Dress-Reform, the Blue-glass Cure, Scientific Physiognomy, Phrenology,
Cheiromancy, Astrology, Vegetarianism, Edenic Diet, Single Tax,
Evolution, Mental Healing, Christian Science, Spiritualism, Theosophy,
and Hypnotism. All these metamorphoses of thought had Mrs. S. Cora Grubb
passed through, and was not yet a finished butterfly. Some of the ideas
she had left far behind, but she still believed in them as fragments of
truth suitable for feeble growing souls that could not bear the full
light of revelation in one burst. She held honorary memberships in most
of the outgrown societies, attended annual meetings of others, and kept
in touch with all the rest by being present at their social reunions.
One of her present enthusiasms was her ‘Kipling Brothers,’ the boys’ band
enlisted under the motto, ‘I saw a hundred men on the road to Delhi, and
they were all my brothers.’ She believed that there was no salvation for
a boy outside of a band. Banded somehow he must be, then badged,
beribboned, bannered, and bye-lawed. From the moment a boy’s mother had
left off her bye-lows, Mrs. Grubb wanted him put under bye-laws. She
often visited Mistress Mary with the idea that some time she could
interest her in one of her thousand schemes; but this special call was to
see if the older children, whose neat handiwork she had seen and admired,
could embroider mottoes on cardboard to adorn the Kipling room at an
approaching festival. She particularly wanted ‘Look not upon the Wine’
done in blood-red upon black, and ‘Shun the Filthy Weed’ in smoke-colour
on bright green. She had in her hand a card with the points for her
annual address noted upon it, for this sort of work she ordinarily did in
the horse-cars. These ran:
1st. Value of individuality. ‘_I_ saw.’
2nd. Value of observation. ‘I _saw_.’
3rd. Value of numbers. ‘I saw a _hundred_ men.’
4th. Importance of belonging to the male sex. It was _men_ who were
seen on the road.
5th. What and where is Delhi?
6th. Description of the road thither.
7th. Every boy has his Delhi.
8th. Are you ‘on the road’?
9th. The brotherhood of man.
10th. The Kipling Brothers’ Call to Arms.
She intended to run through the heads of this impassioned oration to
Mistress Mary, whom she rather liked; and, in truth, Mary had difficulty
in disliking her, though she thoroughly disapproved of her. She was so
amiable, and apparently so susceptible to teaching, that Mary always
fancied her on the verge of something better. Her vagaries, her
neglects, and what to Mary’s mind were positive inhumanities, seemed in a
way unconscious. ‘If I can only get into sufficiently friendly
relations,’ thought Mary, ‘so that I can convince her that her first and
highest duty lies in the direction of the three children, I believe she
will have the heroism to do it!’ But in this Mistress Mary’s instinct
was at fault. Mrs. Grubb took indeed no real cognisance of her immediate
surroundings, but she would not have wished to see near duties any more
clearly. Neither had she any sane and healthy interest in good works of
any kind; she simply had a sort of philanthropic hysteria, and her most
successful speeches were so many spasms.
VII
THE COMET AND THE FIXED STAR
‘I DON’T feel that I can part with Lisa now, just as she’s beginning to
be a help to me,’ argued Mrs. Grubb, shortly after she had been welcomed
and ensconced in a rocking-chair. ‘As Madame Goldmarker says, nobody
else in the world would have given her a home these four years, and a
good many wouldn’t have had her round the house.’
‘That is true,’ replied Mary, ‘and your husband must have been a very
good man from all you tell me, Mrs. Grubb.’
‘Good enough, but totally uninteresting,’ said that lady laconically.
‘Well, putting aside the question as to whether goodness ought to be
totally uninteresting, you say that Lisa’s mother left Mr. Grubb three
hundred dollars for her food and clothing, and that she has been ever
since a willing servant, absolutely devoted to your interests.’
‘We never put a cent of the three hundred dollars into our own pockets,’
explained Mrs. Grubb. ‘Mr. Grubb was dreadfully opposed to my doing it,
but every penny of it went to freeing our religious society from debt.
It was a case of the greatest good of the greatest number, and I didn’t
flinch. I thought it was a good deal more important that the Army of
Present Perfection should have a roof over its head than that Lisa
Bennett should be fed and clothed; that is, if both could not be done.’
‘I don’t know the creed of the Army, but it seems to me your Presently
Perfect soldiers would have been rather uncomfortable under their roof if
Lisa Bennett had been naked and starving outside.’
‘Oh, it would never have come to that,’ responded Mrs. Grubb easily.
‘There is plenty of money in the world, and it belongs equally to the
whole human race. I don’t recognise anybody’s right to have a dollar
more than I have; but Mr. Grubb could never accept any belief that had
been held less than a thousand years, and before he died he gave some
money to a friend of his, and told him to pay me ten dollars every month
towards Lisa’s board. Untold gold could never pay for what my pride has
suffered in having her, and if she hadn’t been so useful I couldn’t have
done it,—I don’t pretend that I could. She’s an offence to the eye.’
‘Not any longer,’ said Mary proudly.
‘Well, she was up to a few months ago; but she would always do anything
for the twins, and though they are continually getting into mischief she
never lets any harm come to them, not so much as a scratch. If I had
taken a brighter child, she would have been for ever playing on her own
account and thinking of her own pleasure; but if you once get an idea
into Lisa’s head of what you expect her to do, she will go on doing it to
the end of the world, and wild horses couldn’t keep her from it.’
‘It’s a pity more of us hadn’t that virtue of obedience to a higher law.’
‘Well, perhaps it is, and perhaps it isn’t; it’s a sign of a very weak
mind.’
‘Or a very strong one,’ retorted Mary.
‘There are natural leaders and natural followers,’ remarked Mrs. Grubb
smilingly, as she swayed to and fro in Mary’s rocking-chair. Her smile,
like a ballet-dancer’s, had no connection with, nor relation to, the
matter of her speech or her state of feeling; it was what a watchmaker
would call a detached movement. ‘I can’t see,’ said she, ‘that it is my
duty to send Lisa away to be taught, just when I need her most. My
development is a good deal more important than hers.’
‘Why?’
‘Why? Because I have a vocation and a mission; because, if I should
falter or faint by the wayside, hundreds of women who depend on me for
inspiration would fall back into error and suffer permanent loss and
injury.’
‘Do you suppose they really would?’ asked Mary rather maliciously,
anxious if possible to ruffle the surface of Mrs. Grubb’s exasperating
placidity. ‘Or would they, of course after a long period of
grief-stricken apathy, attach themselves to somebody else’s classes?’
‘They might,’ allowed Mrs. Grubb, in a tone of hurt self-respect; ‘though
you must know, little as you’ve seen of the world, that no woman has just
the same revelation as any other, and that there are some who are born to
interpret truth to the multitude. I can say in all humility that it has
been so with me from a child. I’ve always had a burning desire to
explore the secret chambers of Thought, always yearned to understand and
explain the universe.’
‘I have never tried to explain it,’ sighed Mary a little wearily; ‘one is
so busy trying to keep one’s little corner clean and sweet and pleasant,
a helpful place where sad and tired souls can sit down and rest.’
‘Who wants to sit down and rest? Not I!’ exclaimed Mrs. Grubb. ‘But
then, I’m no criterion, I have such an active mind.’
‘There are just a few passive virtues,’ said Mary teasingly. ‘We must
remember that activity doesn’t always make for good; sometimes it is
unrest, disintegration; not growth, Mrs. Grubb, but fermentation.’
Mrs. Grubb took out a small blank-book and made a note, for she had an
ear for any sentence that might be used in a speech.
