Then,—
“But Reginald’s mother died,” said Alitza, in a singularly half-muffled
tone, as if she had been long going forward with the story, and now but
made an addition. “Then Uncle George (as I called old Grove) sent me to
a good school. It was thought by some to be very good of him; but there
was much more back of all that, you must know. I was a thin ghost of a
girl then; thinner than I have now become, and I had cross-eyes (as
people call it), and I was sallow. But little Reg was used to me; so to
come to it at once, the summer I was seventeen I came home from school
to the old Grove place. There was no one there but one old servant and
Reg, who had been suspended from the academy on some charge; so there we
were together two months, as good as in a wilderness.
“The first thing I knew we were engaged to be married, and then nothing
would do for Reg but a drive to Hartford, to the minister’s; but I knew
the minister would not marry us if he knew we were both under age. So as
quick as he asked how old we were, I said I was eighteen and Reg was
twenty-one. And then came the trouble; for truth, of a sort, was always
Reg’s strong point. And as we rode away together, married tight enough
by the minister, he looked at me with absolute dislike, and wanted to
know what I told that story for.
“I told him that as he had been teasing me for six weeks to marry him,
and as I had at last said I would, some one had got to tell the lie; and
as he hated to, I did it for him out of kindness. I felt bad about it
myself. And then the minister had looked at us in a queer way; and
Ethel, I was such a simple, ignorant little child, that I did not even
know then what disagreeable thing the minister might have been thinking,
other than that I was telling a lie. And I knew I was, and that made me
color up; and that had made Reginald mad. And so the outcome of his
haste to tie me to him by that ceremony was that he had called me a
liar, and I had told him I hated him. Then I would do nothing other but
drive straight to the old home, half frightened to death at what I had
done.
“Then you must know, as we drove up to the house up came a common sort
of a fellow on horseback; and the first thing he did was to joke Reg for
riding with me, when he was suspended for a flirtation, at least, with a
common sort of a girl who lived in the academy town. I was as mad as a
lunatic at that; for though I understood nothing about such sort of
talk, I loathed the least breath of it as badly as Reg hated lying. And
while I was in a frenzy of wrath, and tearing away at both of the
impossible rowdy boys, up came old Grove, driving in from somewhere with
‘friends’ to whom he was going to sell the so-called Grove place. The
sight of me there made him mad anyway, for a reason that I can now
understand; and in a minute the other young boor had let out all about
our foolish work at the minister’s house; and, too, Reg’s affair with
the other girl; all this—imagine it—was blazed out before those four
men; mixing me, Reginald’s good straight maiden wife, up with things
which I simply felt sure were very detestable.
“Well, I went to my old nurse’s room (she had always staid there in the
family for my sake), and I got from her papers which auntie had gotten
from old Grove before she died, and had made nurse keep privately for
me, though he had hunted for them everywhere. For you must know that
they were legal documents which showed that the estate we lived on and
every cent of money on which he had been speculating was my money, which
he, as one guardian, held in trust for me, and was bound to invest for
me. So the more successfully he turned it over, the richer I was
growing. Well, you see? But the point with me was, I knew the possession
of this paper gave me a jack-wrench to put on old Grove, whenever I got
ready. But I loved Reg then in a way, and could not disgrace his father
without disgracing him. And I didn’t see how I could go to my other
guardian without letting him know how bad old Grove was. My nurse had
talked a good deal to me about it, and I had made up my mind the week
before, romantically, that I would marry Reg and turn my property all
over to him, and save his feelings, and keep him as rich as he thought
himself to be, and give him a surprise the day after we should be
married, by telling him all about it.
“What I did do was to take all those papers and my wedding certificate
and get away, carrying with me a look as if I would just as lief kill
anyone who spoke to me disrespectfully, like old Grove had done. I was
hateful enough looking to get on quite well. I got a good place to do
housework under the name of Jane Collins. I stayed there two years,
saving money, and terribly frightened lest Grove or Reg should find me.
Next, the lady I worked for recommended me as housekeeper for a
half-paralyzed old man, because I was good, and as ugly looking as
gloomy sin. I was a good nurse, and he said my touch made him stronger.
