CHAPTER VII.OPPORTUNITY.
“A new friend is a new fortune.”You have sometimes known happiness, eh? Yes, the happiness of others.—Aresene Houssaye.
“A new friend is a new fortune.”
You have sometimes known happiness, eh? Yes, the happiness of others.
—Aresene Houssaye.
One Sunday morning Mrs. Doring sat at a window, making a sketch of a figure she saw on the opposite side of the street, when Chrissalyn, who had entered by the open door, went near and looked over her shoulder with the familiarity of close friendship.
“Why, how wonderful!” she exclaimed, the most flattering admiration in her voice and face. “That’s Gabriel Norris, the street preacher, a local celebrity. You’ve done him to perfection—even better than he looks himself—that is, I see something in his expression here that I never saw in him, and yet I believe he has it after all. The picture brings it out strong. I can’t tell just what it is, but it makes me want to cry.”
The eyes of the sketcher glowed with an indescribable light—the light which the intangible, potent, holy thing we call appreciation calls from the depths of human souls. To portray nature so that the most heedless and untaught see the soul ofthe subject and are able for the moment to roam about in that awesome country,—with the artist, and feel his heart-throbs—is ever the dream of art. By the effect of her work on the Butterfly, Cartice realized that in this modest drawing she had accomplished this.
“There, he is moving on and the boys he has been talking to are going with him,” said Chrissalyn, leaning out of the window. “He preaches every Sunday morning at the South Market, and is probably on his way there now. He is a queer fellow, though he belongs to a rich and respectable family who are greatly mortified at his peculiar doings. But he hasn’t lived with them for ten years, nor taken a cent from them. He has a little cobbler’s shop away down town in the very ugliest part of the city, and supports himself making and mending shoes, and does excellent work, they say. On Sundays, and other odd times he preaches to people who are too poor to go to church, and does lots of other things for them besides. You see he is cheaply dressed, though as clean as a pin. He could have better clothes, but doesn’t want them—has views about such things—says he does not want to be separated from the people he tries to help by being better dressed than they are. Of course he is an out-and-out crank, but wasn’t always so. A dozen years ago nobody was fonder of the good things of the world. He was the leader of the very swellestsocial doings. All at once he took a turn in the opposite direction—said he had been wasting his life, and was going to put what remained of it to some use. Some say an unlucky love affair set him off; others that he had a dream or vision that changed him. At this very moment I dare say his father and family are rolling to church—the swellest church here—in their fine carriage. But Gabriel preaches against the rich—or at least against the selfish use they make of their money, and prophesies no end of difficulty for them here and hereafter if they keep on as they are going. I have always laughed at him, but I never shall again, because your picture of him gives me a queer thrill and lets me see into him as I never did before. But how did you get the features, the expression,—everything so perfect, seeing him only from the window?”
“I saw him a few days ago, with his head bare, just as I have him here, preaching to a little group on a street corner,” said Cartice. “I stopped a moment to listen, and his face has been often in my mind since. So when I saw him from the window, this morning, talking to the boys, I hurried to make a sketch of him.”
Then looking up, with an eager light in her mottled eyes, she said, “Chrissalyn, let us go and hear him. You say he speaks to the poor. We are of them. Who needs help more? Let us go.”
The Butterfly gave but a grudging consent. She was the natural enemy of all serious instruction. As they went she babbled on about Gabriel Norris:
“As he was bent on preaching, his father wanted him to go to a theological college and be shaped up into a first-class regulation preacher, wear the correct thing in clothes, have a fashionable church, gilt-edged Bible, velvet pulpit cushions, fat salary and everything that goes to make preaching respectable; but Gabriel wouldn’t have it that way. He said there was more than enough of that kind of thing; that what he wanted to say to people had nothing in common with theological factories, and as for pulpit cushions and the like they were abominations in the sight of the Lord; that Jesus had none of them, nor would he have.”
The scene at the market-house was one to take hold upon the heart. The people who sat there on rude benches were all from the bitter land of indigence. Its hard conditions were written in their faces, their poor garments, stooping shoulders, weary and awkward attitudes. Many women were there, for women are ever found where a word of promise and hope is to be spoken, and that fact is eloquent of what they suffer, of the bitterness of their disappointments, of the weight of their sorrows, of the hunger of their hearts and the yearning of their spirits.
