THE PROP THAT FAILED.
“Ye have read, ye have heard, ye have thought,” he said, and the tale
is still to run.
“By the worth of the body that once ye had, give answer--what have ye
done?”
--_Rudyard Kipling._
Two years passed, and Mrs. Doring still sat at her editorial desk.
Farnsworth had been the kindest and most considerate of employers.
The envious said no woman ever had an easier situation. They raised
their eyebrows, when they said this, implying the usual sentimental
insinuations; but they were mistaken. Farnsworth’s regard for Cartice
had no sentimental coloring whatever. He admired her ability and
delighted in giving her a chance, and making that chance as pleasant as
possible, having views on the unfair, industrial, political and social
rulings from which women suffer.
He had come to New York, a talented struggler. Now he was a
millionaire, chief proprietor of a great publishing house, which had
become great under his management, and he loved to make the road a
little smoother for those less able and less fortunate.
Cartice loved him, it is true; but not as the common mind understands
the term. Sometimes her eyes grew moist, while she looked at him and
wished she might have a chance to prove her gratitude. He was to her
like the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. In the weakness of
spirit ages have bred in her sex, she regarded him as a wall that stood
between her and possible calamity.
“I need fear no financial disaster, while he lives,” she thought. “His
hand will be ever friendly; his heart ever kind.”
Farnsworth was far above the average of men, but he had a serious
weakness of character that made curious comradeship with his better
attributes. Anybody, the least trustworthy, the most malicious, could
sow in him seeds of suspicion against his best friend, and in ten hours
they would be full-grown trees, loaded with bitter and baneful fruit.
When this happened his kindness vanished and he could be as cruel as
hate. His conscience fled the field, whenever his vanity was ruffled.
Knowing this a woman poisoned his mind against Cartice Doring, by a few
lying words--a woman who believed it would be to her interest to get
Cartice out of her way. The seed sown sprouted, grew, blossomed and
bore fruit within twenty-four hours.
The next day Cartice found a note of dismissal on her desk, the
curtness of which was incompatible with the pretensions of a
gentleman, if addressed to one merely in the capacity of employee. But
when the employee was a social equal, a faithful friend of years and a
lady, it showed a lack of self-control on the part of the writer seldom
surpassed.
The tenor of it was that, as she was “not doing justice” to the work
entrusted to her care, her services were dispensed with. A check for
the whole of the unfinished week was enclosed.
Cartice read the letter and sat like one frozen, and the
heart-breaking, unbearable look of long ago came again into her eyes.
Every one who has received an unexpected, felling blow from the hand of
a friend can understand the blended astonishment and anguish of that
moment.
She knew who had turned Farnsworth against her and why it had been
done, but that could not help the irremediableness of the situation.
She could not go to Farnsworth and mortify him by telling him this; and
she knew his implacable spirit too well to hope that he would so much
as allow her an audience. Serious as was the blow to her finances, its
worst effect was on her heart. Black and deep are the bruises made by
the hands we love.
“I must not forget what I owe him for past kindness,” she said,--“must
not let this cruelty put hatred into my heart. I must forgive him, for
he knows not what he does. Being a man, he cannot know how difficult
is life for a woman, under the existing order of things. Neither does
he know how often heretofore my heart has bled from cruelty; nor how I
have loved him; nor how weary and feeble I am much of the time.
“No; he doesn’t know. Would any of us ever hurt another if we knew
all that other has to bear? Besides, it is better to be the victim of
injustice than the perpetrator of it. Ugly as is poverty, it is better
to endure it than to have the power which the possession of millions
confers and misuse it.
“Poor Farnsworth,” she said. “Success has spoiled your naturally
beautiful soul.
“The great destroyer of human conscience that goes by the name of
business permits you to put me out of your service in a summary and
humiliating manner, which puts me out of your life and friendship at
the same time, though moral right to treat another human being in this
way you have none. But the law of causality is ever operative, and you
cannot escape the consequences of your deeds. You will get back your
meed as you measure.
“I accept your dismissal as part and parcel of the destiny I am working
out. Sooner or later every earthly prop on which I lean is taken from
me. Everything has a meaning and purpose. The lesson I have been slow
to learn is now plain to me. It is that I must stand alone, and
so must every soul, somewhere, some time. Props are destroyers of
strength and character. In all the universe there is but one on which
we may lean without inviting weakness, and that is Eternal Being, the
background of all life.”