‘That is true. “_Distrust the activity which is not growth_, _but
fermentation_” that will just hit some ladies in my classes, and it comes
right in with something I am going to say this evening. We have a Diet
Congress here this week, and there’s a good deal of feeling and dispute
between the various branches. I have two delegates stopping with me, and
they haven’t spoken to each other since yesterday morning, nor sat down
to eat at the same table. I shall do all I can, as the presiding
officer, to keep things pleasant at the meetings, but it will be
difficult. You’ve never been in public life and can’t understand it, but
you see there are women among the delegates who’ve suffered the tyranny
of man so long that they will cook anything their husbands demand; women
who believe in eating any kind of food, and hold that the principal
trouble lies in bad cooking; women who will give up meat, but still
indulge in all sorts of cakes, pastries, and kickshaws; and women who are
strong on temperance in drink, but who see no need of temperance in food.
The whole question of diet reform is in an awful state, and a Congress is
the only way to settle it.’
‘How do men stand on the diet question?’ asked Mary, with a twinkle in
her eye.
‘They don’t stand at all,’ answered Mrs. Grubb promptly. ‘They sit right
still, and some of them lie down flat, you might say, whenever it’s
mentioned. They’ll do even more for temperance than they will for
reformed diet, though goodness knows they’re fond enough of drinking.
The Edenites number about sixty-seven in this city, and nine is the
largest number of gentlemen that we’ve been able to interest. Those nine
are the husbands and sons of the lady members, and at the next meeting
two of them are going to be expelled for backsliding. I declare, if I
was a man, I’d be ashamed to confess that I was all stomach; but that’s
what most of them are. Not that it’s easy work to be an Edenite: it’s
impossible to any but a highly spiritual nature. I have been on the diet
for six months, and nothing but my position as vice-president of the
society, and my desire to crush the body and release the spirit, could
have kept me faithful. I don’t pretend to like it, but that doesn’t make
me disloyal. There’s nothing I enjoy better than a good cut of underdone
beef, with plenty of dish gravy; I love nice tender porter-house steaks
with mushrooms; I love thick mutton-chops broiled over a hot fire: but I
can’t believe in them, and my conscience won’t allow me to eat them. Do
you believe in meat?’
‘Certainly.’
‘I don’t see why you say “certainly.” You would be a good deal better
off without it. You are filling yourself full of carnal, brutal,
murderous passions every time you eat it. The people who eat meat are
not half so elevated nor half so teachable as the Edenites.’
‘The Edenites are possibly too weak and hungry to resist instruction,’
said Mary.
‘They are neither weak nor hungry,’ replied their vice-president, with
dignity. ‘They eat milk, and stewed fruit, and all the edible grains
nicely boiled. It stands to reason that if you can subdue your earthly,
devilish, sensual instincts on anything, you can do it on a diet like
that. You can’t fancy an angel or a Mahatma devouring underdone beef.’
‘No,’ agreed Mistress Mary; ‘but for that matter, the spectacle of an
angel eating dried-apple sauce doesn’t appeal to my imagination.’
‘It’s no joking matter,’ said Mrs. Grubb, with real tears in her eyes.
‘It was my interest in Theosophy that brought me to the Edenic diet. I
have good and sufficient motives for denying my appetite, for I’ve got a
certain goal to reach, and I’m in earnest.’
‘Then here’s my hand, and I respect you for it. Oh, how I should like a
hot mutton-chop at this moment!—Do forgive me.’
‘I forgive you, because I can see you act up to all the light that has
been revealed to you. I don’t know as I ought to be proud because I see
so much truth. My classes tell me I get these marvellous revelations
because I’m so open-minded. Now Mr. Grubb wouldn’t and couldn’t bear
discussion of any sort. His soul never grew, for he wouldn’t open a
clink where a new idea might creep in. He’d always accompany me to all
my meetings (such advantages as that man had and missed!), and sometimes
he’d take the admission tickets; but when the speaking began, he’d shut
the door and stay out in the entry by himself till it was time to wait
upon me home. Do you believe in vaccination?’
‘Certainly.’
‘Well, it passes my comprehension how you can be so sure of your beliefs.
You’d better come and hear some of the arguments on the opposite side. I
am the secretary of the Anti-Vaccination League.’ (Mrs. Grubb was
especially happy in her anti-societies; negatives seemed to give her more
scope for argument.) ‘I say to my classes, “You must not blame those to
whom higher truths do not appeal, for refusing to believe in that which
they cannot understand; but you may reprove them for decrying or
ridiculing those laws or facts of nature which they have never
investigated with an unprejudiced mind.” Well, I must be going. I’ve
sat longer than I meant to, this room is so peaceful and comfortable.’
‘But what about Lisa’s future? We haven’t settled that, although we’ve
had a most interesting and illuminating conversation.’
‘Why, I’ve told you how I feel about her, and you must respect my
feeling. The world can only grow when each person allows his fellow-man
complete liberty of thought and action. I’ve kept the child four years,
and now when my good care and feeding, together with the regular work and
early hours I’ve always prescribed, have begun to show their fruits in
her improved condition, you want she should be put in some institution.
Why, isn’t she doing well enough as she is? I’m sure you’ve had a
wonderful influence over her.’
‘Nothing could induce me to lose sight of her entirely,’ said Mistress
Mary, ‘but we feel now that she is ready to take the next step. She
needs a skilled physician who is master both of body and mind, as well as
a teacher who is capable of following out his principles. I will see to
all that, if you will only give me the privilege.’
Mrs. Grubb sank down in the rocking-chair in despair. ‘Don’t I need some
consideration as well as that little imbecile? Am I, with my ambitions
and aspirations, to be for ever hampered by these three nightmares of
children? Oh, if I could once get an astral body, I would stay in it,
you may be sure!’
‘You do not absolutely need Lisa yourself,’ argued Mary. ‘It is the
twins to whom she has been indispensable. Provide for them in some way,
and she is freed from a responsibility for which she is not, and never
was, fit. It is a miracle that some tragedy has not come out of this
daily companionship of three such passionate, irresponsible creatures.’
‘Some tragedy will come out of it yet,’ said Mrs. Grubb gloomily, ‘if I
am not freed from the shackles that keep me in daily slavery. The twins
are as likely to go to the gallows as anywhere; and as for Lisa, she
would be a good deal better off dead than alive, as Mrs. Sylvester says.’
‘That isn’t for us to decide,’ said Mistress Mary soberly. ‘I might have
been careless and impertinent enough to say it a year ago, but not now.
Lisa has all along been the victim of cruel circumstances. Wherever she
has been sinned against through ignorance, it is possible, barely
possible, that the fault may be atoned for; but any neglect of duty now
would be a criminal offence. It does not behove us to be too scornful
when we remember that the taint (fortunately a slight one) transmitted to
poor little Lisa existed in greater or less degree in Handel and Molière,
Julius Cæsar, Napoleon, Petrarch, and Mohammed. The world is a good deal
richer for them, certainly.’
Mrs. Grubb elevated her head, the light of interest dawned in her eye,
and she whipped her notebook out of her pocket.
‘Is that a fact?’ she asked excitedly.
‘It is a fact.’
‘Is it generally known?’
‘It must be known by all who have any interest in the education of
defective persons, since it touches one of the bug-bears which they have
to fight.’
‘Is there any society in this city devoted to the study of such
problems?’
‘There is a society which is just on the point of opening an institution
for the training of defective children.’
Mrs. Grubb’s face fell, and her hand relaxed its grasp upon the pencil.
(If there was anything she enjoyed, it was the sensation of being a
pioneer in any movement.) Presently she brightened again.
‘If it is just starting,’ she said, ‘then it must need more members, and
speakers to stir up the community. Now, I am calculated, by constant
association with a child of this character, to be of signal service to
the cause. Not many persons have had my chance to observe phenomena.
