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 knowwhohe 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 foruse, 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 thethoughts 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 ofallwomen 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 itthat 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, areligieusein 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 extendhis 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 theirownconsciences 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,” “invisiblepowers,” 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, butnullity.
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 braincellcan 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,exultin 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 onall 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 wouldannuland 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 theChristian 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, theDoctorofDivinityhad made answer: “It is not revealed to us that theHoly Spirithas 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 HOLYSpirithas relations to nations, yet that their common sense would recognize thatthe 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 thatthatgovernment (?) 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 armymade 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 toanimal-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 theHoly Spirithas 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.