He was kind, but rather romantic; and finally I had to tell him my
story, because he wanted to marry me. I showed him my certificate, and
then I showed him my other papers; and because I could trust him, I told
him I had a plan of my own. I wanted a very fine education, and I wanted
to put my other guardian on old Grove’s track, so as to get my money all
into my own hands clear and fair, and then make it all over to Reg, who
wasn’t fit to rough it, somehow. But that I had got to do carefully, for
I was legally his wife, and so the money was his in a way; but that I
would never be Reg’s wife any longer than till the day I could find
myself in a condition to be divorced, and could make him marry the girl
who had been a good girl till he ruined her. My idea was that she really
was (law or no law) his wife more than I was. Heaven knows I didn’t want
ever to see him again. Yet I had that romantic, real, dispassionate sort
of principle which made me determined to keep my vow to do him good and
not evil, all the days of his life. So, as I say, I was bound he should
have the money, and marry the girl of whom I have told you, but whom I
never could find.
“All this seemed just fun to old Mr. Mancredo, and he took so much
interest in the ‘joke of the thing,’ as he called it, putting a lawyer
on Grove’s track, and fixing things up a little, while getting at facts,
that he grew better in health under it; and he had my eyes straightened,
and gave me the best of teachers, of which he was chief. And with
kindness, approbation, good treatment and all, by the time I was
twenty-four I was not only quite handsome, but had everything all about
my business in my own hands. But the poor little girl had died,—so
somebody said, but I’m not sure,—and that took my courage down. And Reg
was at West Point, ‘swinging round on my money,’ Mr. Mancredo said. But
you see Reg had called me a liar, and I loathed the whole mess. But you
see I had a woman’s pride in being, myself, _intrinsic wealth_ of a
finer sort than that thing called ‘money’ can fully represent. I wanted
to know how to do well (and in a way which would be of marketable value)
every sort of thing which could be needed in the economics of a broad
social-system. It made me sick to see men, who inherently had nothing
worth exchanging, quarreling so much to get their clutch on the ‘medium
of exchange’ called money. But not to stop about all that now, I can
only tell you that old Mr. Mancredo laughed so much, and had such a good
time over my theories, that he legally adopted me as his heiress and
daughter, and then got so well that we travelled all over Europe and the
Nile country, and he made my guardian stop bothering about the laws of
the matter, and appearances, and the rest of it. For why should I go
back to Reginald, who hated me, and force on him my money as a gift,
which he now was enjoying much better under the supposition that it was
his of right? Besides, I was really punishing old John Grove most
deliciously; and I relished that. For he was a singularly offensive old
animal; and besides, ‘if your enemy thirst, give him drink,’ and he was
awful on the money-thirst. And I was helping him to pour gold down his
own throat, with just enough of a scare with every gulp to make life a
terror to the old animal; and it was fun to me. But just before we
sailed for the Mediterranean I did send Reg one ringing slap. For I was
angry that he was such a coward as not to have fought for me against his
father. But then he was afraid as death of his ‘old dad,’ as he called
him; just as his mother had been. I wrote to him that his mother in
heaven would never forgive him for his treatment of me; for that she had
left me in his care, as a younger sister. And that now, however low he
sunk, he might look about him in the sloughs there, for any woman whom
he met might be the sister to whom he had betrayed his trust. I did not
mean to give him a chance to take much comfort in his badness. But I
meant to do more than to merely put a ‘death’s head’ at the feast of
life which he had spoiled for me. I knew that this letter would put him
on the wrong track, so that he would never look for me among the
cultivated, scholarly, useful women, whom I intended to lead before I
was forty. And besides, I felt it would give him an idea of the fact
that all women are the sisters of all men, and that a man is a felon if
he betrays their trust. So I thought this letter hit off all these
things pretty well; don’t you see that it did?
“Well, we travelled everywhere, Mr. Mancredo and I, and I cultivated a
leisurely, haughty manner, and grew high-colored, with magnificent eyes,
they said, and then I knew how to dress. And people commonly called me
‘Mrs. Mancredo.’ Sometimes I corrected it and sometimes I did not. The
world was so full of tangles that I scorned to bother myself about
names. I knew how staunch I was. And besides, I had such an innate
passion for chastity and continence, that the other sort of life seemed
as idiotic to me as to have dashed my brains out a little every day
would have seemed. Dear old Mancredo called me a very brainy woman, and
I valued that, and I enjoyed being good without letting anybody know it,
if you can imagine such a notion. But then, always, Miss Ethel, I have
devotedly loved my guardian angel.”