Just give me a letter to the president,—have they elected officers
yet?—where do they meet?—and tell him I’ll call on him and throw all the
weight of my influence on his side. It’s wonderful! Handel, Molière,
Buddha, was it—Buddha?—Cæsar, Petrarch, and Wellington,—no, not
Wellington. Never mind, I’ll get a list from you to-morrow and look it
all up,—it’s perfectly marvellous! And I have one of this great,
unhappy, suffering class in my own family, one who may yet be transformed
into an Elizabeth Browning or a Joan of Arc!’
Mistress Mary sighed in her heart. She learned more of Mrs. Grubb with
every interview, and she knew that her enthusiasms were as discouraging
as her apathies.
‘How unlucky that I mentioned Napoleon, Cæsar, and Mohammed!’ she
thought. ‘I shall be haunted now by the fear that she will go on a
lecturing-tour through the country, and exhibit poor Lisa as an
interesting example. Mrs. Grubb’s mind is like nothing so much as a
crazy-quilt.’
VIII
THE YOUNG MINISTER’S PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS
MRS. GRUBB’S interest in the education of the defective classes was as
short-lived as it was ardent. One interview with the president of the
society convinced her that he was not a person to be ‘helped’ according
to her understanding of the term. She thought him a self-sufficient
gentleman, inflexible in demeanour, and inhospitable to anybody’s ideas
or anybody’s hobbies but his own. She resented his praise of Mistress
Mary and Rhoda, and regarded it fulsome flattery when he alluded to their
experiment with Marm Lisa as one of the most interesting and valuable in
his whole experience; saying that he hardly knew which to admire and
venerate the more—the genius of the teachers, or the devotion, courage,
and docility of the pupil.
In the summer months Lisa had gone to the country with Mistress Mary and
Edith, who were determined never to lose sight of her until the end they
sought was actually attained. There, in the verdant freshness of that
new world, Lisa experienced a strange exaltation of the senses. Every
wooded path unfolded treasures of leafy bud, blossom, and brier, and of
beautiful winged things that crept and rustled among the grasses. There
was the ever new surprise of the first wild-flowers, the abounding
mystery of the bird’s note and the brook’s song, the daily greeting of
bees and butterflies, frogs and fishes, field-mice and squirrels; so that
the universe, which in the dead past had been dreary and without meaning,
suddenly became warm and friendly, and she, the alien, felt a sense of
kinship with all created things.
Helen had crossed the continent to imbibe the wisdom of the East, and had
brought back stores of knowledge to spend in Lisa’s service; but Rhoda’s
sacrifice was perhaps the most complete, for Mrs. Grubb having at first
absolutely refused to part with Lisa, Rhoda had flung herself into the
breach and taken the twins to her mother’s cottage in the mountains.
She came up the broad steps, on a certain appointed day in August,
leading her charges into Mistress Mary’s presence. They were clean, well
dressed, and somewhat calm in demeanour.
‘You may go into the playground,’ she said, after the greetings were
over; ‘and remember that there are sharp spikes on the high fence by the
pepper-tree.’
‘Mary,’ she went on impressively, closing the doors and glancing about
the room to see if there were any listeners, ‘Mary, those children have
been with me eight weeks, and I do—not—like—them. What are you going to
do with me? Wait, I haven’t told you the whole truth,—I dislike them
actively. As for my mother, she is not committed to any theory about the
essential integrity of infancy, and she positively abhors them.’
‘Then they are no more likable in the bosom of the family than they have
been here?’ asked Mary, in a tone of disappointment.
‘More likable? They are less so! Do you see any change in me,—a sort of
spiritual effulgence, a saintly radiance, such as comes after a long
spell of persistent virtue? Because there ought to be, if my summer has
served its purpose.’
‘Poor dear rosy little martyr! Sit down and tell me all about it.’
‘Well, we have kept a log, but—’
‘“_We_?” What, Rhoda! did you drag your poor mother into the
experiment?’
‘Mother? No, she generally locked herself in her room when the twins
were indoors, but—well, of course, I had help of one sort and another
with them. I have held to your plan of discipline pretty well; at any
rate, I haven’t administered corporal punishment, although, if I had
whipped them whenever they actually needed it, I should have worn out all
the young minister’s slippers.’
Mary groaned. ‘Then there was another young minister? It doesn’t make
any difference, Rhoda, whether you spend your summers in the woods or by
the sea, in the valleys or on the mountains, there is always a young
minister. Have all the old ones perished off the face of the earth,
pray? And what do the young ones see in you, you dear unregenerate, that
they persist in following you about threatening my peace of mind and your
future career? Well, go on!’
‘Debarred from the use of the persuasive but obsolete slipper,’ Rhoda
continued evasively, ‘I tried milder means of discipline,—solitary
confinement for one not very much, you know,—only seventeen times in
eight weeks. I hope you don’t object to that? Of course, it was in a
pleasant room with southern exposure, good view, and good ventilation, a
thermometer, picture-books, and all that. It would have worked better if
the twins hadn’t always taken the furniture to pieces, and mother is so
fussy about anything of that sort. She finally suggested the winter
bedroom for Atlantic’s incarceration, as it has nothing in it but a huge
coal-stove enveloped in a somewhat awe-inspiring cotton sheet. I put in
a comfortable low chair, a checkerboard, and some books, fixing the time
limit at half an hour. By the way, Mary, that’s such a pretty idea of
yours to leave the door unlocked, and tell the children to come out of
their own accord whenever they feel at peace with the community. I tried
it,—oh, I always try your pretty ideas first; but I had scarcely closed
the door before Pacific was out of it again, a regenerated human being
according to her own account. But to return to Atlantic. I went to him
when the clock struck, only to discover that he had broken in the circles
of isinglass round the body of the coal-stove, removed the ashes with a
book, got the dampers out of order, and taken the doors off the hinges!
I am sure Mrs. Grubb is right to keep them on bread-and-milk and
apple-sauce; a steady diet of beef and mutton would give them a simply
unconquerable energy. Oh, laugh as you may, I could never have lived
through the ordeal if it hadn’t been for the young minister!’
‘Do you mean that he became interested in the twins?’
‘Oh, yes!—very deeply interested. You have heard me speak of him: it was
Mr. Fielding.’
‘Why, Rhoda, he was the last summer’s minister, the one who preached at
the sea-shore.’
‘Certainly; but he was only supplying a pulpit there; now he has his own
parish. He is taking up a course of child-study, and asked me if he was
at liberty to use the twins for psychological observations. I assented
most gratefully, thinking, you know, that he couldn’t study them unless
he kept them with him a good deal; but he counted without his host, as
you can imagine. He lives at the hotel until his cottage is finished,
and the first thing I knew he had hired a stout nursemaid as his
contribution to the service of humanity. I think he was really sorry for
me, for I was so confined I could scarcely ever ride, or drive, or play
tennis; and besides, he simply had to have somebody to hold the children
while he observed them. We succeeded better after the nurse came, and we
all had delightful walks and conversations together, just a nice little
family party! The hotel people called Atlantic the Cyclone, and Pacific
the Warrior. Sometimes strangers took us for the children’s parents, and
that was embarrassing; not that I mind being mistaken for a parent, but I
decline being credited, or discredited, with the maternity of those
imps!’
‘They are altogether new in my experience,’ confessed Mary.
‘That is just what the young minister said.’
‘Will he keep up his psychological investigation during the autumn?’ Mary
inquired.
‘He really has no material there.’
‘What will he do, then?—carry it on by correspondence?’
‘No, that is always unsatisfactory. I fancy he will come here
occasionally: it is the most natural place, and he is especially eager to
meet you.’