Gathering up her little possessions from the place that had been
her official home for eight years, Mrs. Doring walked out of it
heavy-hearted and solitary. The rock from which she had expected
shelter had vanished from her horizon forever. More! It had never been
there, save in her imagination. It was an illusion from which now she
was free.
Curiously enough we regret the loss of our illusions, yet we ought
to thank God fervently every time we get rid of one, for it means
that we are emerging from ignorance and darkness into light and
knowledge,--approaching nearer to the truth that shall make us free.
On reaching home Mrs. Doring sat down to take a practical view of the
situation. For nearly twenty years had she worked faithfully, having
begun at seventeen. She had lived in modest comfort, and by dint of
self-denial had saved one thousand dollars. What man above mediocrity
would think that a fair recompense for half a lifetime’s work?
A sudden cutting off like that is what any one may expect who has
given his or her time and talents to the building up of another’s
business. It is the soul’s vengeance for not trusting it entirely, and
confidently following whithersoever it may lead.
But there is something shamefully immoral in our business methods, when
an employee after years of faithful service can be flung out without
a chance for a word of defence. It is as though our father should
unexpectedly open the door of his home and bid us begone forever. And
is not our employer our business father, from whom we have a right to
expect consideration? Does he owe us nothing more than our weekly wage?
Must his relation to us be always measured only by dollars and cents?
Among the letters Mrs. Doring took with her from the office unopened
was one from Bardell, now in Paris, famous and prosperous beyond his
dreams. Strange irony of fate that brought to her his glad story of
fresh successes on the day that carried defeat to her.
With the superstition common to Bohemia Bardell considered Cartice his
mascot. His letters were always frank, friendly and charming. His last
words were: “Follow your ideals. They will lead you into freedom.”
This reminded her of her book. It was finished long since; but the
writing was scarcely half the battle. It languished for want of a
publisher. Those to whom it had been submitted, had returned it, one
and all, with the contempt, but thinly veiled with regrets, it had
excited in their infallible minds.
One plainer spoken and less heavily veneered with the world’s polish
than the rest, said to her face:
“Come now, Mrs. Doring, you mustn’t expect anybody to publish stuff
of that kind--digging into the meaning of life, higher methods of
evolution, ‘shall we live after we die?,’ ‘ultimate destiny of the
human race,’ and all such heavy timber. People take no interest in
these questions. What we want is a rattling good love-story, with
plenty of hugging and kissing in it. I like that in or out of a novel
myself. There must be some iron-clad obstructionists in it, too, cruel
parents or other able marplots, and the hero must get her in the last
chapter or sooner. Anything but a story that doesn’t end all right. The
public abhors it. Now, your book is loaded with high-up, mountain-peak
thought, and wouldn’t sell at all.”
Another, with whom also, she had a personal interview, a young man
with extraordinary faith in his own wisdom, smiled as he returned her
manuscript, and made his smile so vocative it needed few accompanying
words. “It is, ah--you know, Mrs. Doring, so wide a departure from
the standard of art in fiction, that it might make even a publisher
ridiculous, to say nothing of the author. One must keep somewhere
within sight of the existing canons. This, if you will pardon me, flies
in the face of every one of them.”
“I dare say,” answered Cartice. “I never troubled myself about the
existing canons. It is life as I know it that I have tried to portray;
not life as somebody else says it should be painted in books.”
After a number of equally disheartening experiences, the book was
carefully laid aside to await the judgment day.
Meantime these same publishing houses were exuding cart-loads of
marketable abominations, which were scattered in all directions, doing
their share in weakening the minds of their unfortunate readers. Life,
as depicted by them, was a mere sex-chase, more or less interrupted by
the usual difficulties, all of which was quite in accordance with the
“existing canons,” so much respected by the young man with the smile.
* * * * *
Perhaps nothing gives us a lonelier feeling than to be cut off from
our field of daily activity, whatever it may have been. Cartice found
herself set back to the dreadful days of her beginning in New York. It
was as though she had gone steadily up a steep slope, to a respectable
height, only to be knocked violently to the bottom by the hand that was
helping her upward.
“Had I developed the best that was in me--followed my ideals”--she
said, “this could not have happened. In that case I should have stood
alone long since, leaning on no prop, depending on no person’s caprice.
Set-backs and knock-downs are our schoolmasters, and they are ever busy
with us until we learn our lessons.”