She became silent, and the silence was preserved. Then—
“We lived in Italy several years. My mother was an Italian, and so was
Mr. Mancredo, and I felt to be the middle-aged, rich Italian woman whom,
by adapting myself to dear Mr. Mancredo’s language and needs, in his
lameness, I was becoming. When he died I was as much a widowed heart as
if I had been his wife. He called me always a truthful, sound nature,
and encouraged me to believe that my last ‘slap’ at Reginald would
sicken him of vice, which, by the way, he curiously enough did not
believe Reginald was particularly guilty of. He said the false
conditions of woman’s environment had cultivated lack of frankness in
me, and that a certain sort of farcical manœuvering even now made me
like to put people in the wrong, to my own disadvantage, rather than to
allow them to intrude on my business, which is true. ‘You are too fond
of being privately good,’ said he, which was a funny fact.
“After everything was over and I had gotten back to America, Mr.
Mancredo’s lawyer (and he was my guardian) wanted me to come down on old
Grove, whose touch was turning everything to gold. They had come out
West here, and Reg was riding the social wave buoyed up by my money, and
I decided to come West and take a look at him, with the agreement that
at a word from me my lawyer should come on and fetch old Grove with him,
for he was under close surveillance on two accounts.
“And then at the hotel I found the poor fellow, awfully gone down, and
drinking away like a man with something on his conscience. I felt vexed
with him for getting nothing but brandy-slings out of all that money,
for there were people who needed it, and could have used it if he
couldn’t. I found it was said that he was a fellow who was afraid of
women. He had a queer way of looking at them, and his way with me was
his general way. Perhaps he thought any one of them might be me, and the
dread _wore_ on him. But he did not know me, and I rather had to press
myself on his attention, to try to make things come about so we could
settle on a divorce. But my attention to him made him shyer and more
distrustful than ever; yet he was perplexed by a half recognition at
times, too, I think.
“He never knew me, though, till that night on the stairs when I asked
him what would have become of that sister of his if she had been as
unprincipled as he had been. And then, oh dear, poor fellow, that was
the end of all for him! I have never been much to him, and never
anything to anyone else, but I have always been true to myself and to my
guardian angel.”
She stopped and gave way to the weeping that had twice interrupted her,
then said, drawing a full breath:
“So I am honestly and only Mrs. Reginald Grove.”
“Oh, my good Lord!”
It was Reginald’s voice, in full manhood’s tone.
“Oh, go to him, Ethel, I am afraid!” said Alitza.
But Reginald, parting the blinds, stepped out of the long window and
stood in the moonlight looking about him, with his hand to his head,
gazing at Ethel, who, rosy-red with joy, looked into the eyes of an
irate but not insane man.
“I have had enough of this talking outside my window. I tell you I don’t
know where I am. Send for Mrs. Mancredo. She’s a straight woman, but by
George, how she _will_ lie. Why, Miss Ethel, I didn’t know you. You are
looking old and queer, somehow. I’m frightened somehow. This room and
place—? Send for Robert. He’ll take me round to my hotel in his trap, as
he did yesterday.”
“Take my arm for a moment, and we will walk up and down the balcony,”
said Ethel. “Your foot feels as if it were asleep, does it not?”
“It feels as though it were waking up. Get out, man! Hold off there!”
said he, bracing back against the wall ready to strike out at Fleetwood,
his nurse, who approached too much in the character of an attendant to
escape distrust.
“I am here, Captain Grove,” said Ethel. “You are my guest.”
“I am your guest, Miss Ethel? Well, that’s all right then. You hear
that, you peeping idiot back there? I’m Miss Ethel’s guest; but I tell
you others, the whole posse of you, to keep away from me, or I’ll knock
you all down, like ninepins in an alley. They are for shutting me up
somewhere. I have heard lots of talk about it, and if that dark fellow
isn’t a doctor, what is he, with his soft-stepping ways?
“There, look at that. There are my roses, not wilted yet; and there is
my Petrarch. There’s no drunk about me. I was here yesterday. I remember
everything: only I forget some of it. Oh,—oh, Miss Ethel, what has
happened?”
“Just this: you have been ill, but you are getting well now.”
“There now, you’re telling the truth. But when have I been ill, and
where have I been ill?” said he, reassured, yet with the anger of a
proud man fighting against the treachery of his faculties. “Look here.
