CHAPTER XVII.UPROOTING A HUMAN TREE.
A man said unto his angel:“My spirits are fallen through,And I cannot carry this battle:O Brother, what shall I do?”
Then said to the man his angel:“Thou wavering, foolish soul,Back to the ranks! What matterTo win or lose the whole.”—Louise Imogen Guiney.
The Joys, otherwise the Hanleys, fell into financial trouble. Burton Hanley was forced to make an assignment for the benefit of his creditors. He had enough to pay every dollar he owed, and he turned it all over with an out-of-date honesty that scandalized the community.
The envious found a certain sweetness in this news. Nodding their heads knowingly, they said they guessed the Joys were about done with Joy. But this did not seem to be the case. On the evening following the assignment they were at an entertainment in the house of a friend and were the blithest guests, as they generally were.
The knowing ones said this light-heartedness was put on—a mere bluff to make others think they did not value money. As a matter of factit was not. They had simply forgotten all about their financial troubles in the engrossing pleasures of the hour. This enviable faculty for enjoying the present moment, unclouded by past or future shadows was largely responsible for their joyous lives. For them there was only the now. They never reasoned or philosophized about it, but just lived that way by nature.
“Wait till they have a hand-to-hand fight with Poverty,” said the knowing ones, who are often the cruel ones. “Wait till he writes his name on their clothes, their faces and their thoughts. Wait till he walks with them, sits with them, eats with them and never leaves them for an instant! Wait!” They said this in a way that made their hearers understand the waiting would not require patience.
Kinder ones sighed and said the Joys, poor souls, laughed at poverty, because they didn’t know its horrors. But they were destined to better acquaintance with the dreaded spectre. Meantime they went their way rejoicing that affairs were no worse.
Lilla was so full of what she had learned through Chrissalyn of the deathlessness of herself and fellow beings, that she bubbled over like a kettle filled to the brim and boiling. What was loss of money and a contest with poverty to one who knew that Death was dead? This knowledge was of a character too fermentative toremain bottled up within her. She went around talking of it, unmindful of the injunction not to cast pearls before swine. An enthusiast by nature, and endowed with power to carry conviction to an extraordinary degree, it is strange she did not succeed in the propaganda; but she did not. On the contrary the swine turned upon her and she was rended, like other prophets who have been guilty of similar indiscretion.
To each other some of the swine said: “Poor Lilla Joy. Burton’s failure has upset her after all. Talks about nothing but souls. Thinks she has had proof of dead folks being alive. It’s too bad.”
But Lilla refused to be cast down. After a time she gave up the hopeless work of letting her light shine too far, it is true, but she kept her strangely happy face and joyous ways—kept them through many a dark day, on many a stony road—kept them to the end. She met all things, troublous or pleasant, as Socrates said he wished to meet the gods—with a bright face.
This never-changing brightness made an impression on everybody who beheld it. One might feebly describe it by saying that her soul seemed too large and too happy for its mortal measure, and was always running over.
Perhaps the office boy of theRegisterhit it most felicitously, when he thus described her to Cartice, who had been out, when she called oneday: “It was that lady who comes often and always looks as if she had just heard good news.” Mrs. Doring recognized the word photograph of Lilla Joy at once.
There are times in the lives of all when new departures are imminent, when a change is impending and obligatory, yet is slow to define itself. There is the feeling that other paths must be entered, but to the outer eye they are unblazed.
Such a time had come to Cartice Doring. She had long felt its approach, but knew not the end to which it pointed. Something more than impulse stirred within her. The Spirit of Destiny itself spoke the inexorable command to move on.
Whither? “Move on.” This was the only answer, for Destiny has a way of making us choose our roads, though for the most part the various whips within and without which play upon us seem to make the matter of choice largely a thing of name only. We do what we can rather than what we wish. This should give us a grain of comfort on dark days by relieving us of regrets, and settling us in the conviction that we are no more and no less than that which we must be. Even though our own nature be the compelling and directing force, we are none the less servants to its dicta. Call that which rules us by whatever name we choose, how supreme is the sway!
