Elkhorn, “if it were agreed to all around, for the sake of -peace?” - -“It would be an agreement to dethrone liberty, and the compactors would -be traitors and self-made slaves; and war, not peace, would be the -result. But it has never been agreed to all around. I never agreed to -it. It was done by trickery and the feebleness of the enslaved, with the -result that for the lack of courage to stand by the law of liberty, we -have all become the slaves of license, and not peace, but war prevails -concerning every question which is before the country, yes, before the -world,—Europe, Asia, Africa, America and the islands of the sea.” - -“Miss Daksha,” said Palmer, “according to your opinion, how did all this -muss creep in?” - -“In this era it practically was never out,” said Ethel. “Liberty, as -formulated in the preamble of our Constitution, has failed of -practicalization, because people were not, and are not, up to the level, -requisite to even mentally grasp the idea. It is God-like, and far -beyond the popular ideal of what God is like. And what makes matters -worse, it is beyond what the average pulpit now claims God is like. But -shall we feel badly about all this? No; let us rather say, that as yet -we have not had time, conveniences nor methods adequate to the evolution -of the ideal commonwealth of the United States, into which individual -intelligence will be presently annealed.” - -The power of her thought reached every mind there, poorly as these words -convey it on paper. But to invite fuller explanations, Mrs. Daksha said: -“Ethel, what precisely do you mean by commonwealth? Anything in the -ordinary communistic line, or on the Bellamy idea?” - -“Please take from my words the simplest dictionary sense of them, quite -unrelated to any elaborated theory,” said Ethel, with that comfortable -assurance which comes to each of us, that anyone ought to know what _we_ -are talking about, however misapprehended other theorists have chosen to -make themselves to be, by their play upon words. - -“According to my idea,” said Ethel, “commonwealth consists in the common -services which each can perform to others, in releasing and distributing -those natural commodities which earth, water, air and the spiritual -substance-of-the-universe put potentially into the possession of each -individual.” - -“Ye Goths!” ejaculated Judge Elkhorn. “You are going into things deep -and high.” - -“Things deep and high have gone into the question. That’s what makes an -intelligent handling of it so difficult on the part of the -gold-worshiping, materialistic class of irreligious-religionists who are -trying to annihilate our present _real_ constitutional Theodicy, a -_natural_ Theodicy in which ‘the voice of the people’ (might it be -really but heard) is the voice of God, the Holy Spirit; that spirit -which Churchianity declares before our judiciary ‘has not relations to -nations’; and which that set of people apparently intend shall not have, -if that _vox populi_, which is ‘the voice of God,’ can be silenced,” -said Daniel Daksha. - -“It must be gone into deep, broad and high, if we are going to handle it -on the square,” said Palmer, who was a most intelligent freemason. - -“In politely giving the masses possession of the universe,” said Elkhorn -satirically, “how would you regulate people’s way of taking possession -and working and sharing?” - -“If once we rightly got hold of the principle at stake, that matter -would regulate itself. I accept the natural distinctions which now -actually exist, and which really will eventually control everything, in -spite of all our artificial attempts to the contrary.” - -“For instance,” said Elkhorn. - -“Will you admit that as we go on now, it takes much of our time to make -and enforce laws for building up and hedging in artificial distinctions? -And the rest of it to crush out those real distinctions that inhere in -the nature of things?” - -“For instance,” said Elkhorn again. - -“I see Mr. Palmer has made a note of my definition of commonwealth,” -said Ethel. “So instead of giving instances of what I mean by artificial -distinctions, I will repeat my definition of commonwealth, and go on. -Commonwealth consists of the common-sense service which each can perform -to the other, by releasing and distributing those natural commodities, -which earth, air, water and the spiritual substance of the universe put -potentially into the possession of each individual. This commonwealth, -then, is divisible into three classes of valuables; namely, personal -common-sense services; secondly, the natural ‘commodities’ of earth, -water and air, and the spiritual substance-of-the-universe, and for the -third class of values—‘_credits_.’ - -“Now my happy philosophy of the matter points to the fact, that one’s -natural (not his artificial) desires are in the line of his ability, -duty and destiny. So that if each man and woman is left free to follow -intelligently his and her desires, each will attain the true development -and best use of self, for self and others. Thus, a real civil service -will come about, not by expending millions of dollars and days in -arbitrarily dictating ways and measures by which individuals shall -civilly be serviceable, but by leaving each individual intelligently and -blithely free to use self-inherent possessions in a way which will -occasion a self-adjusting supply of everything to the demands of -everybody. This will naturally release and distribute first, personal -services; second, the commodities which fill earth, air, water and the -spiritual substance-of-the-universe, and will bring into play the third -element in the class of values, recognized in the system of social -economics; namely, credits.” - -“But what will be your medium,” said Elkhorn dubiously, “of exchange?” - -“Time,” said Ethel simply. “For of course to meet the orderly demands of -each and all, with an orderly supply, will take a great deal of time. -But then we each have _all the time there is_; and this, at the start, -equalizes the distribution _of that_ medium of exchange. And our bank -can never fail us, for when our drafts on it are _very_ large, we will -still have reserves of it in eternity. So time is the medium of exchange -for the common-sense services which will release and keep in -distributive-circulation the commonwealth-commodities of which earth, -water, air and the spiritual-substance-of-the-universe make each of us -possessed. (Silence invited her to go on.) Time is a commodity, for as -we all know, ‘commodities are a class of valuables organic and -inorganic, which may be fitted by human effort to satisfy human -desires.’ - -“Franklin used to say ‘Time is money,’ but the point I make is, that -time is _value per se_; so intrinsic in quality, so invariable in -quantitative supply, that it is the natural medium of exchange for all -the valuables precious to a morally sustained government of people, by -and for people. But, though time is value, it is difficult to place an -exact valuation on time without asking, Whose time? And that would seem -like asking, Whose rain, whose air, and whose sunshine? Yet it is -impossible to place an exact valuation on time without first getting an -answer to the question, _Whose_ time, whose services? For the value of a -person’s services depends on the use which the servitor has theretofore -made of his or her time. So here comes in the matter of personal -‘credits.’ So, in coming toward your question, Judge Elkhorn, concerning -distinctions as to the way of ‘working and sharing,’ we might take it as -an axiom in the morals of social economics, that the value of personal -services, broadly considered, is measurable by the _use_ which the -servitor has heretofore made of his or her time. And as time is the -medium of exchange, a person who has not theretofore made skilled use of -his time, might wish to contribute more of it to help out the works of a -person who has made great use of his time. This would only include that -one day from many people would have to be given to execute the plans -which another person might have potentially worked out in the hours of a -vision-filled night, as these plans thus led the way into that which -would advance the interests of all concerned. All this, American -economists of two hundred years ago must have known; judging by the zeal -with which, in the midst of their straightened circumstances, they held -themselves to the business of developing the capacity of children (the -born citizens of their ideal on-coming Republic). These true -human-economists bound themselves to cultivate in humanity a capacity to -utilize _time_. For the development in each little citizen of the -capacity to _well-use-time_, enabled each such well-developed person to -hold the other in well-poised personal liberty; while each chose for -self such an order (or such orders) of personal service as makes each -one to be of most value to himself and others.” - -“Oh, oh, oh!” ejaculated the judge. “Who are the fellows who really did -this? Name them, do, Miss Daksha.” - -Ethel halted at this onslaught from the man who claimed to believe of -everybody and everything only what his external senses revealed to him -concerning them. Everybody laughed good-naturedly; and Ethel laughed -with them at herself. For she knew there was a line between things, -perceivable only to the inner senses and those perceptible to the outer -senses. But she, like her father Daniel, was a dreamer who worked; and -therefore took care to protect herself from seeming like a dreamer who -_lied_, as she saw Elkhorn thought and meant to hint to her that she -was. She felt what she said was truth, as to the interior aspirational -thoughts which were held by many women and men, who, like Hawthorne, -Emerson and others of earlier date, had philosophized, romanced and -poetized over common-sense facts, and had thus enthroned them; till they -now, at least, were lodged in the memories of men like Elkhorn, as -entertaining fictions. - -Luckily for Ethel she had a merry soul, as well as a philosophically -religious one. And, too, she had the faculty of standing off at a -distance from herself in a way that enabled her to see herself as others -saw her. She was not self-conceited, though to others she seemed so. If -she had been, her gift of seeing herself as others often saw her (so -frequently was she misunderstood), would have many times a day taken -down her self-conceit. - -She saw the confusion in Elkhorn’s mind concerning her. She knew he was -a stoical man, and had no power of imaging the unseen. He was like the -men of that class which long ago sprung up and outlawed the poets, and -repressed everything of that sort (music included, I believe); because -these things, according to these realists (?) led to lies, and were -lies. All this was in Ethel’s mind as she caught Daniel’s eye, and they -both laughed out cheerily. For Daniel had often been called a —— (that -name you know) and, too, he had been quite outlawed long ago by deacons, -who called him a “rationalist.” And then when he patiently inquired if -they would rather he should become “irrational,” he was churched for it. -So when Ethel and Daniel had rung forth that swift chime of laughter, it -had rung up memories of these things to the ears of all