Before the preacher had spoken ten minutes Cartice was under the spell of his oratory, which was simple, strong and sympathetic. It wasn’t preaching. It was the life-giving, hope-inspiring talk of a loving friend, and it went to the hearts of his hearers and there awoke nobler aspirations. He said nothing of seeing evil in them. Instead, he told them how good they were—much better and higher than they themselves had dreamed; that possibilities of wonderful and beautiful growth were in every one of them; that they had an eternity in which to grow, and on themselves depended their well-being now and forever.
It was good to see the light of self-respect come into their dull eyes under the potent spell of the young preacher’s earnest words. Some of them had shrunk internally to almost nothing, under the blight of the self-depreciation which close intimacy with grinding poverty begets. Now their souls began to gather confidence and stand erect, conscious of their own value.
“My dear ones,” he said, “don’t make the blunder of thinking that the aim of life is to be happy. Do not spend your time hunting happiness, seeking it where it never was and never will be—in the external things of life, in possessions that pass even while you use them, in pleasures that leave a bitter taste in the mouth and a regret in the heart. I doubt not that our Divine Father intended us to be happy, but not inthe way we imagine. His way is so very clear and simple, and yet we are so blind we see it not, and wander in such hard paths, and lose ourselves often. It is to love each other. Ever so brief a trial of this way proves it the true one. But to love each other does not mean to love only your own families, your friends and those who treat you well. It means to love everybody, even your enemy. When you love your enemy, a miracle happens. He ceases to be your enemy. Love always and to the end.
“When we love as we should we do not question whether we are happy or not. Then another miracle happens. We are happy, for we taste the highest order of happiness, that of forgiving and loving our enemies, of giving out good will and kindness to all, of making others happy. The less we think of our own happiness the happier we shall be.
“Did any man or woman whose life has helped the world go about complaining because he or she was not happy? Serve others, thinking not of yourselves and, without knowing the hour of the great transformation, you will find you are already a dweller within the kingdom of heaven.
“Love, and judge not—that is, don’t find fault. When you learn to love, you will not wish to judge; you will not see the faults; you will see only the good in everybody.”
The Butterfly would have found the experiencedull, but that on the edge of the assemblage she spied a handsome male acquaintance. This enabled her to await the end of the lecture with heroic patience. Her face wore an expression indicative of complete indifference to his presence, for that was part of her method of attracting moths, though in fact she saw nothing and thought of nothing but him. It goes without saying that as soon as Gabriel Norris had dismissed his people, this imposing moth was by her side. She greeted him with demure civility, as though he was the most ordinary apparition that could loom up—for that, too, was in her tactics—then presented him to Cartice asMr.Prescott.
He had a reverent way with women, unstudied and natural, which usually won their good will and sometimes more at the first meeting. He took her hand with old-fashioned friendliness, and as he looked into her face, and her eyes met his, the mask of self-repression she had been wearing slipped aside for a moment, and her sore and suffering spirit stood in mute appeal before him, and he saw and understood.
“ShowMr.Prescott your sketch, Mrs. Doring, please,” said the Butterfly. Without demur Cartice opened her sketch book which she had brought to give the finishing touches to Gabriel’s picture. Prescott started in surprise when he saw it. After a moment or so of silence, he said, “It is admirable.”
Mrs. Doring’s face glowed. A word of praise with the genuine ring in it warmed her heart to the core.
“You draw well, too, Mrs. Layton,” he said, with a significant smile; “but not in the same way.”
The Butterfly disdained to reply. Turning to Cartice, with the most winning deference, he said, “I should like to purchase your sketch, when completed, Mrs. Doring. I want to publish it. Write me a description of the services here this morning, to go with it, will you not? Youcanwrite, I know without asking.” (Mentally—If she would write what her eyes tell it would move the world.)
“Mr.Prescott is the editor of theRegister,” said the Butterfly, by way of explanation.
“I shall be delighted to do so,” Cartice answered, with swelling heart.
“And do some more of the same kind of work afterward. I want things like that—plenty of them,” he said.
As they talked together Gabriel Norris joined them, for he and the newspaper man were old friends. Cartice thanked him earnestly for his helpful words, saying frankly that she needed them as much as any of his hearers. Accustomed to the indifference and contempt of that part of the public which should have understood him, and to the stupidity of that which could not,he had long used himself to live without praise; but he was human, and his heart was lighter and warmer for a word of appreciation.