Looking over the situation Mrs. Doring summed up the reasons for making a change. First, she was not doing her best; she was letting down a little all the time, and that clearly was degeneration. Pleasure in her work had gone and perfunctory performance taken its place. She was weary of the miserable business of writing to please the many-headed multitude, which the lateDr.Charles Mackay was fond of describing as “fool of a public; pig of a public,” while her honest convictions had to be kept locked up in her soul and labeled, “Dangerous,” like a can of dynamite.
In Prescott’s day she was free to say what she thought ought to be said. Now, she was frequently brought to book for utterances far too bold, in the opinion of the proprietors of the paper, who insisted on a close connection between the counting room and editorial desk. As a result of constantly trimming to suit the fitful breezes of public taste, theRegisterwas losing ground. Strange law that governs the minds of men! Kowtow to them and they despise and neglect you. Defy them and they respect and court you.
No; she must not stay with theRegister. Internal wranglings were shaking it. An eruption might take place any day, changing the whole face of its affairs.
For her salvation, intellectual and physical, shemust go. Yet habit, friendship and a horrible dread of facing new difficulties put up a plea for her to stay. No; she must go, no matter what she had to meet, loneliness, humiliation, disappointment, defeat, want, death itself. MUST. Something told her that in a way that brooked no contradiction.
But she was so tired—more tired than any one dreamed, in spite of her almost jaunty cheerfulness.
And what had she as financial armor for the new battle about to begin? Grimly she smiled as she cast her mind’s eye in that direction. A few dollars only. “Verily industry and talent combined are richly rewarded,” she said. Yet she had made reputation; she was considered successful. However, many a slave to the pen knows that reputation and money do not always go hand in hand. Besides this imposing capital she had her experience and the knowledge of her own powers which it had brought. Valuable capital, to be sure. Yet experience brings us another gift which helps to weaken us by counteracting our faith in ourselves, and that is a knowledge of the difficulties, a bold outlining of the greatness of the task.
What else had she wherewith to gird herself for that trip into the unexplored, so sure to involve risks of many kinds?
In the teeth of a wish to find a quiet place andthere lie down, closing her eyes to the world forever,—in the face of a weariness untellable, she knew that within the hidden depths of herself, under all the scars, disappointments and fatigues was courage.
What other prop had she? A strong, an invincible one—the knowledge that eternal being and her being were one and the same, and that she was never alone or dependent on herself, however much this seemed to be the case; that living, loving souls, angels, if you choose, had charge concerning her and that the everlasting arms of universal love were ever about her.
She would go to New York, a field of many gleaners, truly, but big, and therefore of promise. The needle of her destiny pointed in that direction. There was its magnet. With the decision came peace.
Yet day after day she lingered, telling no one of her decision, and feeling that she belonged neither to the place she was in nor to that for which she was bound—a curious, detached sort of existence such as had ever been hers, when she must tear herself from an accustomed place and seek an unaccustomed one. The work of uprooting herself involved pains and groans like those of a great tree, when torn up by a storm.
In love of locality Cartice was a tree, and frequently said so. Her pleasure would have been to live always in one place, taking deeper rootevery day, and loving the soil that sustained her. Doubtless because this was her nature, fate decreed that she should have no chance to take deep root anywhere, for her own good.
Those days of inward groaning and tree-like clinging to a spot of which she had long been weary, reminded her of other days, now years in the past, when she had uprooted herself from the only peaceful bit of life she had known, to go forth and marry Louis Doring and become sister to misery.
Then she had swayed and clung and groaned day after day, only to yield at last to the force that ruled her destiny, and she knew she must do the same now.
A time came, however, when the human tree lay prone, its uprooting an accomplished fact. Its roots, bared to the sun and wind, trembled a little, but the groaning was over.
Now there was nothing to do but tell Chrissalyn and go.
The Butterfly paled as she heard the decision.
“I have known this for a long time,” she said, “long before you knew it yourself, but I would not speak of it, lest you might be guided by what I said. I learned it by the inside way that things are told me so often. It’s hard for me to have you go; but I understand, and believe it’s for the best. Does any one else know?”