who heard it. - -Her pleasantness and just estimate of others seemed to have cleared the -atmosphere. And Judge Elkhorn said cordially, but a little quizzically, -“Well, we’ll take all that on the strength of our faith in you, Miss -Daksha. But go on, and take your time.” - -“Yes, take your time,” said Robert, accenting significantly. “This is -not half bad that you are saying, Ethel, but it is quite a fairy tale to -everybody who is listening to you, you know.” - -“On, on with the fairy story,” said Paul Palmer. - -“I am talking to you about the realness of these men’s ideals; men like -William Ellery Channing, Warren, Emerson, Thoreau and men of earlier and -later date than either of these; men some of them who had the serious -scholasticism which was held in the college of ‘Mary and William,’ of -Baltimore. And I receive from them proofs that they had hold of the fact -that the _spiritual essence_ of the social economics of a self-governed -people, was their goal; and that their idea of real social economics -included a full,—a supernal evolution of national moral-power. - -“These men and women of early and later date steadily put forth -teachings which impressed the fact that, to the faithfulness of the -individual conscience, the liberties of the race were committed. And so -I legitimately conclude that national moral-power must now be evolved by -persons who, with leisurely intelligence, apply themselves to dealing -with the commodities of earth, air, sea and _the spiritual substance of -the universe_ as they engage themselves in graciously exchanging mutual -services. America has such men and women, and needs many. - -“There is time; there are personal services. What hinders us that we are -not baptized in the water of life, flowing out from the throne of -supernal power? A social waste hinders us, and that waste results from a -fallacy which seeks to sustain the relation of supply and demand, on the -basis of the legal tender of a money token; as if to say: “I know that -man is hungry, the money in his hand shows it.” - -“But, Miss Daksha, we can’t keep brutes in order with these elusive, -transcendental theories,” said Elkhorn. - -“Yes,” said Palmer, “the question is, How can we keep brutes in order -without throwing license as a ‘sop to Cerberus’?” - -“To keep brutes in order is not this nation’s problem, as woman, the -mother of man, understands it,” she answered swiftly. “We are not -dealing with a menagerie. We are dealing with a nation of immortals -whose native air is liberty. And as to raising the question as to -whether all people shall be allowed to breathe their native air of -liberty, that would be but insolence on my part, if I should name it. -These, ‘_the people_,’ are endowed with certain inalienable rights, -among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. How, then, -can any two or three people talk of keeping the rest in bounds?” - -“But, Mr. Palmer, the simile is fortunate which compares license to a -sop thrown to Cerberus, that hundred-brained-monster. For you remember -in the Greek story, that sop was flung _up_ to Cerberus, by those who -dwelt _down_ in Pluto’s regions, and who wished to keep Cerberus down -there to guard the mouth of Pluto’s regions, and who wished to keep him -content with being chained there.” - -“Do you see? It is in exact correspondence with the doings of modern -Pluto-crats who toss the sop of license up to the enchained masses, to -keep them content with conditions which are hell-on-earth to us all.” - -Such angelic tones filled her voice, such angelic pity illumined her -paling countenance, as she said these hard-sounding words, that that -hell-on-earth appeared at once to be what it is, a hideous intrusion on -a fair realm. And two men sprang to their feet, as if to smite the thing -back to the under world, and deliver Cerberus from his chains. - -Ethel stood beside them, one with them in the purpose; saying, swiftly, -with the flame of a white-light-spreading through the very pores of her -fine face: - -“Hold to your present thought! And take home now the part of the story -popularly forgotten: Pluto promised Cerberus, as a gift to whomsoever -could release and bring him to the upper air _without the use of -weapons_. - -“The promise holds good today. But—but among the Greeks there was a -man—Hercules. He did it. - -“There are such men among Americans. Hercules did it. How? Certainly not -by licensing Cerberus to remain chained down in Pluto’s regions. What -Hercules did do, was this: he brought Cerberus a morsel fresh from the -feast of the ‘gods of Olympus’; and Cerberus, at the taste, aflame for -more, burst his chains, and willingly he went away with Hercules to the -upper air, where such feasts awaited him. - -“Men of America, the trouble with our nation is, there is a dearth of -deities at our Capitol! There is still a lack of Herculean power! We -want more there at the moral-feasts of our Olympus, the flavor of which -would be new to our desiring, fighting, frenzied Cerberi! It is not that -our ‘masses’ are so greatly degraded. It is that our superiors are so -little superior; are, in fact, so much at one quality with the chained -Cerberi, that, for the gift of Cerberus, no man has yet been able to -bring him to the upper air. Worse than that, faith is nearly gone, that -there _is_ any upper air, or that there are at our Olympus any -Capitolian gods.” - -“No. The smoke of hades and the ‘sop’ flung up by Pluto are there; and -the snapping of the jaws of the Cerberi-congress, as they jump this way -and that to catch ‘the sop.’ These things are there,” said Elkhorn. - -“Plus—some men who are to be honored,” said Paul Palmer. “Still, that is -only partly the fashion of that place,” continued he; “the smoke of the -torment still ascends. But the question there honestly today is, What is -to be done about it? There is an upper air somewhere, and there are men -in the Congress of the United States, and in the parliament of Britain, -and in the legislative bodies among the peoples of every country in the -world, who are seeking for these heights.” He halted, then looking out -from under his deep brows, in intensity of upflaming hope, he said with -ferocious directness: - -“Ethel Daksha, I ask you, what _can_ be kept restrainingly before the -masses, if (according to your idea of liberty) we take away from them -fear of punishment? If no man or woman is amenable to any other, will it -not be grab, tear and carnage, by the hundred-headed-monster?” - -“What is it now?” said Ethel, “when everyone is presuming to frighten -and to dictate to everyone else? But I will ask a better question than -that. I will ask if _you_ are kept up to duty by fear of punishment? If -not, by what?” - -It was long before he spoke, and no one thought of breaking the silence, -for it was a solemn one. - -“Whatever rectitude there is in me,” he said, “comes from an inherent -repugnance to making chains for myself by forming habits that would fit -me to dwell in Pluto’s region. Yes, it is a repugnance to the smoke, -stench and torment of the Pluto-cratical domain, which was graphically -and practically explained to me in earliest childhood, by my most -vigorous mother. It is this deep-seated repugnance to moral smoke, -stench and torment, which keeps me up to my idea of duty. And then, Miss -Ethel, I certainly am not better than other men, but I surmise I was -vastly better taught than some men are, from babyhood, and before birth. -For, like thousands of men everywhere today, there comes to me a sort of -homesick, perplexed feeling, at having to sojourn amid such -‘hell-let-loose’ conditions as (so-called) _society_ today represents. -But we all seem to be chained, paralyzed, hypnotized,—heaven knows what, -and unable to break up the influence, which has its grip on the church, -and which the church wants to clamp on to the state.” - -“Paul Palmer,” said Ethel, with Quaker-like simplicity, “if thy mother -had been at the Capitol, those who now conduct like Cerberi would have -long since known themselves for what they are—not brutes, but interiorly -pure spirits—perplexed and homesick at having ever to breathe the miasma -of the Plutonic shores. - -“Look at this picture.” Ethel showed one of Flaxman’s engravings of -Psyche in the lower regions: a fair spirit, standing in a dark defile, -gazing upward in a maze of wonder, as with hope astrain. “Believe me, -brothers, that is the spirit of the new age. A beautiful thing, -intelligently expectant of soon being _itself_. We are all immortal men, -and those whom Pluto seems to have chained, are not chained except by -the fetters of one delusion—they deludedly think themselves beasts. But -they are inherently of the so-called Dios Kouroi. And the Dios Kouroi -know there is food in the upper air, and place and pleasures there -convenient for the hundred-brained Cerberi who are but undeveloped gods. - -“Believe me,” she said slowly, a look of infinite joy glorifying her -upraised countenance, “the Herculean power of the _Dios Kouroi_ can, -when ordered, bring from the upper air a morsel to the Cerberi, and -without weapons win them away to the heights.” - -Then to her it was as if down-reaching mighty arms, with clasped hands -passed under her feet, lifted her with blissful enswathement to an -electric oneness with delight-in-right. - -Elkhorn felt as if he were walking on a wave of light, whose warmth -filled the marrow of his bones. Feeling, too, he was one of the very -gods for whom Ethel had asked, he opened his mouth to boast: “I have -tasted, I can give,” when it all passed, and he dared not boast of what -he now doubted having for the moment received. - -Paul Palmer had covered his eyes, and stood trembling, white, radiant -and reverently assured forever, that there was an “upper air,” and that -there was a goddess there; and that for him life held but one -purpose,—and that was to do Herculean work for the hundred-headed masses -who all hated their chains as heartily as did he. Masses all of whom -would win away to the heights, to go no more down forever, could they -but be fed with such morsels as these there, in that moment of -transfiguration had tasted. - -“There will be no more working against nature when in the near future -the mountain of the house of Yod He-Vaw shall be established in the top -of the mountain,” said Daniel, “for the center of gravitation will be -established in the upper air when woman, released from bondage to -brutality, bounds up and stands at her post. Then all men will scale -Alpine heights of purity, wisdom and wealth, for the love of the -womanhood there, the eternal feminine in Deity.” - -“Alpine heights! Woman there!” - -It was a cry of rapture from beyond the portière, in the added suite of -rooms which had been built on for Reginald Grove’s use. - -Ethel heard it, and explaining it as if she were double-brained, said: -“He is in the garden of Eden, the place of innocence where spirits in -liberty live, as live the lilies of God; neither fearing, fighting, nor -desiring desires; but where, welcoming the will-of-wisdom, they become -like the self-unioned One. See?” - -With a swift impulse, turning on one toe-poised limb, winding so, her -clinging gown about her svelt figure, with arms extended, head thrown -back and face