‘Of course!’ said Mistress Mary, reciting provokingly:
‘“My lyre I tune, my voice I raise,
But with my numbers mix my sighs,
And whilst I sing Euphelia’s praise
I fix my soul on Chloe’s eyes.”’
‘How delightful,’ she added, ‘how inspiring it is to see a young man so
devoted to science, particularly to this neglected science! I shall be
charmed to know more of his psychology and observe his observations.’
‘He is extremely clever.’
‘I have no doubt of it from what you tell me, both clever and ingenious.’
‘And his cottage is lovely; it will be finished and furnished by next
summer,—Queen Anne, you know.’
Now, this was so purely irrelevant that there was a wicked hint of
intention about it; and though Mistress Mary was smiling (and quaking) in
the very depths of her heart, she cruelly led back the conversation into
safe educational channels. ‘Isn’t it curious,’ she said, ‘that we should
have thought Lisa, not the twins, the impossible problem? Yet, as I have
written you, her solution is something to which we can look forward with
reasonable confidence. It is scarcely eighteen months, but the work
accomplished is almost incredible, even to me, and I have watched and
counted every step.’
‘The only explanation must be this,’ said Rhoda, ‘that her condition was
largely the fruit of neglect and utter lack of comprehension. The state
of mind and body in which she came to us was out of all proportion to the
moving cause, when we discovered it. Her mother thought she would be an
imbecile, the Grubbs treated her as one, and nobody cared to find out
what she really was or could be.’
‘Her brain had been writ upon by the “moving finger,”’ quoted Mary,
‘though the writing was not graved so deep but that love and science
could erase it. You remember the four lines in Omar Khayyàm?
“‘The moving finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all your piety nor wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a line,
Nor all your tears wash out a word of it.”’
‘Edith says I will hardly know her,’ said Rhoda.
‘It is true. The new physician is a genius, and physically and outwardly
she has changed more in the last three months than in the preceding year.
She dresses herself neatly now, braids her own hair, and ties her ribbons
prettily. Edith has kept up her gymnastics, and even taught her to row
and play nine-pins. For the first time in my life, Rhoda, I can fully
understand a mother’s passion for a crippled, or a blind, or a defective
child. I suppose it was only Lisa’s desperate need that drew us to her
at first. We all loved and pitied her, even at the very height of her
affliction; but now she fascinates me. I know no greater pleasure than
the daily miracle of her growth. She is to me the sister I never had,
the child I never shall have. When we think of our success with this
experiment, we must try to keep our faith in human nature, even under the
trying ordeal of the twins.’
‘My faith in human nature is absolutely intact,’ answered Rhoda; ‘the
trouble is that the Warrior and the Cyclone are not altogether human.
Atlantic is the coldest creature I ever knew,—so cold that he could stand
the Shadrach-Meshech-and Abednego test with impunity; Pacific is hot,—so
hot-tempered that one can hardly touch her without being scorched. If I
had money enough to conduct an expensive experiment, I would separate
them, and educate Pacific at the North Pole, and Atlantic in the
Tropics.’
‘If they are not distinctly human, we must allow them a few human virtues
at least,’ said Mary; ‘for example, their loyalty to each other.
Pacific, always at war with the community, seldom hurts her brother;
Atlantic, selfish and grasping with all the world, shares generously with
his sister. We must remember, too, that Lisa’s care has been worse than
nothing for them, notwithstanding its absolute fidelity; and their
dependence has been a positive injury to her. There! she has just come
into the playground with Edith. Will wonders never cease? Pacific is
embracing her knees, and Atlantic allows himself to be hugged!’
Marm Lisa was indeed beside herself with joy at the meeting. She clung
to the infant rebels, stroked their hair, admired their aprons, their
clean hands, their new boots; and, on being smartly slapped by Atlantic
for putting the elastic of his hat behind his ears, kissed his hand as if
it had offered a caress. ‘He’s so little,’ she said apologetically,
looking up with wet eyes to Edith, who stood near.
IX
MARM LISA’S QUEST
IT was not long after this conversation that the twins awoke one morning
with a very frenzy of adventure upon them. It was accompanied by a
violent reaction against all the laws of God and man, and a desire to
devour the tree of knowledge, fruit, limbs, and trunk, no matter at what
cost.
We have no means of knowing whether there was an excess of electricity in
the atmosphere, whether their youthful livers were disordered, or whether
the Evil One was personally conducting the day’s exercises; judged by the
light of subsequent events, all of these suppositions might easily have
been true. During the morning they so demeaned themselves that all
Mistress Mary’s younger neophytes became apostates to the true faith, and
went over in a body to the theory of the total depravity of unbaptized
infants.
In the afternoon they did not appear, nor did Marm Lisa. This was
something that had never occurred before, save when Pacific had a certain
memorable attack of mumps that would have carried off any child who was
fitted for a better world, or one who was especially beloved.
‘Do you suppose anything is wrong?’ asked Mary nervously.
‘Of course not,’ said Edith. ‘I remember seeing Lisa in the playground
at one o’clock, but my impression is that she was alone, and stayed only
a moment. At any rate, I was very busy and did not speak to her. Mrs.
Grubb has probably taken the twins to have their hair cut, or something
of that sort.’
‘What a ridiculous suggestion!’ exclaimed Rhoda. ‘You know perfectly
well that Mrs. Grubb would never think of cutting their hair, if it swept
the earth! She may possibly have taken them to join a band; they must be
getting to a proper age for membership. At any rate, I will call there
and inquire, on my way home, although I can never talk to Mrs. Grubb two
minutes without wanting to shake her.’
Rhoda made her promised visit, but the house was closed and the
neighbours knew nothing of the whereabouts of the children beyond the
fact that Mrs. Grubb was seen talking to them as she went into the yard,
a little after twelve o’clock. Rhoda naturally concluded, therefore,
that Edith’s supposition must be correct, and that Mrs. Grubb had for
once indulged in a family excursion.
Such was not the case, however. After luncheon, Marm Lisa had washed the
twins’ hands and faces in the back-yard as usual, and left them for an
instant to get a towel from the kitchen. When she returned, she looked
blankly about, for there was no sign of the two dripping faces and the
uplifted streaming hands. They had a playful habit of hiding from her,
knowing that in no other way could they make her so unhappy; so she stood
still for some moments, calling them, at first sharply, then piteously,
but with no result. She ran to the front gate; it was closed; the
rope-fastening was out of reach, and plainly too complicated even for
their preternatural powers. She hurried back to the house, and searched
every room in a bewildered sort of fashion, finding nothing. As she came
out again, her eye caught sight of a kitchen chair in the corner of the
yard. They had climbed the picket fence, then. Yes; Atlantic, while
availing himself of its unassuming aid, had left a clue in a fragment of
his trousers. She opened the gate, and ran breathlessly along the
streets to that Garden of Eden where joy had always hitherto awaited her.
Some instinct of fear or secrecy led her to go quietly through all the
rooms and search the playground without telling any one of her trouble.
That accomplished fruitlessly, she fled home again, in the vain hope of
finding the children in some accustomed haunt overlooked in her first
search. She began to be thoroughly alarmed now, and thoroughly confused.
With twitching hands and nervous shaking of the head, she hurried through
the vacant rooms, growing more and more aimless in her quest. She
climbed on a tall bureau and looked in a tiny medicine cupboard; then
under the benches and behind the charts in the parlour; even under the
kitchen sink, among the pots and pans, and in the stove, where she poked
tremulously among the ashes. Her newfound wit seemed temporarily to have
deserted her, and she was a pitiable thing as she wandered about, her
breath coming in long-drawn sighs, with now and then a half-stifled sob.
Suddenly she darted into the street again. Perhaps they had followed
their aunt Cora. Distance had no place in her terror-stricken heart.