“Not yet. I don’t tell others, even goodfriends, because they will ask questions about my plans and dig my very heart out of my body to find out all about what I am going to do. In the first place I don’t know. In the second I should not care to tell if I did. Telling spoils everything for me. Why do people make inquisitions of themselves and torture others merely to gratify an idle curiosity?”
“Cartice”—Chrissalyn spoke a little cautiously—“in the face of what you have been saying, and knowing that your temper is not seraphic, I will say I wish I knew for sure that you would have something to hold on to, when you get to New York.”
“Chriss, dear, Imustfind something, that’s all there is to it.Must.That word is a magnet drawing whatever it demands. Whenever weMUSThave something, we get it.”
Contact with the industrial problem had let a few practical ideas into the Butterfly’s once airy head. Therefore she was concerned about the financial future of her friend. Still, she did not comprehend the situation in its tragic entirety. A prop of some kind had ever been near for her to lean on in dire extremity. Fate provides props for those who are not strong enough to stand alone; but the great souls are placed where there is nothing to lean against, that they may both keep and show their strength. They suffer; their hearts often bleed; but they stand.
Then, too, Chrissalyn looked upon her friend as a person of such incomparable ability, that she could overcome any obstacle, however formidable. “How I shall miss you, Cartice,” she said, huskily. “How lonely and bereft I shall be.”
“You have your admirers, your moths.”
“My moths? Yes, my miserable moths,” said Chrissalyn, contemptuously. “They are about as much comfort to me, as so many of the genuine insects. I am a proof of evolution. I have evolved too far to find them interesting. But where are the men? Do they not exist outside of novels any more? For a long time I cherished dreams of meeting one whom I could love without being ashamed of myself, but I am giving them up. Sometimes, where I hear of friends marrying, it all sounds so fine that I am quite envious until I see their husbands, and then I am better contented.”
For Cartice the pain of parting from her friend was intensified by the knowledge that it meant loss of opportunity to talk with her beloved unseen people. The Butterfly was a telephone to the other world whose like might never be met again.
They spent the last evening together. Their invisible friends understood what was determined upon, without any telling. Prescott was asked if he had any suggestions to make in regard to Cartice’s plans.
“It is not for us to direct you,” he said. “You must steer your own bark. That is the business of life. The field is wide, and you have your place therein and will find it. Don’t be discouraged. We shall be often with you, and shall keep an eye on you.”
The evening was one long to be remembered by the two who were so soon to be separated, tinged as it was with the melancholy that colors all last occasions.
The final glimpse Cartice had of the place that had been to her a city of sorrow as well as of light, showed her the Butterfly waving a loving and tearful adieu. Dear Butterfly! Was there ever so charming a combination of vanity, love of pleasure, earthly prettiness and goddess-like ability to do wondrous things?
Cartice settled herself for her journey, feeling somewhat as a soul might who had just issued from one very difficult and wretched incarnation and knew that in a few hours it must begin another, which in all probability would prove more difficult and more wretched.
It takes courage to face the mouths of cannon; yet that, though horrible, lasts not long. But the woman who, alone and unknown, goes into the mixed and frightful mass of humankind represented by a great city, to seek a chance to earn honest bread, displays a courage besides which that of the bravest soldier must lose a little of itsluster. And any one who makes her hard road harder, builds for himself a wall which will not be easy to scale; he is but lengthening the period of his own spiritual evolution.
The train rolled on, its wheels beating a steady rhythm like the feet of flying horses, their vibrations striking the sick heart of the weary woman inside, and making it quake with terror.
She had kept a smiling face before the Butterfly clear to the last; but now that she was alone—at least unknown to her fellow travelers, hence secure from intrusion, her courage evaporated, and she curled up on her sofa, a mere lump of suffering.
As the telegraph posts flew by she pictured herself taken out, tied to one and shot dead by balls from many rifles, and earnestly wished she could exchange her present situation for such brief pain.
Is this world hell? The query had come to her before, and now it challenged her boldly. Whose happiness or safety was secure for the morrow?
