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 ofespritwhich 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 compactorswould 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 whatweare 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 presentrealconstitutional Theodicy, anaturalTheodicy 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 thatvox 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 distributingthose 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 haveall the time there is; and this, at the start, equalizes the distributionof thatmedium of exchange. And our bank can never fail us, for when our drafts on it areverylarge, 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 isvalue 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,Whosetime, 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 theusewhich 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 cultivatein humanity a capacity to utilizetime. For the development in each little citizen of the capacity towell-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 wholied, 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 thespiritual essenceof 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 andthe spiritual substance of theuniverseas 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 flungupto Cerberus, by those who dweltdownin 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 thathell-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 airwithout 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 thereisany 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, whatcanbe 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 ifyouare 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)societytoday 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 beingitself. 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 theDios Kouroican, 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-headedmasses 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 inthe 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 ofWILLrefined toWISDOM.
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 thememory 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 Lifeper seshould 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 arousementhemselves 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 thepublic and illustrious thoughtswhich were her realest and most entirely creative self. So that the centripetal attraction toward this self was balanced by the centrifugal force which sent thosewho 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 alovenow again becoming known to mortals in this passion-wearied age.