A loneliness assailed her heart, poignant, sharp, deep. All her life
its resistless waves had at times rolled over her spirit,--a flood that
would not be stayed. It was that kind of loneliness that creates a
solitude which is not placed in a densely peopled universe.
Then came the comforting reflection that we are never alone, never
solitary, however much we may seem to be, and never absolutely on our
own hands, in spite of appearances. About us are ever the spiritual
hosts, and back of us, within us and about us, the Supreme Self, to
which each is both inlet and outlet.
* * * * *
On the evening of Mrs. Doring’s first day of idleness, Gabriel Norris
called to see her. For several years he had been a resident of New
York. In the worst of the thick mass of the miserables he had set up
his cobbler’s bench, and opened an adjoining reading-room; and there he
fished for the souls of men, in the great ocean of wretchedness whose
huge waves beat about his door.
Cartice told him the story of her summary ejectment from the place
that she had so long occupied, and the various shifts that she had been
making in her mind for the future.
“It’s a good thing,” he said, “when you don’t know just what to do,
not to do anything--to wait,--wait without worry or anxiety--wait and
trust. Unseen influences are ever at work on our destiny. We can hurry
nothing, change nothing. Rest for a time. You have been so busy most of
your life that you have had but little chance to get acquainted with
yourself. You have a little capital ahead; rest on that. New ideas come
in seasons of repose, for then the mind is receptive.”
“That is what I had half-decided to do,” she answered, “though I am
still so much a slave to the old, erroneous belief that I carry myself
on my own shoulders, I scarcely could get my consent to it.”
“And when you feel so disposed,” continued Gabriel, “come to my
reading-room and read a story or a poem to my sheep--‘my po’ los sheep
o’ de sheepfol,’ whom I try so hard to gather in. You may not know
it--you know yourself so little--but you have the most beautiful voice
I ever heard. Your reading, as well as your speech, is exquisite music.
‘The soul of man is audible, not visible,’ says Longfellow. ‘It reveals
itself in the voice. A sound alone betrays the flowing of the eternal
fountain.’”
Anxiety and worry fell away from Cartice Doring soon as she determined
to rest and trust. A profound philosophic truth is here revealed. When
we trust, God Himself carries our burdens, and we are set free from
care. Trust is the essence, the vital principle of religion, which is
at heart a recognition of the divine intelligence within us, about us,
and is reflected by us,--the reality we call God.
It was a joy to be the mistress of her own time, to know when she began
the day that she could do with it what she pleased. It was luxury to
sit at an open window and feel the air blow over her, and not be goaded
by any thought of duty undone. She went about the city and enjoyed its
treasures of art and beauty. She formed new friendships and cultivated
old ones. She read and, through sympathy, entered into, the lives and
feelings of authors and the people of their creation, as never before.
She became better acquainted with herself, and by that means with all
others. She went to Gabriel Norris’s unsectarian temple and helped him
feed his sheep. There the music of her beautiful voice called in many
a lost one. The bitter loneliness that shadowed her at times fled away
and troubled her no more. Her spirit came in sympathetic and loving
touch with others, with all that is, with the universal mind itself,
for this is the purpose of life, the union of the entire being with
its original. This is the true freedom which is the destiny of the
human race. The individual self becomes one with the universal, and is
henceforth free from limitations, from restrictions, from bondage of
every kind. It exchanges its little circle of personal desires for the
great world-consciousness. Whosoever does this even in the most limited
degree puts care and trouble behind him.
Thus it was that this truth which Cartice Doring had long theoretically
accepted, became a part of her being. She began to live it and be it,
for we only really accept truth when we are it. Her eyes lost the look
of suffering that lighted them at times with a moving and resistless
fire, and became trustful, hopeful, peaceful, like those of a happy
child.
Difficulties and disappointments vanished and fear vexed her no more.
She was like those who have won all battles, put all troubles behind
them. She had the knowledge that within herself was power over all
temporal dragons; that her welfare depended on no man’s whim; that
there are no accidents; that He who slumbers not nor sleeps, is
“guiding each of His creatures in the current of an eternal purpose”;
that she was as indestructible as the universe, and as old, as young
and as deathless as its builder. She thought no more of happiness,
because blessedness had come into her life,--the blessedness which
“consists in progress toward perfection.” In an undefined way she felt
herself approaching high summits, understanding that there is neither
high nor low, near nor far in the universe save in thought.