She traversed block after block, street after street, until she reached
Pocahontas Hall, a building and locality she knew well. She crept softly
up the main stairs, and from the landing slipped into the gallery above.
Mrs. Grubb sat in the centre of the stage, with a glass of water, a
bouquet of roses, and a bundle of papers and tracts on the table by her
side. In the audience were twenty or thirty women and a dozen men, their
laps filled, and their pockets bulging, with propaganda. They stood at
intervals to ask superfluous or unanswerable questions, upon which Mrs.
Grubb would rise and reply, with cheeks growing pink and pinker, with
pleasant smile and gracious manner, and a voice fairly surcharged with
conviction. Most of the ladies took notes, and a girl with a receding
chin was seated at a small table in front of the platform, making a
stenographic report.
All this Marm Lisa saw, but her eyes rested on nothing she longed to see.
Mrs. Grubb’s lecture voice rose and fell melodiously, floating up to her
balcony heights in a kind of echo that held the tone, but not the words.
The voice made her drowsy, for she was already worn out with emotion, but
she roused herself with an effort, and stole down the stairs to wander
into the street again. Ah, there was an idea! The coat-shop! Why had
she not thought of it before?
The coat-shop was a sort of clothing manufactory on a small scale, a
tall, narrow building four stories high, where she had often gone with
Atlantic and Pacific. There were sewing-machines on the ground-floor,
the cutters and pressers worked in the middle stories, and at the top
were the finishers. It was neither an extensive nor an exciting
establishment, and its only fascination lay in the fact that the
workwomen screamed with laughter at the twins’ conversation, and after
leading them to their utmost length, teasing and goading them into a
towering passion, would stuff them with nuts or dates or cheap
sweetmeats. The coat-shop was two or three miles from the hall, and it
was closing time and quite dark when Lisa arrived. She came out of the
door after having looked vainly in every room, and sat down dejectedly in
the entrance, with her weary head leaning against the wall. There was
but a moment’s respite for her, for the manager came out of his office,
and, stumbling over her in the dusk, took her by the shoulders and pushed
her into the street with an oath.
‘Go and sit on your own doorstep, can’t you?’ he muttered, ‘and not make
me break my legs over you!’
She was too spent to run any further. She dragged her heavy feet along
slowly, almost unconsciously, neither knowing nor caring whither they led
her. Home she could not, dared not go, bearing that heavy burden of
remorse! Mrs. Grubb would ask for Atlantic and Pacific, and then what
would become of her? Mr. Grubb would want to give Pacific her milk. No,
Mr. Grubb was dead. There! she hadn’t looked in the perambulator. No,
there wasn’t any perambulator. That was dead, too, and gone away with
Mr. Grubb. There used to be babies, two babies, in the perambulator.
What had become of them? Were they lost, too? And the umbrella that she
used to hold until her arm ached, and the poor, pale, weeping mother
always lying on a bed,—were they all gone together? Her head buzzed with
worrying, unrelated thoughts, so that she put up her hands and held it in
place on her shoulders as she shuffled wearily along. A heavy, dripping
mist began to gather and fall, and she shivered in the dampness, huddling
herself together and leaning against the houses for a shelter. She sat
down on the curb-stone and tried to think, staring haggardly at the sign
on the corner fruit-shop. In that moment she suddenly forgot the reason
of her search. She had lost—what? She could not go home to Eden Place,
but why? Oh yes! It came to her now: there was something about a
perambulator, but it all seemed vague to her. Suddenly a lamplighter put
his ladder against a post in front of her, and, climbing up nimbly,
lighted the gas-jet inside of the glass frame. It shone full on a flight
of broad steps, a picture so much a part of her life-dream that she would
go up to the very gate of heaven with its lines burned into her heart and
brain.
She crept up and turned the knob of the outer door. It was unlocked, and
she stole into the inner room, the Paradise, place of joy and sweet
content, heart’s rest, soul’s heaven, love’s own abode. The very
atmosphere soothed her. She heard the janitress clatter through the
halls, lock the door, and descend the stairs to her own rooms in the
basement. The light from the street lamps shone in at the two end
windows, so that the room was not in utter darkness. She would lie down
here and die with Mr. Grubb and the babies and the umbrella. Atlantic
and Pacific would be sure to come back; nobody who had ever known it
could live without this place. Miss Mary would find them. She would
make everything right. The mere thought of Mistress Mary brought a
strange peace into poor Lisa’s over-wrought, distraught mind.
She opened the closet door. It was as dainty and neat as Mistress Mary
herself, and the mere sight of it bred order in Lisa’s thoughts. On the
top of a pile of envelopes lay the sewing-picture that Atlantic had
spoiled that day. It had been a black morning, and the bit of cardboard
was torn and soiled and bent. Lisa looked at it with a maternal and a
prophetic eye. She could see the firm line of Rhoda’s lip as she bore
down upon the destructive urchin. She could almost hear the bright
challenging tone as Rhoda would say: ‘Now, Atlantic, let us see what we
can do! Cut off the chewed edges with these scissors, paste these thin
pieces of paper over the torn places, and rub the card with this crust of
bread. A new one? Certainly _not_, my young friend!’
Lisa took the poor little object in her hand, and, seeing Mistress Mary’s
white apron, pressed her cheek against it in a transport of tenderness
and hung it over her arm. Just then she caught sight of the clay
bird’s-nest that Pacific had modelled—such a lovely bird’s-nest that it
had been kept for the cabinet. She carried her treasures over to the
old-fashioned lounge where the babies took their occasional nap, put them
carefully in a small red chair close beside it, and then, stretching her
weary length on the cushions, she kissed the smooth folds of the apron,
and clasped it in her arms.
Mistress Mary would come soon. She would come in her cloud of white, and
her steel fillet would gleam and shine when the sunshine fell upon it,
and make star-rays and moonbeams and lightning-flashes; and the tiny
points would twinkle and wink and laugh and blink whenever she turned her
head. She would smile, and everything would suddenly be clear; she would
speak, and the weary buzzing of windmills in the brain would be hushed.
Under her touch the darkness and heaviness would vanish, and there would
be no more night there—no more night.
As these healing visions stole upon Marm Lisa, the torture and the
anguish, the long hours of bewilderment, faded little by little, little
by little, till at length a blessed sleep crept over her eyelids,
blotting into a merciful nothingness the terror and the misery of the
day.
X
THE TWINS JOIN THE CELESTIALS
MEANWHILE, Atlantic and Pacific had been enjoying themselves even unto
the verge of delirium. In the course of their wanderings they had come
upon a Chinaman bearing aloft a huge red silken banner crowned by a
badger’s tail. Everything young that had two legs was following him, and
they joined the noble army of followers. As they went on, other Chinamen
with other banners came from the side-alleys, and all at once the small
procession thus formed turned a corner and came upon the parent body, a
sight that fairly stunned them by its Oriental magnificence. It was the
four thousandth anniversary of the birth of Yeong Wo, had the children
realised it (and that may have been the reason that they awoke in a fever
of excitement)—Yeong Wo, statesman, philanthropist, philosopher, and
poet; and the great day had been chosen to dedicate the new temple and
install in it a new joss, and to exhibit a monster dragon just arrived
from China. The joss had been sitting in solemn state in his sanctum
sanctorum for a week, while the priests appeased him hourly with
plenteous libations of rice brandy, sacrifices of snow-white pigeons, and
offerings of varnished pork. Clouds of incense had regaled his expansive
mahogany nostrils, while his ears of ivory inlaid with gold and bronze
had been stimulated with the ceaseless clashing of gongs and wailings of
Chinese fiddles. Such homage and such worship would have touched a heart
of stone, and that of the joss was penetrable sandalwood; so as the days
of preparation wore away the smile on the teakwood lips of the idol
certainly became more propitious. This was greatly to the satisfaction
of the augurs and the high priest; for a mighty joss is not always in a
sunny humour on feast-days, and to parade a sulky god through the streets
is a very depressing ceremony, foretelling to the initiated a season of
dire misfortune. So his godship smiled and shook his plume of peacock
feathers benignantly on Yeong Wo’s birthday, and therefore the pageant in
which Atlantic and Pacific bore a part was more gorgeous than anything
that ever took place out of the Flowery Kingdom itself.