That’s—_that’s_ Mrs. Mancredo that I hear crying somewhere. It breaks me
all up to have that woman so unhappy. Come, Miss Ethel, if you believe
in prayer, down on your knees, and tell them up there to keep paralysis
off a fellow like me. I’m not half a bad lot, I tell you. No, indeed;
I’m not half bad.”
At last Ethel brought him to see that if he would submit to patient
thought he would soon bridge the mental hiatus that now afflicted him,
since his mind had been abstracted from things about him. But that only
made him anxious to have one good fight with the best fellow there, to
prove that there was nothing the matter with him, and never had been.
“Well, then, take me,” said Daniel Daksha, coming up; his presence so
full of blessed content that Reginald laid his hand in that man’s with a
comforted sense that “old Heem,” as he was sometimes called, would see
him through all right.
It was held to be desirable that Reginald should be saved from the
sudden shock of the knowledge that as thirty odd years had been blotted
out of his memory at the time of his paralysis, so now at this crisis of
probable recovery the years which had since intervened, with their life
of other worldliness and other consciousness, were swept away for the
moment, like a dream forgotten.
Daniel’s full comprehension of a brief but similar lapse from
consciousness that had once befallen him, prepared him to help Reginald
thoroughly.
Reginald was singularly, courteously grateful for the care which he saw
had been taken of him, in bringing him to this private home. But his
mind was full of shadowy incidents related to the two worlds in which he
had lived. And Daniel well knew the terrors and mental perils of a man
recently returned as from a far country. He knew Reginald Grove felt
badgered and broken-hearted at the incongruous, conflicting memories
which bewildered him; and he felt that presently, when Reginald should
begin to recall the blissful states of existence now left behind him as
in a dreamland, he would fall into conditions of homesickness for those
states of exaltation, which might result in settled melancholia or
suicide.
The possibility of this man’s being mentally wrecked, after all the
lofty care which had been bestowed on him, seemed a disaster which could
and should be diverted. For it was Daniel’s theory that a man who had
gone through such an experience as this, should find a way to make
himself of use to others tempted and tried in a like way; and that
therefore he must pull through.
So rising to his feet, and standing between Reginald and Ethel, he said
staunchly, looking at Reginald:
“Ethel, he is well now; and what I have to say is, that a man who has
been so expensively educated by angels in heaven and on earth, as this
Captain Reginald Grove has been, will of course be honorable and
soldierly enough to review coolly all the extraordinary lessons he has
learned, digesting the facts which seem confusing, and winning out of
them at last an order of knowledge which will fit him to do for other
needy fellows the same things which we Dakshas have done for him.”
Reginald looked up with a glad, proud expectancy, now quite sure that
all was right enough with him, and that he had had some unusually good
thing befall him, which in some way fitted him to be quite a friend with
the Dakshas, and a coworker with them in unusual lines.
Then with the strong tone of one determined to get at facts, he said:
“Miss Ethel, what whitened your hair since—since the day on the
balcony?”
“It turned white in one night. For I will tell you this: there is a
world where a day is as a thousand years; and we learn fast in a few
seconds there.”
“And did you go to that world?”
“I did,” said Ethel.
“How did you get back?”
“It was my inner self that went. No one looking at my outer self—my
body—could have seen that I was away.”
“Well,” said Reginald, after a prolonged look into her face and his own
memories: “I see that you are the same old truthful young girl, who said
kind words to me one day out on your balcony, all about my mother and
roses, and the goodness of wealth, and that you wished, with me, that I
was but five years old. Now what you say would look to some people
uncommon unlikely. But—but if you don’t know about your own hair—whose
hair should—” He heard an hysterical giggle.
“Oh, there she is at her old tricks. There’s Mrs. Mancredo making fun of
a fellow,” he said irritably.
“But then, you see,” said Ethel, “she’s not been away, as you and Daniel
and I have. But you will soon find your way back; we did, though it
seemed unnatural at first, and we felt homesick for the upper air. Sleep
now; in the morning all will seem more natural, and Mrs. Mancredo will
help you.”
He slept, and slept soundly. In the morning he was up early. What he
wanted to see now, was Mrs. Mancredo. She seemed to him somehow to be
his oldest friend; and a homesickness for old, old friends had begun to
lay hold on him.
