CHAPTER XXIII.THE BOOK AND ITS CRITICS.
The tale is as old as the Eden Tree—and new as the new-cut tooth—For each man knows ere his lip-thatch grows he is master of Art and Truth;And each man hears as the twilight nears, to the beat of his dying heart,The Devil drum on the darkened pane: “You did it, but was it Art?”—Rudyard Kipling.
One day Mrs. Doring received a letter from a lawyer announcing Kendall’s death, and advising her that by his will she was sole heir to his property, which was valued at about twenty-five thousand dollars—a fortune in Bohemia. A few lines from the testator were enclosed, the last his hand penned. He had but one request to make in regard to the disposition of it, and that was that she use part of it in bringing out her book.
“See,” she said to Lilla Joy, who had long lived with her in the little flat, “how my trust is rewarded. Influences unseen were working for me while I rested. Had I been a little wiser, I might have saved myself much torment all my life. Worry hinders instead of helps, I believe it is one of the forty deadly sins the Egyptians tried to avoid.”
With money to work with it was not difficult to find a publisher for the book. It was a true tale, told in a simple, straightforward manner, of life and its meaning, as its author understood them. The theme of it was that life goes on after the change we call death, and is inconceivably enlarged and ennobled for all who aspire.
Such of the critics as worship plots and believe that the chief aim of life in stories and out is to marry and be given in marriage, made it the subject of very rough surgery.
“It is a most unwholesome book,” said one. “Love and marriage are scarcely mentioned in it. Some twaddle that pretends to come from across the river of death is the only bait it has with which to angle for the reader’s interest, a theme in which healthy minds will find no attraction.”
Death waits for every one that breathes, yet any light thereon is “unwholesome and not attractive to healthy minds,” according to those who tell us what we ought to read. Strange doctrine, but prevalent!
Another said: “One more of those deplorable books that deal in the supernatural and aim to make readers take a morbid interest in death. Its author has no eyes for the thousand fresh themes of life, but must needs delve into the darksome hereafter for material with which to burden her absurd pages. Why should any one turn from the sweet theme of love to wander inpaths so remote from taste and wholesome imagery as this?”
Some sneered at it, some ignored it and many abused it. Few had so much as a tolerant word for it. Yet verily a mystery guideth the fate of a book as well as the growing of a daisy, for “The Last Enemy” sold astonishingly fast, and was read and talked about far and wide. In a few months it was the best known book of the year, in spite of the critics, and brought fame and money to its author, though too late, her friends said.
Is anything too late? Come not all things at their appointed time, neither sooner nor later than they are due? In the divine drama of the universe the curtain never falls until the play is finished. In our short-sightedness we say our friend died too soon, or his good fortune came too late; but we are in error. Everything is part of the eternal plan, and to be out of time or place an impossibility.
Never to Cartice Doring had life appeared so well worth living, nor work so well worth doing. To Lilla Joy she said:
“I am just beginning to live. I am learning what life means, what we can make of it, and what I am. We are love.
“We love because we cannot help it. It is our expression, and the greater, wider and more all-inclusive our love, the fuller, larger, more perfectand more abundant is our life. How beautiful it all is! How orderly and harmonious! How glorious!
“Most of my life I have written down to the majority of readers. Now I shall bring them up to me. I shall follow my ideals, as I did in ‘The Last Enemy.’ Our ideals! What are they but our souls, trying to reveal themselves to other souls. Here in this noble poem by Katherine Lee Bates, the ideal speaks:
“At the innermost core of thy being, I am a burning fireFrom thine own altar-flame kindled, in the hour when souls aspire:For know that men’s prayers shall be answered, and guard thy spirit’s desire.“That which thou wouldst be, thou must be; that which thou shalt be thou art;As the oak, astir in the acorn, the dull earth rendeth apart,Lo, thou, the seed of thy longing, that breaketh, and waketh, the heart.
“Call me thy foe in thy passion; claim me in peace for thy friend:Yet bethink thee by lowland or upland, wherever thou willest to wend,I am thine Angel of Judgment, mine eyes thou must meet in the end.”
“I know that well, Lilla. Woe be to those who have outraged their ideal on that day, when their souls shall meet it face to face. I have sinned against mine, and have met its accusing eyes already. But now I have begun my atonement, and am eager to go on with it. There isjoy in creating what we wish to create—that means giving form to our ideals.”
But Lilla was silent, wondering what ideals her friend would follow in that country into which flesh and blood can never enter. In her eyes Lilla saw the strange light that flames up only when the end of the journey is near; and on her face, and in all that she said and did was a hint of imminent change, plain to others, unseen by herself.
In the Sanscrit is a story of one who asked what is the most wonderful thing in the world. The answer is that every man should believe that all shall die but himself. The reason of this is that he shall not die, and his soul knows it.
Remember this, you who see your beloved going down into what we call Death’s Valley, serene, hopeful, unconscious of their doom. They are wiser than you. They know they shall not die.