Fortune smiled upon the naughty creatures at the very outset, for Pacific
picked up a stick of candy in the street, and gave half of it to a pretty
Chinese maiden whose name in English would have been Spring Blossom, and
who looked, in any language, like a tropical flower, in her gown of
blue-and-gold-embroidered satin and the sheaf of tiny fans in her glossy
black hair. Spring Blossom accepted the gift with enthusiasm, since a
sweet tooth is not a matter of nationality, and ran immediately to tell
her mother, a childish instinct also of universal distribution. She
climbed, as nimbly as her queer little shoes would permit, a flight of
narrow steps leading to a balcony; while the twins followed close at her
heels, and wedged their way through a forest of Mongolian legs till they
reached the front, where they peeped through the spaces of the railings
with Spring Blossom, Fairy Foot, Dewy Rose, and other Celestial babies,
quite overlooked in the crowd and excitement and jollity. Such a very
riot of confusion there was, it seemed as if Confucius might have
originally spelled his name with an s in the middle; for every window was
black with pigtailed highbinders, cobblers, pork butchers, and
pawnbrokers. The narrow streets and alleys became one seething mass of
Asiatic humanity; while the painted belles came out on their balconies
like butterflies, sitting among a wealth of gaudy paper flowers that
looked pale in comparison with the daubs of vermilion on their cheeks and
the rainbow colours of their silken tunics.
At last the pageant had gathered itself together, and came into full view
in all its magnificence. There were pagodas in teakwood inlaid with
gold; and resting on ebony poles, and behind them, on a very tame
Rosinante decked with leopard skins and gold bullion fringes, a Chinese
maiden dressed to represent a queen of Celestial mythology. Then came
more pagodas, and companies of standard-bearers in lavender tunics, red
sashes, green and orange leggings and slippers; more and more splendid
banners, painted with dragons sprawling in distressed attitudes; litters
containing minor gods and the paraphernalia they were accustomed to need
on a journey like this; more litters bearing Chinese orchestras, gongs
going at full blast, fiddles squeaking, drums rumbling, trumpets
shrieking, cymbals clashing,—just the sort of Babel that the twins
adored.
And now came the chariot and throne of the great joss himself, and just
behind him a riderless bay horse, intended for his imperial convenience
should he tire of being swayed about on the shoulders of his twelve
bearers, and elect to change his method of conveyance. Behind this
honoured steed came a mammoth rock-cod in a pagoda of his own, and then,
heralded by a fusilade of fire-crackers, the new dragon itself,
stretching and wriggling its monster length through one entire block. A
swarm of men cleared the way for it, gesticulating like madmen in their
zeal to get swimming-room for the sacred monster. Never before in her
brief existence had Pacific Simonson been afraid of anything, but if she
had been in the street, and had so much as caught the wink of the
dragon’s eye, or a wave of its consecrated fin, she would have dropped
senseless to the earth; as it was, she turned her back to the procession,
and, embracing with terror-stricken fervour the legs of the Chinaman
standing behind her, made up her mind to be a better girl in the future.
The monster was borne by seventy-four coolies who furnished legs for each
of the seventy-four joints of its body, while another concealed in its
head tossed it wildly about. Little pigtailed boys shrieked as they
looked at its gaping mouth that would have shamed a man-eating shark, at
the huge locomotive headlights that served for its various sets of eyes,
at the horns made of barber poles, and the moustache of twisted hogshead
hoops. Behind this baleful creature came other smaller ones, and more
flags, and litters with sacrificial offerings, and more musicians, till
all disappeared in the distance, and the crowd surged in the direction of
the temple.
There was no such good fortune for the twins as an entrance into this
holy of holies, for it held comparatively few besides the dignitaries,
aristocrats, and wealthy merchants of the colony; but there was still
ample material for entertainment, and they paid no heed to the going down
of the sun. Why should they, indeed, when there were fascinating opium
dens standing hospitably open, where they could have the excitement of
entrance even if it were followed by immediate ejectment? As it grew
darker, the scene grew more weird and fairylike, for the scarlet, orange,
and blue lanterns began to gleam one by one in the narrow doorways, and
from the shadowy corners of the rooms behind them. In every shop were
tables laden with Chinese delicacies,—fish, flesh, fowl, tea, rice,
whisky, lichee nuts, preserved limes, ginger, and other sweetmeats; all
of which, when not proffered, could be easily purloined, for there was no
spirit of parsimony or hostility afloat in the air. In cubby-holes back
of the counters, behind the stoves, wherever they could find room for a
table, groups of moon-eyed men began to congregate for their nightly game
of fan-tan, some of the players and onlookers smoking, while others
chewed lengths of peeled sugar-cane.
In the midst of festivities like these the twins would have gone on from
bliss to bliss without consciousness of time or place, had not hunger
suddenly descended upon them and sleep begun to tug at their eyelids,
changing in a trice their joy into sorrow and their mirth into mourning.
Not that they were troubled with any doubts, fears, or perplexities.
True, they had wandered away from Eden Place, and had not the slightest
idea of their whereabouts. If they had been a couple of babes in a wood,
or any two respectable lost children of romance, memories of lullabies
and prayers at mother’s knee would have precipitated them at this
juncture into floods of tears; but home to them was simply supper and
bed. The situation did not seem complex to their minds; the only plan
was, of course, to howl, and to do it thoroughly,—stand in a corner of
the market-place, and howl in such a manner that there could be no
mistake as to the significance of the proceeding; when the crowd
collected,—for naturally a crowd would collect,—simply demand supper and
bed, no matter what supper nor which bed; eat the first, lie down in the
second, and there you are! If the twins had been older and more
experienced, they would have known that people occasionally do demand the
necessities of life without receiving them; but in that case they would
also have known that such a misfortune would never fall upon a couple of
lost children who confide their woes to the public. There was no
preconcerted plan between them, no system. They acted without invention,
premonition, or reflection. It was their habit to scream, while holding
the breath as long as possible, whenever the universe was unfriendly, and
particularly when Nature asserted herself in any way; it was a curious
fact that they resented the intervention of Nature and Providence with
just as much energy as they did the discipline of their caretakers. They
screamed now, the moment that the entertainment palled and they could not
keep their eyes open without effort; and never had they been more
successful in holding their breath and growing black in the face; indeed,
Pacific, in the midst of her performance, said to Atlantic, ‘Yours is
purple, how is mine?’
A crowd did gather, inevitably, for the twins’ lungs were capable of a
body of tone more piercing than that of a Chinese orchestra, and the
wonder is that poor Lisa did not hear them as she sat shivering on the
curbstone, miles away; for it was her name with which they conjured.
The populace amused itself for a short space of time, watching the fine
but misdirected zeal of the performance, and supposing that the parents
of the chanting cherubs were within easy reach. It became unpleasant
after a while, however, and a policeman, inquiring into the matter,
marched the two dirty, weary little protestants off to a station near
by,—a march nearly as difficult and bloody as Sherman’s memorable ‘march
to the sea’; for the children associated nothing so pleasant as supper
and bed with a blue-coated, brass-buttoned person, and resisted his
well-meant advances with might and main, and tooth and nail.