upraised, she stood, a radiant image of dual being, -unified in cruciform. - - * * * * * - -What had come to her? Had the ecstasy of the “real cross” drawn her up -into itself? Had she for a finality won away into the company of those -who unintermittingly do the will-of-wisdom? - -Free and far through Emperean space on wings of vision fleetly she fled, -gleaming from the gladness of the star-filled air the truth (known to -the intelligences) of the meaning of that victory won over Semiramis, -when defeated on the banks of the Indus she flew away in the form of a -dove. For the starry hosts were showing them the meaning of the -“whirling wheel of Ixion,” on which the spirit of the world will still -be crucified until the coming-woman, by self-use, shall have expressed -to the race her relation to the world’s work, and worship; and so shall -have healed it of its woes. - -And the two men to whom Ethel was giving participance in all she was -sharing with the angels, heard jubilates in the upper air, pitifully -tremulant, yet glad, which revealed that the cries of the world are but -the growing pains which all endure while getting the growths that bring -forth new forms of life, of knowledge and beauty. - -To Paul Palmer’s entranced uplook, it seemed as if the bounding moon, -shining through the great window back of where Ethel stood, could hardly -wait for gladness in going through the blue; where the sparkling stars -were the dust of the wisdom of the ages, transmuted into the gold of -those supernal heights. - -And lovingly laughing together, the moon and earth and they seemed -bounding through realms where old beyond compare had grown that -seed-thought, which now, falling to earth, is sowing itself and -springing up daily in the electrical doings of those who, inwardly -yearning for it, put forth the deeds which the reception of this seed -enables. - -On, on, through spheres where the inhabitants know full well that the -crassness of selfhood is but the undeveloped manner of the creature, as -it struggles toward the real humanity, whose spirit is a form of WILL -refined to WISDOM. - -On and on—till—oh, ecstasy—next— - -“Ethel, my daughter.” - -It was to the three as if those words had buffeted their way to them -across ages of absence and realms of peace. Then, somewhere in the -star-garden it seemed Daniel must have met them. As friendlily near, -with swiftness indescribable, they shot earthward together (or thus it -seemed) lighting so, as a thistle-down alights upon the earth. - -Ethel’s eyes met Daniel’s as he stood beside her; and with the memory of -how the star-seed was sowing the earth with thoughts for this new age, -she cried out ringingly: “Was such bravery of beauty ever before seen by -you, Daniel?” Then—“oh, I understand,” she whispered hushedly, steadying -herself and them all. - -For she perceived what had befallen. But she well knew how to bridge the -chasm between ecstasies and earth’s needs so as to turn raptures into -rational-spiritualized results. - -Her first swift act was to concentrate on Reginald this focussed energy, -in a way to fetch his wandering mind into harmony with the work of this -epoch; not by sundering him suddenly from the realm he lived in, but by -giving him an interior sense of the presence of those who stood there -with her and with him, in that instant’s transfiguration on the mount of -vision, when altogether they were allied to the doings of the dualized. - -Ethel never “lost herself”—as the term goes—in these ecstasies, any more -than an eagle in the delight of its ascending flight to heights, even -above the eyrie where it dwells, loses itself. It is an eagle still, and -knows its way aloft and below. Nevertheless, she knew that when she went -aloft this time, it was as if at the sound of a triumphal trump, persons -there rallied and sped away with her. And upborne by her wings and -seeing with her un-sun-blinded eyes, they saw what she saw, and learned -what she knew. For when the urgency of her need rang through the -silence, calling on life, that Life _per se_ should show itself to those -who knew it not, that the sight of it should baptize this household into -fitness for the Herculean-labors of this epoch, she knew trusted helpers -then, with an under-lift, had upborne her and hers into participation -with all-creative bliss. And that what they then learned no art, not -even music’s own, with octaves ever so many, can hint to mortal ears. - -For what these seers then saw, tones, nor half-tones, quarters nor -eighths, in octaves ever so many, not yet have learned to melodize. - -“Grace of heaven, Daksha, is she living woman, or spirit only?” said -Paul Palmer breathlessly. - -“I only know,” said Robert, in tones muffled by his heart’s quick pulse, -“that one day the spirit of harmony came and dwelt under the roof, where -I had had cradle. And this is she.” - -“Yes, yes, it is the new Madonna,” whispered Reinsvelt, Robert’s artist -friend. And he sped away out at the path from the house to the street. - -“He does well,” said Paul. “He goes to whiten white canvas with that -white ‘vision’s inward illuminings.’ Visions, which will ‘pierce gross -sight, and with mild persistence urge man’s search to vaster issues, -whose growing sway controls the growing life of man.’” - -“He has caught the art-thought of the new age. For you see, Robert, as -the pictures of the Crucified Man have tortured woman’s soul to a -devotion of self-sacrificing desire to rescue man from the cross which -man’s passions make for him,—so the new picture of that dearer self, in -ecstatic union with the gladsome heights above, will arouse _men_ -themselves to become the sanctuary of nuptial rites. For see you not the -meaning of George Eliot’s most wonderful poem? ‘Oh, Might I Join the -Choir Invisible?’ Robert, Madonna, self-crossed by the will-of-wisdom is -Elohim; the cabalistic feminine-duad of the Hebrew. And it lacks not the -mother there, but ‘shapes it forth before the multitude, divinely human, -raising worship so, to reverence more mixed with’ WISDOM.” - -And Paul Palmer, like Reinsvelt, as if empowered by some dynametrical -battery affixed to the forces of heaven, sped away to write of new deeds -for the redemption of that hundred-headed power, the Cerberi—the masses -of the people. Seeing that we are all of the mass—_the high mass_. - -For as Ethel, raised from private considerations, lived amid public and -illustrious thoughts, those whom she attracted were attracted not to -her, but to the _public and illustrious thoughts_ which were her realest -and most entirely creative self. So that the centripetal attraction -toward this self was balanced by the centrifugal force which sent those -who admired her out and far away from her bodily-presence to work the -work of that force which sent them on its way. - -As had done Paul and Reinsvelt, so did the rest, one after another. For -they speedily bethought them of deeds that should be wrought at once, -impelled by the new force to high enterprise. - -For the centripetal power that attracted people to Ethel was like that -of the sun or of mightier Arcturus, never absorbing them emotionally -into her atmosphere; but on the reverse, filling them with the vigor of -God, and sending them to achieve newly discerned lines of public -beneficence. - -Thus Ethel suddenly found herself standing alone. For everyone had -fallen away from her presence, away and out to do the will-of-wisdom. -And for an instant she halted, with a sense of sudden and unaccountable -desertion; forgetting for the moment how many hundred times the same -thing had befallen her, after one of those mystical uplifts had filled -with power those who had entered with her into the moment of full -vision, and who from thence had hastened gladly down among the multitude -to practicalize there what the vision had but illustrated. - -“’Twas but that ‘loneliness which inures to oneliness,’” she said to -herself; entering then herself again into the at-one-ment with the -divine purpose. - -Then it came. And reeling under the sudden inflow of the might of the -Eternal, as it surged through brain and nerve, she knew some great need -was at hand, calling for all the power with which she was now being -surcharged. Then arms trembling with the eagerness of a shuddering -soul’s necessities, closed around her. - -“I have waited years. Love me, Ethel. I am friendless, distrusted and -forlorn. Let me tell you fully now, my story and Reginald’s. For I have -a suspicion that haunts me, and I want to get square with all moral -questions all round. But all stands still, while Reginald is as he is. -It is time he was well.” - -In external stature Ethel was a grand, large woman. And with a solemn -glorifying of her power, inhaling a breath which attendant hosts -supplied, seating herself, she took to her arms her courageous friend, -holding her commodiously, and saying: “Your hour has come. Tell me what -you will. Your work is ready for you now, and you for your work, choose -what you may.” - -And as great Isis might have held a woman, childlike in proportion to -herself, so held she Alitza Roccoca, bathing her spirit in a _love_ now -again becoming known to mortals in this passion-wearied age. - - - - - CHAPTER VII. - - -Then,— - -“But Reginald’s mother died,” said Alitza, in a singularly half-muffled -tone, as if she had been long going forward with the story, and now but -made an addition. “Then Uncle George (as I called old Grove) sent me to -a good school. It was thought by some to be very good of him; but there -was much more back of all that, you must know. I was a thin ghost of a -girl then; thinner than I have now become, and I had cross-eyes (as -people call it), and I was sallow. But little Reg was used to me; so to -come to it at once, the summer I was seventeen I came home from school -to the old Grove place. There was no one there but one old servant and -Reg, who had been suspended from the academy on some charge; so there we -were together two months, as good as in a wilderness. - -“The first thing I knew we were engaged to be married, and then nothing -would do for Reg but a drive to Hartford, to the minister’s; but I knew -the minister would not marry us if he knew we were both under age. So as -quick as he asked how old we were, I said I was eighteen and Reg was -twenty-one. And then came the trouble; for truth, of a sort, was always -Reg’s strong point. And as we rode away together, married tight enough -by the minister, he looked at me with absolute dislike, and wanted to -know what I told that story for. - -“I told him that as he had been teasing me for six weeks to marry him, -and as I had at last said I would, some one had got to tell the lie; and -as he hated to, I did it for him out of kindness. I felt bad about it -myself. And then the minister had looked at us in a queer way; and -Ethel, I was such a simple, ignorant little child, that I did not even -know then what disagreeable thing the minister might have been thinking, -other than that I was telling a lie. And I knew I was, and that made me -color up; and that had made Reginald mad. And so the outcome of his -haste to tie me to him by that ceremony was that he had called me a -liar, and I had told him I hated him. Then I would do nothing other but -drive straight to the old home, half frightened to death at what I had -done. - -“Then you must know, as we drove up to the house up came a common sort -of a fellow on horseback; and the first thing he did was to joke Reg for -riding with me, when he was suspended for a flirtation, at least, with a -common sort of a girl who lived in the academy town. I was as mad as a -lunatic at that; for though I understood nothing about such sort of -talk, I loathed the least breath of it as badly as Reg hated lying. And -while I was in a frenzy of wrath, and tearing away at both of the -impossible rowdy boys, up came old Grove, driving in from somewhere with -‘friends’ to whom he was going to sell the so-called Grove place. The -sight of me there made him mad anyway, for a reason that I can now -understand; and in a minute the other young boor had let out all about -our foolish work at the minister’s house; and, too, Reg’s affair with -the other girl; all this—imagine it—was blazed out before those four -men; mixing me, Reginald’s good straight maiden wife, up with things -which I simply felt sure were very detestable. - -“Well, I went to my old nurse’s room (she had always staid there in the -family for my sake), and I got from her papers which auntie had gotten -from old Grove before she died, and had made nurse keep privately for -me, though he had hunted for them everywhere. For you must know that -they were legal documents which showed that the estate we lived on and -every cent of money on which he had been speculating was my money, which -he, as one guardian, held in trust for me, and was bound to invest for -me. So the more successfully he turned it over, the richer I was -growing. Well, you see? But the point with me was, I knew the possession -of this paper gave me a jack-wrench to put on old Grove, whenever I got -ready. But I loved Reg then in a way, and could not disgrace his father -without disgracing him. And I didn’t see how I could go to my other -guardian without letting him know how bad old Grove was. My nurse had -talked a good deal to me about it, and I had made up my mind the week -before, romantically, that I would marry Reg and turn my property all -over to him, and save his feelings, and keep him as rich as he thought -himself to be, and give him a surprise the day after we should be -married, by telling him all about it. - -“What I did do was to take all those papers and my wedding certificate -and get away, carrying with me a look as if I would just as lief kill -anyone who spoke to me disrespectfully, like old Grove had done. I was -hateful enough looking to get on quite well. I got a good place to do -housework under the name of Jane Collins. I stayed there two years, -saving money, and terribly frightened lest Grove or Reg should find me. -Next, the lady I worked for recommended me as housekeeper for a -half-paralyzed old man, because I was good, and as ugly looking as -gloomy sin. I was a good nurse, and he said my touch made him stronger. -He was kind, but rather romantic; and finally I had to tell him my -story, because he wanted to marry me. I showed him my certificate, and -then I showed him my other papers; and because I could trust him, I told -him I had a plan of my own. I wanted a very fine education, and I wanted -to put my other guardian on old Grove’s track, so as to get my money all -into my own hands clear and fair, and then make it all over to Reg, who -wasn’t fit to rough it, somehow. But that I had got to do carefully, for -I was legally his wife, and so the money was his in a way; but that I -would never be Reg’s wife any longer than till the day I could find -myself in a condition to be divorced, and could make him marry the girl -who had been a good girl till he ruined her. My idea was that she really -was (law or no law) his wife more than I was. Heaven knows I didn’t want -ever to see him again. Yet I had that romantic, real, dispassionate sort -of principle which made me determined to keep my vow to do him good and -not evil, all the days of his life. So, as I say, I was bound he should -have the money, and marry the girl of whom I have told you, but whom I -never could find. - -“All this seemed just fun to old Mr. Mancredo, and he took so much -interest in the ‘joke of the thing,’ as he called it, putting a lawyer -on Grove’s track, and fixing things up a little, while getting at facts, -that he grew better in health under it; and he had my eyes straightened, -and gave me the best of teachers, of which he was chief. And with -kindness, approbation, good treatment and all, by the time I was -twenty-four I was not only quite handsome, but had everything all about -my business in my own hands. But the poor little girl had died,—so -somebody said, but I’m not sure,—and that took my courage down. And Reg -was at West Point, ‘swinging round on my money,’ Mr. Mancredo said. But -you see Reg had called me a liar, and I loathed the whole mess. But you -see I had a woman’s pride in being, myself, _intrinsic wealth_ of a -finer sort than that thing called ‘money’ can fully represent. I wanted -to know how to do well (and in a way which would be of marketable value) -every sort of thing which could be needed in the economics of a broad -social-system. It made me sick to see men, who inherently had nothing -worth exchanging, quarreling so much to get their clutch on the ‘medium -of exchange’ called money. But not to stop about all that now, I can -only tell you that old Mr. Mancredo laughed so much, and had such a good -time over my theories, that he legally adopted me as his heiress and -daughter, and then got so well that we travelled all over Europe and the -Nile country, and he made my guardian stop bothering about the laws of -the matter, and appearances, and the rest of it. For why should I go -back to Reginald, who hated me, and force on him my money as a gift, -which he now was enjoying much better under the supposition that it was -his of right? Besides, I was really punishing old John Grove most -deliciously; and I relished that. For he was a singularly offensive old -animal; and besides, ‘if your enemy thirst, give him drink,’ and he was -awful on the money-thirst. And I was helping him to pour gold down his -own throat, with just enough of a scare with every gulp to make life a -terror to the old animal; and it was fun to me. But just before we -sailed for the Mediterranean I did send Reg one ringing slap. For I was -angry that he was such a coward as not to have fought for me against his -father. But then he was afraid as death of his ‘old dad,’ as he called -him; just as his mother had been. I wrote to him that his mother in -heaven would never forgive him for his treatment of me; for that she had -left me in his care, as a younger sister. And that now, however low he -sunk, he might look about him in the sloughs there, for any woman whom -he met might be the sister to whom he had betrayed his trust. I did not -mean to give him a chance to take much comfort in his badness. But I -meant to do more than to merely put a ‘death’s head’ at the feast of -life which he had spoiled for me. I knew that this letter would put him -on the wrong track, so that he would never look for me among the -cultivated, scholarly, useful women, whom I intended to lead before I -was forty. And besides, I felt it would give him an idea of the fact -that all women are the sisters of all men, and that a man is a felon if -he betrays their trust. So I thought this letter hit off all these -things pretty well; don’t you see that it did? - -“Well, we travelled everywhere, Mr. Mancredo and I, and I cultivated a -leisurely, haughty manner, and grew high-colored, with magnificent eyes, -they said, and then I knew how to dress. And people commonly called me -‘Mrs. Mancredo.’ Sometimes I corrected it and sometimes I did not. The -world was so full of tangles that I scorned to bother myself about -names. I knew how staunch I was. And besides, I had such an innate -passion for chastity and continence, that the other sort of life seemed -as idiotic to me as to have dashed my brains out a little every day -would have seemed. Dear old Mancredo called me a very brainy woman, and -I valued that, and I enjoyed being good without letting anybody know it, -if you can imagine such a notion. But then, always, Miss Ethel, I have -devotedly loved my guardian angel.” - -She became silent, and the silence was preserved. Then— - -“We lived in Italy several years. My mother was an Italian, and so was -Mr. Mancredo, and I felt to be the middle-aged, rich Italian woman whom, -by adapting myself to dear Mr. Mancredo’s language and needs, in his -lameness, I was becoming. When he died I was as much a widowed heart as -if I had been his wife. He called me always a truthful, sound nature, -and encouraged me to believe that my last ‘slap’ at Reginald would -sicken him of vice, which, by the way, he curiously enough did not -believe Reginald was particularly guilty of. He said the false -conditions of woman’s environment had cultivated lack of frankness in -me, and that a certain sort of farcical manœuvering even now made me -like to put people in the wrong, to my own disadvantage, rather than to -allow them to intrude on my business, which is true. ‘You are too fond -of being privately good,’ said he, which was a funny fact. - -“After everything was over and I had gotten back to America, Mr. -Mancredo’s lawyer (and he was my guardian) wanted me to come down on old -Grove, whose touch was turning everything to gold. They had come out -West here, and Reg was riding the social wave buoyed up by my money, and -I decided to come West and take a look at him, with the agreement that -at a word from me my lawyer should come on and fetch old Grove with him, -for he was under close surveillance on two accounts. - -“And then at the hotel I found the poor fellow, awfully gone down, and -drinking away like a man with something on his conscience. I felt vexed -with him for getting nothing but brandy-slings out of all that money, -for there were people who needed it, and could have used it if he -couldn’t. I found it was said that he was a fellow who was afraid of -women. He had a queer way of looking at them, and his way with me was -his general way. Perhaps he thought any one of them might be me, and the -dread _wore_ on him. But he did not know me, and I rather had to press -myself on his attention, to try to make things come about so we could -settle on a divorce. But my attention to him made him shyer and more -distrustful than ever; yet he was perplexed by a half recognition at -times, too, I think. - -“He never knew me, though, till that night on the stairs when I asked -him what would have become of that sister of his if she had been as -unprincipled as he had been. And then, oh dear, poor fellow, that was -the end of all for him! I have never been much to him, and never -anything to anyone else, but I have always been true to myself and to my -guardian angel.” - -She stopped and gave way to the weeping that had twice interrupted her, -then said, drawing a full breath: - -“So I am honestly and only Mrs. Reginald Grove.” - -“Oh, my good Lord!” - -It was Reginald’s voice, in full manhood’s tone. - -“Oh, go to him, Ethel, I am afraid!” said Alitza. - -But Reginald, parting