Of what was ahead of her she scarcely dared to think. Glimpses of its grim possibilities flashed across her mind, making her mobile face set and stern. A frightened light came into her eyes and a strange expression fluttered around her mouth. In imagination she was seeing the two rivers that flow on either side of New York,and was thinking of what they had done and were yet to do for those who found the burden of life greater than they could bear.
In that moment she felt a cool, soft breeze about her, and with it came the thought that she could never seek solace there—she who knew that life reached out an unbroken line, beyond the sight and even the dreams of men. Not for her ran rivers, whose flowing waters lapped and swirled and wooed world-weary hearts. Did she believe that silence, nothingness, insensate dust alone were at the end of our journey here, there; blessed be the rivers! But she knew—knew beyond doubt that no river can extinguish the spark of divinity we call consciousness.
After all, why should she fear? No one stands absolutely alone. There is no separateness, no differentiation. Back of each, eternal Being mirrors itself forever; and that which we see is as nothing compared to that which we see not. The cloud of witnesses more than witnesses. Influences invisible, but powerful, are ever working for us. Threads hidden from bodily eyes connect us with all life beheld and unbeheld.
Her own people were in touch with her, loved and inspired her, no matter in what part of the universe they dwelt, and nothing could divide her from them.
Remembering this, the shadow of fear passed,and she prepared to meet her destiny with courage.
New knowledge had brought new responsibility. Life was not to be haggled through as a hateful bargain; it must be lived in the highest sense; its lessons faithfully learned and character constructed by the master architect, experience. One must do one’s best, in the teeth of the storm, in the front of the battle. We must always be able to look our souls in the face without shame.
Suppose her efforts and even her life ended in failure at last! What matter? To succeed in the world’s opinion is often to fail in the exacting eye of conscience. Perhaps the only permanent success is failure. The joy, the glory and the reward are in the doing, not in the result. The fateful question for all of us will be, not, “Hast thou won?” but “Hast thou striven?”
The things we call pain and pleasure she knew to be illusions, mere thought pictures painted on the canvas of our consciousness, by ignorance—ignorance of our true being and the true purpose of existence.
So she said, “No matter what comes, since I know that out of all the pain and humiliation the world can put upon me, out of the shadow of death, I shall rise and pass on to my eternal unfolding.
“For me there is no want. Have I not breadto eat that thousands of others as yet have not, because they will not receive it?
“For me and for the whole human race there is but one thing needful, and that is the knowledge that eternal being is within, around, about us and we are it.”
Spiritualism? The ignorant will say with a sneer. Yes, in the highest, broadest and deepest sense. It sustained this lonely woman on her journey to a great city to work out her life’s problem, and after she was there it gave her patience and confidence. It made it impossible for her to seek the river, and enabled her to wear a cheerful face and carry a hopeful heart, while her little store of money dribbled down to a few lonesome dollars.
Without this rock of faith those long, lonely days of seeking and waiting would have been unbearable. Sometimes she sat in the public squares looking compassionately upon the pitiful people about her. The homeless, the hopeless, the hungry, the despairing, the weary, the ailing, the suffering, the broken-hearted were there, some in rags and some in fine garments. Within each one ached and ate the canker of a wretchedness they tried to hide from happier souls who passed them by.
Cartice read their misery by the light of past suffering, and yearned to say to them: “Awake! You are in a dark dream. The conditions thattrouble you are unreal—mere illusions, and touch not your true life at all. You are gods every one, but unaware of your divinity. One day the dream shall pass and you shall know this.”
But the etiquette of civilization forbade it. We see our fellow beings suffer and perish from some wound in the soul, yet approach them not. All she could do was to send out to them, through the silent waves of thought, messages of hope and good cheer.
In those days of striving and waiting and studying the swarming life about her Mrs. Doring turned over the economic problem in her mind many times. Curious industrial system, that condemns idleness and yet makes the search for employment bitter and hard!
The two arts which held her chance were hedged about in such a way that the most she could do was to shoot an arrow from afar and trust that it might stick. Nor was she unaware that many other arrows were flying from other archers, each one diminishing the chances of the rest.