Cartice walked home on air. The long lane of her misery was turning. A chance to work had come to her, and that meant a means of climbing out of the slough of despond. Idleness is the prelude to decay, an invitation to destruction. Enforced idleness, when the spirit longs for activity, and yet finds itself hedged in, helpless, cut off from opportunity, is the death of hope, the very day of doom for the soul. Now that was all over. The ladder that leads out of despondency and on to the best the world has to give was before her, her feet already on its first round.
She could hardly wait to get home and write the description that was to accompany the drawing. It took shape as she went, one sentence chasing another in her mind, all eager for expression, which is but another word for life.
The Butterfly had a new theme to chatter about—Prescott and his doings, though her companion scarcely heard her, so deep was she in her new dreamland of action.
“Prescott is a genius, they all say, though a capital fellow, nevertheless. Nobody can back him down, for he fears neither man nor devil, and I like that. He is divorced from his wife who was considerable of a fiend, I guess, and nodoubt he is too, on occasions. She married again. It was lucky we went to hear Gabriel. One never knows where one may encounter a streak of good fortune,—even at so unexpected a place as church sometimes.”
Though but few words had been exchanged the famished spirit of Cartice Doring had been refreshed by meeting Prescott and Gabriel Norris. Words are but a cumbrous means of communion anyway. When we better understand the laws of our being we shall need them less. Our thought goes forth and becomes a part of others, by a subtler method than articulate speech; and this is why no man can live unto himself, and why if one be lifted up he lifts up others also.
The turning point in ill fortune had come, sure enough. The very next day Doring announced that he had “dropped into something.” It was not a chance to make a fortune, but it was—well, just what he said—something.
Is it not true that there are persons who bring us good luck from the very moment they cross our paths, and others who dower us with ill-fortune as long as we are associated with them? Mascots and Jonahs are realities, not myths. Meeting Gordon Prescott and Gabriel Norris had turned the tide for Mrs. Doring. One had opened the gate of opportunity, and the other had given her a kind of help not easy to label. It might bedescribed by saying that she felt better for having met him.
Her sketch of him, with an accompanying word picture of the scene at the market-house went promptly to theRegister, and was responded to in person by Prescott, who brought her a crisp five dollar note, said an appreciative word or two in his curt, laconic way, and repeated the order for more.
The joy of expression took hold of her, and to her great amazement her pen could more than keep pace with her pencil. Its creations were distinguished by an originality, a strength and grace that at once attracted attention. To her the pleasure she found in writing was not in the admiration it excited, but in the doing of it,—in the never-ceasing surprise that she could do it so well. Sometimes when she read her own productions after the fire that created them had died out, they seemed new and strange to her, like the work of another. An apparently inexhaustible well within herself had been opened, into which she could reach at will and draw forth sparkling draughts. In this way she became aware of the complexity, temerity and unfathomableness of that wondrous, unseen, indescribable thing we call mind, which has everlastingly within it all that is, was or shall be.
It astonished her to see the facility with which her pen danced humorous jigs, flung off diamondsof wit, and set in motion rippling waves of laughter. It was strange that she who was but emerging from the valley of despair, and whose life so far had had in it but little of the glitter of pleasure, could write as one who knew the light, the joyous, the mirthful, the happy side of existence.
Yet even in her most jaunty and jubilant products, here and there would be a bold, strong stroke of another kind, which made the reader know that he was following no light soul. In all she wrote, whether grave or gay, were the “fresh eyes,” to which we give the name of originality, and another quality, for which we have no name, which moves us, we know not why.
When it began to be rumored that theRegister’snew writer was a woman, the smart people, who knew everything, shook their heads and sniffed incredulously, saying that there was too much force in the work; that the style was not womanish—it was Prescott in disguise. They expected the apron-strings to flutter conspicuously from every page prepared by a feminine hand. For them genius has sex and that sex is always male.
It must not be understood that these early efforts of my heroine were worthy a place among the works of genius. They were only fresh, spirited, striking sketches of life as their author saw it, and they went into the great ocean ofnewspaper literature here, there and all about, that lives but for a day. Some of them, it is true, found a pathetic scrap-book immortality. Others were picked up by mightier periodicals than theRegister, and given a flatteringly wide circulation, and a few met the dreary fate of getting into imposingly bound collections of “Literary Gems,” there to rest in undisturbed security on village parlor tables for many a year to come.