He warily looked about. The doors were open; he would go out. If any one
stopped him he would know they thought him mad; and if they did, he
would knock them down and run. But no one seemed to care where he was
going. He passed Ethel and she bowed to him, with a cordial
good-morning; and Daniel Heem, who was reading on the other balcony,
bowed cordially; but it was all with the air that they were all alike,
and at their ease in that house.
There were two men down by the lake-bluffs. But no one seemed to care
where he was going. The air and the sunshine were good; and it felt
strangely good (though queer) to use his own legs. He looked about
warily, tarrying in the rose-garden. But no infant ever longed more than
he for caressing love; and no man fired with wrath against some
tormenting thing, felt readier than he to deal a death-blow. Yes, he
would get away to the little old arbor in the shrubbery, and there, all
alone, he would cry his heart free (he told himself) for something he
had lost. Then crying as he ran, and running as he cried, he at last
flung himself down on the breast of mother earth, longing for some
unnamable treasure.
What had befallen? Realms of being had been opened to his knowledge,
whose delights the repeating power of his brain could not repicture. He
felt as if starving for what he had lost. He bit at the earth, with
inarticulate cries of soul-bereftness.
Suddenly two arms closed about him, lifting him till his head rested on
a throbbing bosom. They tightened till he felt himself swayed gently to
and fro, while sobs, strong as his own, shook the rocking form which
held him. As he lay extended, half along the ground and half in this
sheltering care, there came to him something of that sort of peace in
which his senses had been enveloped when he before had floated away into
that child-kingdom from which he had had last night so rude an
awakening. He waited wonderingly.
A hand pressed back the hair from his forehead.
“Don’t you know me, Reginald?”
He opened his eyes and saw black velvet. Was he dead? Was coffin couch
so soft? Did angel arms so sweetly clasp poor mortal form within that
narrow bound?
Not yet, at least. For bending over him he saw black orbs and cheeks
tear-flushed. The velvet was a woman’s dress; and laces there rose and
fell with the palpitations of a woman’s heart.
It was Mrs. Mancredo; and she held him tight, as if she would never let
him go.
“I thought you were my mother,” he said.
“Ethel Daksha, do you mean?” she asked, after a strange pause.
“No-o-o, my own dear mother. I thought I was well dead at last; I wish I
were. I have been so knocked about.”
Presently he said, out of the silence, in a good common-sense way: “I
must be awfully sick, or you wouldn’t hold me—like this, as if—as if I
were fainted, you know.”
She shivered. “Don’t you know me?” He sat up and looked at her, and
wondered if he must doubt his own senses next. No, the flush on the dark
cheek, the soft brown orbs and wealth of black hair, were all beauties
possessed by his tormenting friend, Mrs. Mancredo. Like a summer
night-lightning memory flashed, sending him to search her face to find
in it—the link lost in his twice-dissevered life.
“Of course I know you,” he said angrily; “and as I don’t seem to be
dying, I’ll stand on my feet.” And he gave her his hand, helping her to
rise, with his wits all about him.
Something in his act and look whelmed the soul of this strange woman who
had been his playmate from childhood up, and had parted from him on the
bridal hour. And sinking on the arbor-seat she wept violently. With a
scowl of distress and of another emotion, in which there was no liking,
tortured by the mental hiatus which the sight of Mrs. Mancredo
intensified, he said suddenly: “Why do you tell such falsehoods? I hate
it in woman.”
Astonished, and giggling nervously at his queer starts and turns, her
eyes shining like lambent stars through the mist, chiefly concerned not
to startle him, and falling back into the way which, as “little Alitza,”
she had had to use toward him for the last five years, she gently said:
“Well, Regie, I never will again.”
“Oh, oh, they speak like that where I just came from!” he cried. “Tell
me, oh, tell me, was it a trance? I cannot endure this cloud over my
mind which is so thin that I can almost see through it, and yet so dense
that it stifles me. Tell me all!” he pleaded.