the blinds, stepped out of the long window and -stood in the moonlight looking about him, with his hand to his head, -gazing at Ethel, who, rosy-red with joy, looked into the eyes of an -irate but not insane man. - -“I have had enough of this talking outside my window. I tell you I don’t -know where I am. Send for Mrs. Mancredo. She’s a straight woman, but by -George, how she _will_ lie. Why, Miss Ethel, I didn’t know you. You are -looking old and queer, somehow. I’m frightened somehow. This room and -place—? Send for Robert. He’ll take me round to my hotel in his trap, as -he did yesterday.” - -“Take my arm for a moment, and we will walk up and down the balcony,” -said Ethel. “Your foot feels as if it were asleep, does it not?” - -“It feels as though it were waking up. Get out, man! Hold off there!” -said he, bracing back against the wall ready to strike out at Fleetwood, -his nurse, who approached too much in the character of an attendant to -escape distrust. - -“I am here, Captain Grove,” said Ethel. “You are my guest.” - -“I am your guest, Miss Ethel? Well, that’s all right then. You hear -that, you peeping idiot back there? I’m Miss Ethel’s guest; but I tell -you others, the whole posse of you, to keep away from me, or I’ll knock -you all down, like ninepins in an alley. They are for shutting me up -somewhere. I have heard lots of talk about it, and if that dark fellow -isn’t a doctor, what is he, with his soft-stepping ways? - -“There, look at that. There are my roses, not wilted yet; and there is -my Petrarch. There’s no drunk about me. I was here yesterday. I remember -everything: only I forget some of it. Oh,—oh, Miss Ethel, what has -happened?” - -“Just this: you have been ill, but you are getting well now.” - -“There now, you’re telling the truth. But when have I been ill, and -where have I been ill?” said he, reassured, yet with the anger of a -proud man fighting against the treachery of his faculties. “Look here. -That’s—_that’s_ Mrs. Mancredo that I hear crying somewhere. It breaks me -all up to have that woman so unhappy. Come, Miss Ethel, if you believe -in prayer, down on your knees, and tell them up there to keep paralysis -off a fellow like me. I’m not half a bad lot, I tell you. No, indeed; -I’m not half bad.” - -At last Ethel brought him to see that if he would submit to patient -thought he would soon bridge the mental hiatus that now afflicted him, -since his mind had been abstracted from things about him. But that only -made him anxious to have one good fight with the best fellow there, to -prove that there was nothing the matter with him, and never had been. - -“Well, then, take me,” said Daniel Daksha, coming up; his presence so -full of blessed content that Reginald laid his hand in that man’s with a -comforted sense that “old Heem,” as he was sometimes called, would see -him through all right. - -It was held to be desirable that Reginald should be saved from the -sudden shock of the knowledge that as thirty odd years had been blotted -out of his memory at the time of his paralysis, so now at this crisis of -probable recovery the years which had since intervened, with their life -of other worldliness and other consciousness, were swept away for the -moment, like a dream forgotten. - -Daniel’s full comprehension of a brief but similar lapse from -consciousness that had once befallen him, prepared him to help Reginald -thoroughly. - -Reginald was singularly, courteously grateful for the care which he saw -had been taken of him, in bringing him to this private home. But his -mind was full of shadowy incidents related to the two worlds in which he -had lived. And Daniel well knew the terrors and mental perils of a man -recently returned as from a far country. He knew Reginald Grove felt -badgered and broken-hearted at the incongruous, conflicting memories -which bewildered him; and he felt that presently, when Reginald should -begin to recall the blissful states of existence now left behind him as -in a dreamland, he would fall into conditions of homesickness for those -states of exaltation, which might result in settled melancholia or -suicide. - -The possibility of this man’s being mentally wrecked, after all the -lofty care which had been bestowed on him, seemed a disaster which could -and should be diverted. For it was Daniel’s theory that a man who had -gone through such an experience as this, should find a way to make -himself of use to others tempted and tried in a like way; and that -therefore he must pull through. - -So rising to his feet, and standing between Reginald and Ethel, he said -staunchly, looking at Reginald: - -“Ethel, he is well now; and what I have to say is, that a man who has -been so expensively educated by angels in heaven and on earth, as this -Captain Reginald Grove has been, will of course be honorable and -soldierly enough to review coolly all the extraordinary lessons he has -learned, digesting the facts which seem confusing, and winning out of -them at last an order of knowledge which will fit him to do for other -needy fellows the same things which we Dakshas have done for him.” - -Reginald looked up with a glad, proud expectancy, now quite sure that -all was right enough with him, and that he had had some unusually good -thing befall him, which in some way fitted him to be quite a friend with -the Dakshas, and a coworker with them in unusual lines. - -Then with the strong tone of one determined to get at facts, he said: -“Miss Ethel, what whitened your hair since—since the day on the -balcony?” - -“It turned white in one night. For I will tell you this: there is a -world where a day is as a thousand years; and we learn fast in a few -seconds there.” - -“And did you go to that world?” - -“I did,” said Ethel. - -“How did you get back?” - -“It was my inner self that went. No one looking at my outer self—my -body—could have seen that I was away.” - -“Well,” said Reginald, after a prolonged look into her face and his own -memories: “I see that you are the same old truthful young girl, who said -kind words to me one day out on your balcony, all about my mother and -roses, and the goodness of wealth, and that you wished, with me, that I -was but five years old. Now what you say would look to some people -uncommon unlikely. But—but if you don’t know about your own hair—whose -hair should—” He heard an hysterical giggle. - -“Oh, there she is at her old tricks. There’s Mrs. Mancredo making fun of -a fellow,” he said irritably. - -“But then, you see,” said Ethel, “she’s not been away, as you and Daniel -and I have. But you will soon find your way back; we did, though it -seemed unnatural at first, and we felt homesick for the upper air. Sleep -now; in the morning all will seem more natural, and Mrs. Mancredo will -help you.” - -He slept, and slept soundly. In the morning he was up early. What he -wanted to see now, was Mrs. Mancredo. She seemed to him somehow to be -his oldest friend; and a homesickness for old, old friends had begun to -lay hold on him. - -He warily looked about. The doors were open; he would go out. If any one -stopped him he would know they thought him mad; and if they did, he -would knock them down and run. But no one seemed to care where he was -going. He passed Ethel and she bowed to him, with a cordial -good-morning; and Daniel Heem, who was reading on the other balcony, -bowed cordially; but it was all with the air that they were all alike, -and at their ease in that house. - -There were two men down by the lake-bluffs. But no one seemed to care -where he was going. The air and the sunshine were good; and it felt -strangely good (though queer) to use his own legs. He looked about -warily, tarrying in the rose-garden. But no infant ever longed more than -he for caressing love; and no man fired with wrath against some -tormenting thing, felt readier than he to deal a death-blow. Yes, he -would get away to the little old arbor in the shrubbery, and there, all -alone, he would cry his heart free (he told himself) for something he -had lost. Then crying as he ran, and running as he cried, he at last -flung himself down on the breast of mother earth, longing for some -unnamable treasure. - -What had befallen? Realms of being had been opened to his knowledge, -whose delights the repeating power of his brain could not repicture. He -felt as if starving for what he had lost. He bit at the earth, with -inarticulate cries of soul-bereftness. - -Suddenly two arms closed about him, lifting him till his head rested on -a throbbing bosom. They tightened till he felt himself swayed gently to -and fro, while sobs, strong as his own, shook the rocking form which -held him. As he lay extended, half along the ground and half in this -sheltering care, there came to him something of that sort of peace in -which his senses had been enveloped when he before had floated away into -that child-kingdom from which he had had last night so rude an -awakening. He waited wonderingly. - -A hand pressed back the hair from his forehead. - -“Don’t you know me, Reginald?” - -He opened his eyes and saw black velvet. Was he dead? Was coffin couch -so soft? Did angel arms so sweetly clasp poor mortal form within that -narrow bound? - -Not yet, at least. For bending over him he saw black orbs and cheeks -tear-flushed. The velvet was a woman’s dress; and laces there rose and -fell with the palpitations of a woman’s heart. - -It was Mrs. Mancredo; and she held him tight, as if she would never let -him go. - -“I thought you were my mother,” he said. - -“Ethel Daksha, do you mean?” she asked, after a strange pause. - -“No-o-o, my own dear mother. I thought I was well dead at last; I wish I -were. I have been so knocked about.” - -Presently he said, out of the silence, in a good common-sense way: “I -must be awfully sick, or you wouldn’t hold me—like this, as if—as if I -were fainted, you know.” - -She shivered. “Don’t you know me?” He sat up and looked at her, and -wondered if he must doubt his own senses next. No, the flush on the dark -cheek, the soft brown orbs and wealth of black hair, were all beauties -possessed by his tormenting friend, Mrs. Mancredo. Like a summer -night-lightning memory flashed, sending him to search her face to find -in it—the link lost in his twice-dissevered life. - -“Of course I know you,” he said angrily; “and as I don’t seem to be -dying, I’ll stand on my feet.” And he gave her his hand, helping her to -rise, with his wits all about him. - -Something in his act and look whelmed the soul of this strange woman who -had been his playmate from childhood up, and had parted from him on the -bridal hour. And sinking on the arbor-seat she wept violently. With a -scowl of distress and of another emotion, in which there was no liking, -tortured by the mental hiatus which the sight of Mrs. Mancredo -intensified, he said suddenly: “Why do you tell such falsehoods? I hate -it in woman.” - -Astonished, and giggling nervously at his queer starts and turns, her -eyes shining like lambent stars through the mist, chiefly concerned not -to startle him, and falling back into the way which, as “little Alitza,” -she had had to use toward him for the last five years, she gently said: - -“Well, Regie, I never will again.” - -“Oh, oh, they speak like that where I just came from!” he cried. “Tell -me, oh, tell