In a few weeks Mrs. Doring had the felicity to be installed as associate editor of theRegister. Her salary was not munificent, as salaries usually are in fiction. Let no one imagine that all aspirants get an opportunity to do newspaper work and ascend the ladder as easily. Her good luck in this particular could be traced to her fitness for the position. Prescott soon discovered that besides having extraordinary ability and originality as a writer, she had what he called the “editorial instinct,” which, being interpreted, meant that she knew instinctively what an attractive newspaper should contain.
In novels it is always easy to get to the top. In that respect the people who live in books have a much better time than they who live outside of them. There young heroes make dazzling flights up the journalistic mountains. A young man comes out of college, writes something for a powerful daily newspaper, whose editor at once begs him to accept a lucrative situation thereon.He allows himself to be persuaded, after some hesitation, and takes advantage of the opportunity for distinction thrust upon him, after which he goes up without delay or hindrance, till he becomes editor-in-chief, owns the paper and is a recognized power in the land. But in real life, alas! the get-there road is a harder one to travel.
Another thing in real life is managed less excellently than in fiction. The women who do newspaper work, too frequently have a little place fenced off to operate in. This is called “Woman’s Corner,” or “Woman’s Work,” or “Woman’s World,” and therein the entire female part of the population is supposed to find satisfactory news aliment. There the whole mass of reading women are expected to pasture in peace and plenty. And why not? There they can find out just how long a sponge cake should be left in the oven, what is the best lotion for the complexion, how to polish their finger nails, the latest thing in embroidery stitches, the newest style in visiting cards, the most approved method of conducting an afternoon tea, and no end of valuable and ennobling information in regard to what “they” are wearing.
Beside all this indispensable instruction the corner is sure to contain many proud allusions to that terrible scourge, the “true woman,” who is always found sitting serenely within her “sphere,” her feet on a hassock, her embroideryin hand, ignorance in her head, selfishness in her heart, vanity and jealousy written all over her feeble face, saying that she “has rights enough,” just as she would say she has bread enough. But evolution, that “slow performance of miracles,” will eventually oust even this stumbling-block in the path of human progress.
Cartice Doring was not a “true woman,” nor was her work on theRegisterto be found in a “corner,” neither had it a fence of any kind about it, seen or unseen, nor was it addressed to women more than to men. As she saw it, newspapers were for all and dealt with matters of interest to all humankind.
Happily Prescott thought the same. He held almost no opinions dear to the average mind, and scarcely ever put pen to paper without tearing up the ground under the feet of those who insisted upon thinking “the same thoughts their fathers did think.” He had founded theRegisterand made it the vehicle of his opinions rather than a mere news journal. These opinions were invariably so new and daring, and so entertainingly expressed that his worst enemies could not deny themselves the pleasure of reading them. Hence it was that theRegisterwas a flying success.
As it was well known that Prescott was as ready and able with his revolver as with his pen, his views on current events were respected, andseldom openly disputed. He was the mortal enemy of fools and fogies, and found his chief joy in outraging that chaos of ignorance and prejudice we call public opinion. In short he was brilliant, bold, witty, kind and cruel—a tremendous engine with sand in the joints.
Mrs. Doring found her new field of activity stimulating and delightful. It had been her belief that happiness could be made of but two ingredients—companionship and congenial employment. Now that she had the latter, the want of the former troubled her less. Besides, she met many people, and the contact of sympathetic minds is to another what moisture is to vegetation—keeping it alive and invigorating it. In a day, as it were, the world had expanded, and she was in touch with its heart, vibrating in sympathy with its deep pulsations.
She learned much of human nature, particularly gifted human nature, for theRegisterhad literary leanings, and many of its friends, men and women, who came to chat a vast half-hour in the informal editorial den, were toiling up the narrow way that leads to eminence and fame.
Some have achieved the fulfilment of their dreams and are now enjoying their little day of renown. Others had but a taste of the delirious cup of renown when they were called into the silence. Some grew weary and ceased to strive,and some are still plodding on in the old road, having neither lost nor gained ground.
As a matter of course, enemies arose. The spiteful, the envious, the jealous, the bitter-hearted, the undeveloped must needs have their little fling at the woman whose pen was a power. But Cartice was too busy to heed them. Scarcely had she time to ask herself if she were happy. “Almost,” she said, when she thought of it, though it was a different kind of happiness from that of her earlier dreams.