“I will. Stop me if I skip anything that you want explained. You have
been for quite a while with the Dakshas. I have been here, too. You have
lived a double existence; and though I could see you every day, you
seemed never to see Mrs. Mancredo, but instead, your thoughts were away
in some other world and time. You thought Ethel Daksha was your mother,
and always called her so. And once I dreamed, or I saw you, with your
real mother and Ethel Daksha together in the unseen world, and—”
“Yes, yes, angels and my mother’s touch—and—Laura and Petrarch, and
sustained ecstasies she brought in on my soul, flooding my very brain
with joys, warm, white, flying joys—which—oh, it is gone, I am lost
again. No, no, I have it. There was great whiteness, great light, Alpine
heights and woman there, in the grace and glory of electric might,
competent to make man mount as on wings, as eagle’s wings ascending
heights, else inaccessible! I was a boy, always playing with joys,
sweeter than wine and more freely fine. No one blamed another there, and
no one hurried. And I saw always Alitza there; and nothing had harmed
her, for her angels had guarded her at every step. Oh, take me back! No,
no, I will not go back! You think I rave; I do not, I only remember too
much at once. I must remember that Daniel just said—you heard it
yourself—that a man so expensively educated by angels of earth and
heaven must be honorable and soldierly, and gather himself to do for
others what has been done for his redemption to good use on earth. Come,
oh, once more try and bring me what I lack!”
“You know, Reginald, after we all had last night a strange, a heavenly
strange evening, you suddenly roused out of your long, long inattention
to what was going on about you. And now you seem to have forgotten
everything since the night five years ago when you quarrelled (are you
listening?) with Mrs. Mancredo on the stairs of the hotel, when—”
“Oh where, where is little Alitza—playmate, sister, and—she, you—it is
strange you are both such liars!”
“Reginald Grove! You miserable thing,” she said in wholesome anger; “is
that all you can remember about me—us? You are not worth saving.”
“Oh, Mrs. Mancredo, you are—are only and honestly Mrs. Reginald Grove! I
heard you say it. Wait, my brain can’t stand it. You are—”
“Only and honestly Mrs. Reginald Grove,” she repeated. “My only marriage
is with you, just as you understand and remember its limitation, nothing
more. We are all seeking a simple life here, with little marriage or
giving in marriage, because the power of the angels, with whom we
co-operate for the redemption of the Cerberi, is all and in all for us.
“And Reginald, listen to me carefully: No one blames another here; no
one hurries or worries, or enters on wordy discussions of past blunders
or future plans. We act, leaving no room for license, but taking the
liberty to each one be his or her best self, according to individual
judgment.
“Now, Reginald, my permanent relation to you is that of sister. I have
in no real sense ever been, or wanted to be, your wife; neither shall I
ever be. You will hear from the lawyer tomorrow how absolutely sisterly
was the affection which impelled me to agree to your wish for our
marriage, such as it was; and you will see that the plans I laid in my
own mind at eighteen, will be carried out if you like them, now in our
maturity. I shall then be legally divorced from you, and—”
She looked at him. His face was bright and cheerful, interested, and
perhaps a little perplexed; but above all, cheerful, alert and rather
exhilarated.
She continued. “Remember this: We here are all dwellers on the threshold
which is between things seen with the physical vision (so to say) and
the things which are invisible to those eyes. We are chiefly interested
in getting ourselves (and keeping ourselves) in right relations to the
realms of supersensuous life, with which we may choose to surround
ourselves. For of course we draw about us spirits, which in tendencies
and longings are like ourselves. Listen to me: One of the family here,
who has a far-reaching inheritance of psychic-faculty and self-poised
spiritual power, is—”
“Is,” said Reginald, “the one woman in the world who is, in a way, my
wife more than you are.”
Alitza sprang to her feet, flushed and with blazing eyes. For however
thoroughly she ought to have been glad that the way was so clear, and
Reginald so evidently relieved and ready to give her up, she was not
prepared for this raw style of arriving at the conclusion. Till,
suddenly, “Truth is his strong point, you know,” seemed uttered in her
ears, as if in Ethel’s distant spirit tone. She caught herself up and
steadied her angry pulse, and listened, trembling and expectant; but
there was nothing more.
Then “Very well, you know your business and I know mine,” she said, and
left him.
He had all his wits about him, and filled with a sudden sense of the
electric shock which Bertha’s finger-point had sent through him on the
day of Ethel’s conversation with her, he gathered up (with a tingling
sense of shame) all that they together had one day said of him, as being
“a fool not worth mothering.”
The blood surged through his brain, bubbling up cleansingly through all
the stagnant cells, bringing him in its parts and as a whole, a memory
of the things which had been going on about him for the five years of
double-consciousness through which he had lived.
Later in the day he felt strangely happy, and clear-headed and proud,
and ready for life; as if he had been assured by competent judges that
he was really a much more level-headed man, and had always been more
level-headed, with a much clearer eye for the main point at stake, than
anything in his stultified life heretofore had proved.