me, was it a trance? I cannot endure this cloud over my -mind which is so thin that I can almost see through it, and yet so dense -that it stifles me. Tell me all!” he pleaded. - -“I will. Stop me if I skip anything that you want explained. You have -been for quite a while with the Dakshas. I have been here, too. You have -lived a double existence; and though I could see you every day, you -seemed never to see Mrs. Mancredo, but instead, your thoughts were away -in some other world and time. You thought Ethel Daksha was your mother, -and always called her so. And once I dreamed, or I saw you, with your -real mother and Ethel Daksha together in the unseen world, and—” - -“Yes, yes, angels and my mother’s touch—and—Laura and Petrarch, and -sustained ecstasies she brought in on my soul, flooding my very brain -with joys, warm, white, flying joys—which—oh, it is gone, I am lost -again. No, no, I have it. There was great whiteness, great light, Alpine -heights and woman there, in the grace and glory of electric might, -competent to make man mount as on wings, as eagle’s wings ascending -heights, else inaccessible! I was a boy, always playing with joys, -sweeter than wine and more freely fine. No one blamed another there, and -no one hurried. And I saw always Alitza there; and nothing had harmed -her, for her angels had guarded her at every step. Oh, take me back! No, -no, I will not go back! You think I rave; I do not, I only remember too -much at once. I must remember that Daniel just said—you heard it -yourself—that a man so expensively educated by angels of earth and -heaven must be honorable and soldierly, and gather himself to do for -others what has been done for his redemption to good use on earth. Come, -oh, once more try and bring me what I lack!” - -“You know, Reginald, after we all had last night a strange, a heavenly -strange evening, you suddenly roused out of your long, long inattention -to what was going on about you. And now you seem to have forgotten -everything since the night five years ago when you quarrelled (are you -listening?) with Mrs. Mancredo on the stairs of the hotel, when—” - -“Oh where, where is little Alitza—playmate, sister, and—she, you—it is -strange you are both such liars!” - -“Reginald Grove! You miserable thing,” she said in wholesome anger; “is -that all you can remember about me—us? You are not worth saving.” - -“Oh, Mrs. Mancredo, you are—are only and honestly Mrs. Reginald Grove! I -heard you say it. Wait, my brain can’t stand it. You are—” - -“Only and honestly Mrs. Reginald Grove,” she repeated. “My only marriage -is with you, just as you understand and remember its limitation, nothing -more. We are all seeking a simple life here, with little marriage or -giving in marriage, because the power of the angels, with whom we -co-operate for the redemption of the Cerberi, is all and in all for us. - -“And Reginald, listen to me carefully: No one blames another here; no -one hurries or worries, or enters on wordy discussions of past blunders -or future plans. We act, leaving no room for license, but taking the -liberty to each one be his or her best self, according to individual -judgment. - -“Now, Reginald, my permanent relation to you is that of sister. I have -in no real sense ever been, or wanted to be, your wife; neither shall I -ever be. You will hear from the lawyer tomorrow how absolutely sisterly -was the affection which impelled me to agree to your wish for our -marriage, such as it was; and you will see that the plans I laid in my -own mind at eighteen, will be carried out if you like them, now in our -maturity. I shall then be legally divorced from you, and—” - -She looked at him. His face was bright and cheerful, interested, and -perhaps a little perplexed; but above all, cheerful, alert and rather -exhilarated. - -She continued. “Remember this: We here are all dwellers on the threshold -which is between things seen with the physical vision (so to say) and -the things which are invisible to those eyes. We are chiefly interested -in getting ourselves (and keeping ourselves) in right relations to the -realms of supersensuous life, with which we may choose to surround -ourselves. For of course we draw about us spirits, which in tendencies -and longings are like ourselves. Listen to me: One of the family here, -who has a far-reaching inheritance of psychic-faculty and self-poised -spiritual power, is—” - -“Is,” said Reginald, “the one woman in the world who is, in a way, my -wife more than you are.” - -Alitza sprang to her feet, flushed and with blazing eyes. For however -thoroughly she ought to have been glad that the way was so clear, and -Reginald so evidently relieved and ready to give her up, she was not -prepared for this raw style of arriving at the conclusion. Till, -suddenly, “Truth is his strong point, you know,” seemed uttered in her -ears, as if in Ethel’s distant spirit tone. She caught herself up and -steadied her angry pulse, and listened, trembling and expectant; but -there was nothing more. - -Then “Very well, you know your business and I know mine,” she said, and -left him. - -He had all his wits about him, and filled with a sudden sense of the -electric shock which Bertha’s finger-point had sent through him on the -day of Ethel’s conversation with her, he gathered up (with a tingling -sense of shame) all that they together had one day said of him, as being -“a fool not worth mothering.” - -The blood surged through his brain, bubbling up cleansingly through all -the stagnant cells, bringing him in its parts and as a whole, a memory -of the things which had been going on about him for the five years of -double-consciousness through which he had lived. - -Later in the day he felt strangely happy, and clear-headed and proud, -and ready for life; as if he had been assured by competent judges that -he was really a much more level-headed man, and had always been more -level-headed, with a much clearer eye for the main point at stake, than -anything in his stultified life heretofore had proved. - -He saw perfectly well that the story of his life could not end here amid -the congratulations of his friends over his return to health, and their -assurances in relation to Mrs. Mancredo that he was a lucky fellow, with -a wife possessed of such faithfulness and maturity of youthful power. -For of course the story that she was his wife, and all the rest of it, -had gotten abroad. And Reginald knew it had. - -Perhaps if his mental grasp as to moral relations had been as bewildered -as it was when, five years before, he regularly turned to his “drinks” -in order to quiet his perplexities, he would have accepted the -congratulations and slipped along the lines as publicly expected of him. -But five years’ immersion in the blithesome delights of a world where -righteousness reigned, had fortified Reginald in his inherent love of -truth and straightforward dealing, and had enabled him to adopt as -theories to be immediately practicalized, the methods of honor (founded -on simplicity and courage) toward which the Dakshas aspired. - -So when a few days later he found Alitza had legally passed over to him -a good little fortune, and had taken steps to secure (on some of the -many available pleas) a legal release from the results of that -marriage-ceremony, he said, cheerfully and blithely: “That’s all right.” -And when he further learned that Alitza had deeded a further amount of -wealth to Bertha Gemacht, he said: “That’s all wrong; I won’t allow it. -I hope to marry her, and so right up things. And the other money is -enough for both of us,” showing that, as Alitza said to herself, “five -years, even in the society of angels, could not rid the Grove blood of -the thought that a man can cast off a woman when he chooses, and then -marry her when he gets ready; but that, having married her, such a man -felt it was better for him that she should possess as little of that -legal tender called money, as possible; seeing (to the Grove notion of -things) it was sum and substance of independence. She told Ethel that -the irrepressible young hoodlum stood confessed at this touchstone, as -far as his relations to what he would have called ‘this sort of a woman’ -were concerned. Then she said to Grove: “It seems difficult for you to -understand that you have nothing to do with what money someone else may -choose to give to a third person, let that third person be whom it may.” -For quarrel these two people must, by nature. And glad Alitza was that -she had always kept him beyond arm’s length, and now had not let her -sympathy with his sickness, or her joy at his recovery, cause her to -abbreviate the distance between their ineradicable antagonisms. - -“This is a different case,” said he. - -“All cases are alike here, for all are individuals,” said she. - -“But—she—she’s to be my wife.” - -“That’s what you don’t yet know,” said Alitza. “Pah, it takes more than -a visit to paradise to take that sort of stuff out of your brains. I see -the use of purgatory now. You ought to have gone there and staid longer. -We’ve all agreed to let you drop, the next time you knock yourself to -pieces. So look out!” - -“All right, then, I won’t take your money,” said he. - -“Well, leave it; or you can put it into the sinking fund for the -enterprise of this family,” she said. “No one is overinfluenced here.” - -And he did it that day. - -And then the divorce was amicably enough accomplished, but the other -marriage did not occur. - -He said to Ethel afterwards, with wide eyes full of childlike wonder: -“How queer! Do you know _she_ refused me? I’m—I’m afraid, you know, -she’s somehow gone wrong, in spite of all your good opinions.” - -And Alitza, speaking of this remark, said, irate, to Daniel: “After all, -it does seem as if it took a burial six feet under ground to get that -stuff out of him and his like. Why can’t they take to decency as -naturally as women do?” - -“Oh, all he needs is some real misery,” said Daniel. “Leave him to get -it in his own way. He has dreamed of heaven and languished sentimentally -in paradise, but his business is now to pull himself up out of sluggish -uselessness to others. Turning away that money of yours into the public -good, is a hint at something courageous.” - -“Anyway,” said Alitza, “Regie’s as truthful as a dumb brute, even when -he is tossed about by his instincts. He told me, today that he had never -had any feeling toward me but a brother’s anxiety and sense of -responsibility, and that he knew all about the property matter from the -nurse; and that he did hate his ‘old dad,’ and had a sort of hankering -after revenge; and besides, felt it was too mean for the old man to be -cheating me out of my money. And when the nurse said ‘there was enough -for both, and for him to ask me to marry him,’ he thought it would be -about the only way to fix things up easy all round. Yet that when it was -done, and we quarreled all the way home from the minister’s, he felt -sick of it. For he had no love for me like that. And the sight of his -‘old dad’s’ fury threw him into confusion and terror, and a sort of dumb -sickness, just as he had seen in his mother many a time. So he said -today, in his simple way, he was as glad as anything that I had pulled -through life so splendidly; and was glad, in a way, that