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