The policeman was at last obliged to confine himself to Atlantic, and
called a brother-in-arms to take charge of Pacific. He was a man who had
achieved distinction in putting down railroad riots, so he was well
calculated for the task, although he was somewhat embarrassed by the
laughter of the bystanders when his comrade called out to him, ‘Take your
club, Mike, but don’t use firearms unless your life’s in danger!’
The station reached, the usual examination took place. Atlantic never
could tell the name of the street in which he lived, nor the number of
the house. Pacific could, perhaps, but would not; and it must be said,
in apology for her abnormal defiance, that her mental operations were
somewhat confused, owing to copious indulgence in strong tea, ginger,
sugar-cane, and dried fish. She had not been wisely approached in the
first place, and she was in her sulkiest and most combative humour; in
fact, when too urgently pressed for information as to her age, ancestry,
and abiding-place, she told the worthy police-officer to go to a locality
for which he felt utterly unsuited, after a life spent in the exaltation
of virtue and the suppression of vice. (The vocabulary of the twins was
somewhat poverty-stricken in respect to the polite phrases of society,
but in profanity it would have been rich for a parrot or a pirate.) The
waifs were presently given to the care of the police matron, and her
advice, sought later, was to the effect that the children had better be
fed and put to bed, and as little trouble expended upon them as was
consistent with a Christian city government.
‘It is possible their parents may call for them in the morning,’ she said
acidly, ‘but I think it is more than likely that they have been deserted.
I know if they belonged to me they’d be lost for ever before I tried to
find them!’ and she rubbed a black-and-blue spot on her person, which, if
exposed, would have betrayed the shape, size, and general ground-plan of
Pacific’s boot.
XI
RHODA FREES HER MIND
MORNING dawned, and Mistress Mary and Rhoda went up the flight of broad
steps rather earlier than usual,—so early that the janitress, who had
been awake half the night with an ailing baby, was just going in to dust
the rooms.
It was she who first caught sight of the old sofa and its occupant, and
her exclamation drew Mary and Rhoda to the spot. There lay poor Marm
Lisa in the dead sleep of exhaustion, her dress torn and wrinkled, her
shoes travel-stained, her hair tangled and matted. Their first idea was
that the dreaded foe might have descended upon her, and that she had had
some terrible seizure with no one near to aid and relieve her. But the
longer they looked, the less they feared this; her face, though white and
tear-stained, was tranquil, her lips only slightly pale, and her
breathing calm and steady. Mary finally noted the pathetic grouping of
little objects in the red chair, and, touched by this, began to apprehend
the significance of her own white apron close clasped in the child’s
loyal arms, and fell a-weeping softly on Rhoda’s shoulder. ‘She needed
me, Rhoda,’ she said. ‘I do not know for what, but I am sure she needed
me.’
‘I see it all,’ said Rhoda, administering soft strokes of consolation:
‘it is something to do with those little beasts; yes, I will call them
beasts, and if you don’t let me, I’ll call them brutes. They lost
themselves yesterday, of course, and dear old Lisa searched for them all
the afternoon and half the night, for aught we know, and then came here
to be comforted, I suppose—the blessed thing!’
‘Hush! don’t touch her,’ Mary whispered, as Rhoda went impetuously down
on her knees by the sofa; ‘and we must not talk in this room, for fear of
waking her. Suppose you go at once to Mrs. Grubb’s, dear, and, whatever
you learn about the twins there, I shall meanwhile call a carriage and
take Lisa home to my own bed. The janitress can send Edith to me as soon
as she comes, and I will leave her with Lisa while I run back here to
consult with you and Helen. I shall telegraph for Dr. Thorne, also, to
be sure that this sleep is as natural and healing a thing as it appears
to be.’
Mrs. Grubb was surprised, even amused, at Rhoda’s exciting piece of news,
but she was perfectly tranquil.
‘Well, don’t they beat all!’ she exclaimed, leaning against the
door-frame and taking her side hair out of waving-pins as she talked.
‘No, I haven’t seen them since noon yesterday. I was out to a picnic
supper at the Army Headquarters at night, and didn’t get home till later
than usual, so I didn’t go up to their room. I thought they were in bed;
they always have been in bed when it was bedtime, ever since they were
born.’ Here she removed the last pin, and put it with the others in the
bosom of her dress for safe-keeping. ‘This morning, when they didn’t
turn up, I thought some of you girls had taken a fancy to keep them
overnight; I didn’t worry, supposing that Lisa was with them.’
‘Nobody on earth could take a fancy to the twins or keep them an hour
longer than necessary, and you know it, Mrs. Grubb,’ said Rhoda, who
seldom minced matters; ‘and in case no one should ever have the bad
manners to tell you the whole truth, I want to say here and now that you
neglect everything good and sensible and practical,—all the plain, simple
duties that stare you directly in the face,—and waste yourself on matters
that are of no earthly use to anybody. Those children would have been
missed last night if you had one drop of mother’s blood in your veins!
You have three helpless children under what you are pleased to call your
care’ (and here Rhoda’s lip curled so scornfully that Mrs. Grubb was
tempted to stab her with a curling-pin), ‘and you went to sleep without
knowing to a certainty whether they had had supper or bed! I don’t
believe you are a woman at all—you are just a vague abstraction; and the
only things you’ve ever borne or nursed or brooded in your life have been
your miserable, bloodless little clubs and bands and unions!’
Rhoda’s eyes flashed summer lightning, her nostrils quivered, her cheeks
flamed scarlet, and Mrs. Grubb sat down suddenly and heavily on the front
stairs and gasped for breath. According to her own belief, her whole
life had been passed in a search for truth, but it is safe to say she had
never before met it in so uncompromising and disagreeable a shape.
‘Perhaps when you are quite through with your billingsgate,’ she finally
said, ‘you will take yourself off my steps before you are ejected. You!
to presume to criticise me! You, that are so low in the scale of being,
you can no more understand my feelings and motives than a jellyfish can
comprehend a star! Go back and tell Miss Mary,’ she went on
majestically, as she gained confidence and breath, ‘that it is her duty
and business to find the children, since they were last seen with her,
and unless she proves more trustworthy they will not be allowed to return
to her. Tell her, too, that when she wishes to communicate with me, she
must choose some other messenger besides you, you impudent, grovelling
little earthworm! Get out of my sight, or you will unfit me for my
classes!’
Mrs. Grubb was fairly superb as she launched these thunderbolts of
invective; the staircase her rostrum, her left hand poised impressively
on the baluster, and the three snaky strands of brown hair that had
writhed out of the waving-pins hissing Medusa-wise on each side of her
bead.
Rhoda was considerably taken aback by the sudden and violent slamming of
the door of No. 1 Eden Place, and she felt an unwelcome misgiving as to
her wisdom in bringing Mrs. Grubb face to face with truth. Her rage had
somewhat subsided by the time she reached Mistress Mary’s side, for she
had stopped on the way to ask a policeman to telephone the various
stations for news of the lost children, and report at once to her.
‘There is one good thing,’ she thought: ‘wherever they may be, their
light cannot be hid any more than that of a city that is set on a hill.
There will be plenty of traces of their journey, for once seen they are
never forgotten. Nobody but a hero would think of kidnapping them, and
nobody but an idiot would expect a ransom for them!’
‘I hope you didn’t upbraid Mrs. Grubb,’ said Mary, divining from Rhoda’s
clouded brow that her interview had not been a pleasant one. ‘You know
our only peaceful way of rescuing Lisa from her hold is to make a friend
of her, and convert her to our way of thinking. Was she much disturbed
about the children?’
‘Disturbed!’ sniffed Rhoda disdainfully. ‘Imagine Mrs. Grubb disturbed
about anything so trivial as a lost child! If it had been a lost
amendment, she might have been ruffled!’