we didn’t in -the least care for each other, and could be divorced all comfortably.” - -“It’s a queer case, and, in a way, uncommonly sweet, take it altogether, -as these sorts of confusing marital troubles go in these days. For I was -privately planning to marry him, so that he could have the house and -money that he thought were his own, without creating any fuss with old -Grove over the affair. And he was chivalrously going to marry me (in -fact did in a way) so as to deliver me and my money out of old Grove’s -clutches without disgracing his father. Of course it was all quite as if -the question of managing the money were the one question on earth to be -considered. Isn’t it disgraceful? Think of the confusion that comes of -unintelligent conduct, in regard to what real love and real marriage is. -In a way, Reg is a lovable fellow, and has some common sense in him. He -is my own cousin, anyway, and I would do anything to save him except to -marry him, and luckily he don’t want me to do that; so I can mother him -still, as I have always done. I promised his mother I would do my best -for him; and I find he had promised to do the same by me. And I think we -have both blunderingly tried.” - -“Oh, he’ll be well mothered among them all,” said Robert, when Daniel -one day told him all this. “And the queer part is, it is my opinion that -Mrs. Mancredo loves him with the soundest kind of a real wife love, -whether she knows it or not. But as for him, he says he has never had a -permanent attraction toward any woman except the mother of his child. -And now she dreads him with a furious fear, lest he should somehow set -up a claim, and get power over her boy. I’ve seen women like that -before. I wonder where these transitional states will land us all.” - -“It is the great question of the day,” said Daniel. “But manœuvres on -the part of men to disguise from women the conditions of this crucial -epoch will not help the cause along. Men must come into recognition of -the fact that perfect frankness between men and women will lead up to a -natural settlement of the matter as nothing else will do. In fact, it -depends altogether upon the courageous doings of the dualized.” - -“Just what do you mean by dualized?” said Robert. - -“I mean first, as Bacon says, the men and women ‘who have procured the -will to obey the reason, not to invade it.’” - -“He called that the moralization of the whole being; you call it the -dualization. But you include something else,” said Robert, “in your last -meaning.” - -“Oh, that last point comes later. And no person is ready even to discuss -that, until first the subjection of the will to the reason is -accomplished by them and in them. That includes the real moralization of -the whole being, body and spirit,” said Daniel. - -“And so, Robert,” said Ethel, “it is mother-wisdom, full of divinest -love which impels Bertha to protect herself and child against what she -fears in Reginald. But perhaps the same mother-wisdom, full of divine -love, will—now that she is financially independent of him—bring her, in -the near future, to be as noble a wife-friend to Reginald as ever a -poor, struggling fellow-creature had. She is a noble woman, rightly -considered.” - -“She is,” said Mrs. Mancredo. “And she is quite the person to never rest -until she puts one for whom she feels responsible (as she now does for -Reginald) into the way of finding his best self. She wants to help -Reginald exactly as she will Waldemar. That is, to tell him all the -facts, and then leave him free to become what he adores in—well—that -is—oh, how can one express it! - -“For my part,” she resumed, “my love for humanity is and always has been -broader, more intelligent and spiritualizing than a self-arrested, -masculine soul can imagine. The fact is, men in the past have praised a -_simulacrum_ of womanhood which with dire ARTS and infernal-wizzardry -they, themselves demonologically concocted. Then they have set up before -the _androgynous_ mind of a vigorous, virginal womanhood, this unclean -SIMULACRUM of woman, as the thing that she must emulate, or be damned, -to use ‘pulpit words.’ - -“It is of no use opening your eyes, Robert; I may take my departure the -_next_ moment, but I will tell the truth _this_. But the best way to -stop talking disagreeable things is to set vigorously about doing -agreeable things. So now what I have to propose is this: In this house -we bachelor-maids (glancing toward Ethel) and MAIDENLY-MOTHERS who -_enjoy_ a celibate life, and who are legally and financially independent -of men, should hold on to our shekels and our homes (NOT AS FOOLISH -SOCIAL-CENTERS or as unremunerative idols, to be scrubbed and garnished, -but) as centers where we can do what the Bible speaks of when it says, -‘He sets the solitary in families.’ - -“It takes so much time to run up and down the earth and to salary -officers to show us how _not_ to do it, that I would rather permanently -go right on here, ready for emergencies, with an occasional timely -home-extension.” - -“Oh, I imagine that really would be about like our Daniel’s idea, when I -was a little fellow,” said Robert. “When we first came out West, and -when we had plenty of grain and three or four cows, and a well-built, -sunny house, and the big windows full of plants, and an outfit of -kinder-garden ‘gifts’ and Daniel’s perfect knowledge of the -philosophically-religious-science of child-gardening; and when I had -agreed to buy all the clothes for as many children as happened to come -to the door, and when we were hindered, because the mother there,” he -said, halting with a quizzical glance at Althea, “would not have all -sorts of nondescript children homing themselves in our house. Your -thought, Mrs. Mancredo, is about like Daniel’s and mine then was. - -“But, Mrs. Mancredo, my mother was queen of that home, and was a -splendid homemaker, with Daniel’s help; only in our case she was the -money-maker, and Daniel was the family philosopher. Yet she would no -more tolerate the thought than as if there were some moral taint, in -being simply good to folks. And as Daniel was taking the part of -mother-man and Althea of the _man-mother_, Daniel succumbed. Now seeing -we are all telling the truth, JUST AS IF THE LIGHT THAT LIGHTETH EVERY -MAN WAS SHINING RIGHT THROUGH US, REVEALING ALL THAT IN EACH OF US -HINDERS THE GROWTH OF ‘THE LILIES’ OF THIS RESURRECTION TIME,—let’s have -the man-mother tell us, if she can, why she did not let other children -share Ethel’s ideal surroundings and true academical-advantages, which -that man-of-men, Daniel, was so lavishly bestowing on one little -solitary girl. Will you tell us, lady?” said Robert. - -The giant was timid and fragmentary in his statements, like one whose -brain was crowded full of self-adjusting ideals. His headaches made him -distrustful of himself in these days. But better times were coming. - -Althea, the man-mother, the business head of the family (for that she -had been), looked perturbed. She wished Robert had not brought up that -question, either publicly or privately. She looked at him in a way that -meant: “Robert, tell them it’s no matter about it.” But he did not tell -them so; he wanted to know. They were all hunting for truth, and women -were wanting men to tell the truth squarely to them, so that men could -start _and eventually_ “square the circle.” By inference, women are to -now explicitly unveil the remote recesses of their mental-hidingplaces; -and that was what the judicial-looking Robert now said blankly to -Althea. - -Althea, quite amazed, raised her eyes, so like Robert’s, with a -half-challenging shake of the head. But he looked stringent and unmoved. - -She rose a little uneasily on her chair, quaintly folding her handsome -hands, like a child who “did not know the answer.” No one smiled. All -gazed at her unflinchingly, every eye magisterially beholding her. - -For all the years of the children’s lives _she_ had taken _them_ to task -like this, saying: “Of course you know _why_ you do each act; or, of -course you would refrain from action till you found out.” - -_She_ had never been taken to task before, and had rushed through too -many strokes of big business to submit to much interference. - -It was not that she was unwilling to explain the facts of this affair; -it was that she did not “understand such a little thing.” So she said: -“I do not know.” - -“Oh, oh, Robert, would _you_ ever dare to ‘NOT KNOW’?” said Ethel, -folding her hands in imitation of Althea. - -“Not in my wildest moments,” said Robert. - -“Why,” interposed Althea, “what else would you have me say, when I -don’t? Doubtless it is something to do with some two or -three-thousand-year-old-scare which some antediluvian ghost of you men -put on my ancient shade, when you tried to tell as bad falsehoods as are -betimes told now, concerning woman’s nature, duty and—concerning the -_secrecy_ necessary to be sustained about home-affairs, because of the -untellable horrors prevalent within palace and hut,—where worse than -brute passions usurp control over the priestesses of what—home? No, that -is a word very generally needing to be illustrated by a new style of -marital life. However, Daniel and I know what home is; and so do my -children. There was nothing in our home which would not have bettered -the world to know about. That is the reason I can’t tell you _why_ I was -averse to have a lot of little children educated and homed and cared for -with Ethel,” she said perplexed. “Perhaps I was feeling stingy and -tired. At any rate, I remember I wanted to get rich. - -“But Daniel; consider what an exclusive home I was born and bred in, and -how long ago it was, and what departures from old-fashioned dependency I -even then had risked. The fact that of old, woman was chiefly protected -in an enforced-penury, of which she was bitterly ashamed, tended to give -her that preposterous fashion of (metaphorically) peeping out of doors -and windows, and scurrying round to make the best of things before -admitting eyes (much less individuals) into the secrets of the domicile -where she slaved (as I never did); but where she did not intellectually -and morally reign, as Daniel and I together did. - -“Now, Robert, I hope you are satisfied. I have told the truth as to an -age-long tendency in women ‘to want their home all to themselves.’ But -other things and complications there might have been about it, too. I am -tired of that subject now, Robert.” - -“But just one word. Why should women feel so afflicted about this penury -business?” - -Althea, for reasons of her own, did not like this following up of this -matter, and Ethel took on herself to answer: - -“The reason was and is, because the world is the continent of every form -of life, knowledge and beauty necessary for all the needs and delights -of an intellectualized humanity. So woman’s discontent, anger and unrest -at stagnant, self-stultifying conditions, are elements especially -serviceable to her less alert and foreseeing companion.” - -Adding: “‘The sense of beauty, _next to the miraculous, divine suasion_, -is the means through which HUMAN character is purified and elevated.’” - -“I like that answer well,” said Robert. “And I think the power which -beauty has over us all makes us more amenable to that ‘miraculous, -divine suasion’ through which man is finally purified and elevated. - -“Well, that’s finely finished, and I think we are to be congratulated on -the success of our attempt at square dealing,” continued Robert. “But -you know, Ethel, in the old days you and Daniel had some mysterious -talisman by which you discovered if any _goddesses_ came to town in the -Civil (?) War-time days, when so many unhappy babies were likely to be -neglected. Other kinds than the goddess sort you seemed to think were -material not worth your time and attention. I have thought of your way -of discriminating then, in association with the amount of time which you -blessed souls have since seen fit to give to that Reginald?” - -He put this in the form of a question, and Ethel said: - -“There is in Reginald ‘a little seed of immortal power, which will save -its kind alive.’ Therefore he was especially worth saving. He will help -progress toward conditions in which the ARTS OF PEACE will prosper. For -this progress is dependent on the _intelligibility of the doings of -dualized_—self-harmonized natures. _He_ will make such things -intelligible when he gains equilibrium. - -“Bertha, now, is such an one. She has come up out of the scarth of great -tribulation, and she has washed her robes white in the life-blood of her -own bleeding heart, image as it is of the bleeding heart of the Mother -of divine Humanity. She, the outraged, has become pitiful to him who -crucified her and put her to open shame—a shame which she will never -forget. And,” continued Ethel, after a strange pause, “which I should be -sorry to see her forget. For such dealings with woman are not to be -permitted nor condoned. Nevertheless, Reginald is worth saving, though -he should not be encouraged, Mrs. Mancredo, to suppose Bertha will have -anything more to say to him than to—” - -“What, Miss Ethel, do you really mean that you women are going to -conspire to make all other women leave us men alone in peace?” said -Reginald, walking out from his secluded chair in the corner behind the -portières, where he had half relapsed into his old fashion of floating -away into union with _reflective agencies_. “Do you mean,” he repeated -stumblingly, as he came into their circle, “Do you mean that women are -to be taught somehow to leave us men to mind our business? We men are -dead tired of women, all of us; but we can’t really get rid of them. We -often feel like shrieking out at women: ‘For heaven’s sake, take -yourselves out of sight and hearing for a thousand years. Get out of our -light, and give us a chance to find _ourselves_!’ - -“They take too much out of our self-esteem when they tell the truth; and -when they don’t, they take too much out of our esteem for _them_, which -is worse yet, for our comfort. We know there is something wrong about -us, but as we don’t quite understand ourselves, of course we can’t make -them understand us. The reason I want to shriek out at them is—well—it -is queer, but it is because I like _them so much_.” - -Robert laughed out, as if he had a fellow feeling for Reginald in this -difficulty. - -“Now that sounds queer, but it is the truth, isn’t it, Robert?” he said, -with translucent, beautiful orbs raised in integrity. For Reginald was -having an amazing good time, telling the truth as he understood it. But -then he went on and told other truths so simply and helpfully, that they -began to fear he was really getting sick again. - -“See that? Now look at that,” he said. “I have been listening to you, to -see how much you would bear in the way of real endeavor at -truth-tellings. And now, when I speak as plainly as I can, you think my -brain is giving way. Now listen to me. If a lot of good men and women -don’t speak the truth about this matter of love, a lot of good brains -will give way under the contradictory teachings that some sorts of -churches are by silence consenting to, while protecting men in -debauching woman-power, in marriage and out. Protestant churches never, -in my experience of their doings, assist women to establish themselves -on their own moral heights; even though these churches know that, -standing thus and there, women would lift men up to these heights, and -so easily hasten forward man’s truly human development. Besides, such -women’s sons would be born right the first time, and have less need of a -second birth. Woman could do so much for us if we would only give her a -fair chance to work according to her genius. - -“You know how it was with LAURA?” Nothing could exceed his tenderness -and devotion as Reginald uttered this name, once so dear to Petrarch. -And then, as if reciting a memorized matter he went on in his distant, -ventriloquized voice: - -“If that idolized object of Petrarch’s vehement passion had not held to -her rectitude (notwithstanding the harsh vicissitudes of her home), that -man Petrarch would never have known that _that_ woman’s personal -attractions were not her _real_ charm for him. For that _they_ were -excelled by her inherent moral glory and her spiritual-percipience. - -“He would not have known that what he really adored was her _interior_ -SELF, which SELF it was his business by the grace of HE-VAH to develop -_in himself_. And if by lack of rectitude she had failed of holding him -up to the business of understanding her spirit (instead of merely -possessing her personal attractions), he might not have learned the -truth as to WHAT LOVE FOR WOMAN IS FOUNDATIONED UPON EVEN IN THIS LIFE. -And in that case he would not, at her translation to the unseen world, -have been carried forward by his love to THE TRIUMPHS OF SELF-DISCOVERY -which befalls us when the Lord into his garden comes and the LILIES GROW -AND THRIVE.” - -He was looking straight into the air as one does when remembering (or -putting together again) the parts of a total, which, though perfect in -its whole, is yet painfully puzzling in its stages of partial -development. - -He was looking into the air much as he had been used to do before his -recovery of speech, when in mellifluous tones, scarcely audible, he had -talked on in a language quite unknown as the listening Ethel upbore his -highest intelligence, aiding him as he tried to tell what Petrarch had -sought and at last had found in his “VITA SOLITARIA.” - -“As it was, after Laura’s translation to the unseen world his love for -her spiritualized into a worship for that _love-full-of wisdom_ which -our Lord promised to send to lead us into all truth, and which he called -‘the Comforter,’ which was to dwell in disciples of holiness. - -“Well would it be for us if we could first, chastely love all womanhood -as sisters; and then as mothers, noble and dignified, which is far from -being cold and proud. I am sure woman could (if we cleared her way -respectfully) put us at our ease with her on her own supernal plane, -without descending to us from it. If woman remained on her lawful -heights she would leave us men always aspiring toward some veiled and -virgin loveliness which would quicken each dulled spirit, and set it -free from the chains that bind _thought_ to the person, instead of to -the _spiritual-principle_ toward which, in reality, man’s interior -nature aspires. - -“Of course all this is only saying that woman is a help, able to meet -her brother’s painful needs at this _fin de siècle_. And that she is -awfully benevolent to do it, when she has a right to better enjoyments -than that of the misery of birthing and burying babies—many of whom are -not fit to be born—and to better enjoyment than this taking care of men, -who are not fair enough to secure to _her_ those advantages which would -enable her to act freely, according to the teachings of supernal light. - -“I have always been sure,” added Reginald, “that at a certain stage in -man’s development the best thing a wisely-helpful-woman can do for a -man, is to set him absolutely free from love to _her_. That, chained to -_her no more_, she can then, with kind demeanor and dear reserve, -explain him to himself by revealing to him the mental-mystery of that -finished femininity, which is type and potency of the ‘sleeping beauty’ -within his own being,—a sleeping beauty yet to be electrified into -activity by man’s strenuous englobement of his brain substance. Thus, a -fair face will conduct men by a fairer way to his one means of -self-releasement from loving an extraneous self, and will bring him to -the treasured bliss which will ne’er abandon the man who attains it! -Thus man—like woman—will become wholly sexed: neither male nor female, -but-both; being self-whole, self-harmonized, like the lilies of the -Resurrection.” - -Robert had grasped Reginald’s hand. - -A silence had settled upon them. - -Then Robert, with smouldering rage, broke forth relative to -he—knew—what— - -“And yet in the face of all this, think of the embrutalized form of -marriage-ceremony which thrusts words into the mouth of a spiritual man -who is suitor for a life-long union with a woman who is an image of the -feminine in Deity! Think of a decent man having to take into his mouth -that indecent, shoppy remark; a remark which is prescribed to him by a -shoppy-church in response to woman’s enforced promise that she will obey -him. The decent man is made to say (and worse still, the -intellectually-hungry maiden is made to hear him say) ‘With my body (why -not with my brain?) I thee worship.’ ‘And with all my worldly goods (why -not with his best intelligence?) I thee endow.’” - -“Is there not some immediate way to lift the grace of fine living out of -the sloughs with which a most materialistic on-striding form of religion -is saturating it?” he asked impatiently. “It is you women who are to -blame for upholding this materialistic-sacerdotalism,” continued Robert. - -“There is a way,” said Daniel. - -“And we will fetch it forward,” said they all at once, steadying poor -Robert, who had had a peculiar state of nature, added to a sight of “the -better way,” to rightly adjust. - -“Yes,” said Daniel, “there is a way; and it is bourgeoning forth on -every side. It is the Resurrection-dawn, for now the Lord into his -garden has come, and the lilies grow and thrive.” - - - - - AD FINIS. - - -“... the lover ascends to the highest beauty (to the love and knowledge -of the Divinity) by steps on this ladder of created souls. Somewhat like -this the truly-wise have told us of love, in all ages; the doctrine is -not old nor is it new. - -“If Plato, Plutarch and Apuleius taught it, so have Petrarch, Angelo and -Milton. It awaits a truer unfolding in opposition and rebuke to that -subterranean prudence which presides at marriage, with words that take -hold on the upper world, whilst one eye is prowling in the cellar; so -that its greatest discourse has a savor of hams and powdering tubs. - -“Worst, when this sensualism intrudes on the education of young women, -and teaches that marriage means nothing but a housewife’s thrift; and -that woman’s life has no other aim.”—_Emerson._ - - - _FINIS._ - -[Illustration: EASTERTIDE OF 1898.] - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES - - - 1. Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in - spelling. - 2. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed. - 3. 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