‘What is she doing about it, and in what direction is she searching?’
‘She is doing nothing, and she will do nothing; she has gone to a
Theosophy lecture, and we are to find the twins; and she says it’s your
fault, anyway, and unless you prove more trustworthy the seraphs will be
removed from your care; and you are not to send me again as a messenger,
if you please, because I am an impudent, grovelling little earthworm!’
‘Rhoda!’
‘Yes’m!’
‘Did she call you that?’
‘Yes’m, and a jellyfish besides; in fact, she dragged me through the
entire animal kingdom; but she is a stellar being—she said so.’
‘What did you say to her to provoke that, Rhoda? She is thoroughly
illogical and perverse, but she is very amiable.’
‘Yes, when you don’t interfere with her. You should catch her with her
hair in waving-pins, just after she has imbibed apple-sauce! Oh, I can’t
remember exactly what I said, for I confess I was a trifle heated, and at
the moment I thought only of freeing my mind. Let me see: I told her she
neglected all the practical duties that stared her directly in the face,
and squandered herself on useless fads and vagaries—that’s about all.
No-o, now that I come to think of it, I did say that the children would
have been missed and found last night, if she had had a drop of mother’s
blood in her veins.’
‘That’s terse and strong—and tactful,’ said Mary; ‘anything more?’
‘No, I don’t think so. Oh yes! now that I reflect, I said I didn’t
believe she was a woman at all. That seemed to enrage her beyond
anything, somehow; and when I explained it, and tried to modify it by
saying I meant that she had never borne or loved or brooded anything in
her life but her nasty little clubs, she was white with anger, and told
me I was too low in the scale of being to understand her. Good gracious!
I wish she understood herself half as well as I understand her!’
Mary gave a hysterical laugh. ‘I can’t pretend you didn’t speak the
truth, Rhoda, but I am sadly afraid it was ill advised to wound Mrs.
Grubb’s vanity. Do you feel a good deal better?’
‘No,’ confessed Rhoda penitently. ‘I did for fifteen minutes,—yes,
nearly half an hour; but now I feel worse than ever.’
‘That is one of the commonest symptoms of freeing one’s mind,’ observed
Mary quietly.
It was scarcely an hour later when Atlantic and Pacific were brought in
by an officer, very dirty and dishevelled, but gay and irresponsible as
larks, nonchalant, amiable, and unrepentant. As Rhoda had prophesied,
there had been no difficulty in finding them; and as everybody had
prophesied, once found there had not been a second’s delay in delivery.
Moved by fiery hatred of the police matron, who had illustrated justice
more than mercy, and illustrated it with the back of a hair-brush on
their reversed persons; lured also by two popcorn balls, a jumping-jack,
and a tin horse, they accepted the municipal escort with alacrity; and
nothing was ever jauntier than the manner in which Pacific, all smiles
and molasses, held up her sticky lips for an expected salute—an unusual
offer which was respectfully declined as a matter of discipline.
Mary longed for Rhoda’s young minister in the next half-hour, which she
devoted to private spiritual instruction. Psychology proved wholly
unequal to the task of fathoming the twins, and she fancied that theology
might have been more helpful. Their idea seemed to be—if the rudimentary
thing she unearthed from their consciousness could be called an idea—that
they would not mind repenting if they could see anything of which to
repent. Of sin, as sin, they had no apparent knowledge, either by sight,
by hearsay or by actual acquaintance. They sat stolidly in their little
chairs, eyes roving to the windows, the blackboard, the pictures; they
clubbed together and fished a pin from a crack in the floor during one of
Mary’s most thrilling appeals; finally they appeared so bored by the
whole proceeding that she felt a certain sense of embarrassment in the
midst of her despair. She took them home herself at noon, apologised to
the injured Mrs. Grubb for Rhoda’s unfortunate remarks, and told that
lady, gently but firmly, that Lisa could not be moved until she was
decidedly better.
‘She was wandering about the streets searching for the twins from noon
till long after dark, Mrs. Grubb—there can be no doubt of it; and she
bears unmistakable signs of having suffered deeply. I have called in a
physician, and we must all abide by his advice.’
‘That’s well enough for the present,’ agreed Mrs. Grubb reluctantly, ‘but
I cannot continue to have my studies broken in upon by these excitements.
I really cannot. I thought I had made an arrangement with Madame
Goldmarker to relieve me, but she has just served me a most unladylike
and deceitful trick, and the outcome of it will be that I shall have to
send Lisa to the asylum. I can get her examined by the commissioners
some time before Christmas, and if they decide she’s imbecile they’ll
take her off my hands. I didn’t want to part with her till the twins got
older, but I’ve just found a possible home for them if I can endure their
actions until New Year’s. Our Army of Present Perfection isn’t
progressing as it ought to, and it’s going to found a colony down in San
Diego County, and advertise for children to bring up in the faith. A
certain number of men and women have agreed to go and start the thing and
I’m sure my sister, if she was alive would be glad to donate her children
to such a splendid enterprise. If the commissioners won’t take Lisa, she
can go to Soul Haven, too—that’s the name of the place;—but no, of course
they wouldn’t want any but bright children, that would grow up and spread
the light.’ (Mary smiled at the thought of the twins engaged in the
occupation of spreading light.) ‘I shall not join the community myself,
though I believe it’s a good thing; but a very different future is
unveiling itself before me’ (her tone was full of mystery here), ‘and
some time, if I can ever pursue my investigations in peace, you will
knock at this door and I shall have vanished! But I shall know of your
visit, and the very sound of your footfall will reach my ear, even if I
am inhabiting some remote mountain fastness!’
* * * * *
When Lisa awoke that night, she heard the crackling of a wood fire on the
hearth; she felt the touch of soft linen under her aching body, and the
pressure of something cool and fragrant on her forehead. Her right hand,
feebly groping the white counterpane, felt a flower in its grasp.
Opening her eyes, she saw the firelight dancing on tinted walls, and an
angel of deliverance sitting by her bedside—a dear familiar woman angel,
whose fair crowned head rose from a cloud of white, and whose sweet
downward gaze held all of benignant motherhood that God could put into
woman’s eyes.
Marm Lisa looked up dumbly and wonderingly at first, but the mind
stirred, thought flowed in upon it, a wave of pain broke over her heart,
and she remembered all; for remembrance, alas, is the price of reason.
‘Lost! my twinnies, all lost and gone!’ she whispered brokenly, with
long, shuddering sobs between the words. ‘I look—look—look; never, never
find!’
‘No, no, dear,’ Mary answered, stroking the lines from her forehead, ‘not
lost any more; found, Lisa—do you understand? They are found, they are
safe and well, and nobody blames you; and you are safe, too, your new
self, your best self unharmed, thank God; so go to sleep, little sister,
and dream happy dreams!’
Glad tears rushed from the poor child’s eyes, tears of conscious
happiness, and the burden rolled away from her heart now, as yesterday’s
whirring shuttles in her brain had been hushed into silence by her long
sleep. She raised her swimming eyes to Mistress Mary’s with a look of
unspeakable trust. ‘I love you! oh, I love, love, love you!’ she
whispered, and, holding the flower close to her breast, she breathed a
sigh of sweet content, and sank again into quiet slumber.
XII
FLOTSAM AND JETSAM
IT may be said in justice to Mrs. Grubb that she was more than usually
harassed just at this time.
Mrs. Sylvester, her voluble next-door neighbour, who had lifted many
sordid cares from her shoulders, had suddenly become tired of the ‘new
method of mental healing,’ and during a brief absence of Mrs. Grubb from
the city had issued a thousand embossed gilt-edged cards, announcing
herself as the Hand Reader in the following terms:—