He saw perfectly well that the story of his life could not end here amid
the congratulations of his friends over his return to health, and their
assurances in relation to Mrs. Mancredo that he was a lucky fellow, with
a wife possessed of such faithfulness and maturity of youthful power.
For of course the story that she was his wife, and all the rest of it,
had gotten abroad. And Reginald knew it had.
Perhaps if his mental grasp as to moral relations had been as bewildered
as it was when, five years before, he regularly turned to his “drinks”
in order to quiet his perplexities, he would have accepted the
congratulations and slipped along the lines as publicly expected of him.
But five years’ immersion in the blithesome delights of a world where
righteousness reigned, had fortified Reginald in his inherent love of
truth and straightforward dealing, and had enabled him to adopt as
theories to be immediately practicalized, the methods of honor (founded
on simplicity and courage) toward which the Dakshas aspired.
So when a few days later he found Alitza had legally passed over to him
a good little fortune, and had taken steps to secure (on some of the
many available pleas) a legal release from the results of that
marriage-ceremony, he said, cheerfully and blithely: “That’s all right.”
And when he further learned that Alitza had deeded a further amount of
wealth to Bertha Gemacht, he said: “That’s all wrong; I won’t allow it.
I hope to marry her, and so right up things. And the other money is
enough for both of us,” showing that, as Alitza said to herself, “five
years, even in the society of angels, could not rid the Grove blood of
the thought that a man can cast off a woman when he chooses, and then
marry her when he gets ready; but that, having married her, such a man
felt it was better for him that she should possess as little of that
legal tender called money, as possible; seeing (to the Grove notion of
things) it was sum and substance of independence. She told Ethel that
the irrepressible young hoodlum stood confessed at this touchstone, as
far as his relations to what he would have called ‘this sort of a woman’
were concerned. Then she said to Grove: “It seems difficult for you to
understand that you have nothing to do with what money someone else may
choose to give to a third person, let that third person be whom it may.”
For quarrel these two people must, by nature. And glad Alitza was that
she had always kept him beyond arm’s length, and now had not let her
sympathy with his sickness, or her joy at his recovery, cause her to
abbreviate the distance between their ineradicable antagonisms.
“This is a different case,” said he.
“All cases are alike here, for all are individuals,” said she.
“But—she—she’s to be my wife.”
“That’s what you don’t yet know,” said Alitza. “Pah, it takes more than
a visit to paradise to take that sort of stuff out of your brains. I see
the use of purgatory now. You ought to have gone there and staid longer.
We’ve all agreed to let you drop, the next time you knock yourself to
pieces. So look out!”
“All right, then, I won’t take your money,” said he.
“Well, leave it; or you can put it into the sinking fund for the
enterprise of this family,” she said. “No one is overinfluenced here.”
And he did it that day.
And then the divorce was amicably enough accomplished, but the other
marriage did not occur.
He said to Ethel afterwards, with wide eyes full of childlike wonder:
“How queer! Do you know _she_ refused me? I’m—I’m afraid, you know,
she’s somehow gone wrong, in spite of all your good opinions.”
And Alitza, speaking of this remark, said, irate, to Daniel: “After all,
it does seem as if it took a burial six feet under ground to get that
stuff out of him and his like. Why can’t they take to decency as
naturally as women do?”
“Oh, all he needs is some real misery,” said Daniel. “Leave him to get
it in his own way. He has dreamed of heaven and languished sentimentally
in paradise, but his business is now to pull himself up out of sluggish
uselessness to others. Turning away that money of yours into the public
good, is a hint at something courageous.”
“Anyway,” said Alitza, “Regie’s as truthful as a dumb brute, even when
he is tossed about by his instincts. He told me, today that he had never
had any feeling toward me but a brother’s anxiety and sense of
responsibility, and that he knew all about the property matter from the
nurse; and that he did hate his ‘old dad,’ and had a sort of hankering
after revenge; and besides, felt it was too mean for the old man to be
cheating me out of my money. And when the nurse said ‘there was enough
for both, and for him to ask me to marry him,’ he thought it would be
about the only way to fix things up easy all round. Yet that when it was
done, and we quarreled all the way home from the minister’s, he felt
sick of it. For he had no love for me like that. And the sight of his
‘old dad’s’ fury threw him into confusion and terror, and a sort of dumb
sickness, just as he had seen in his mother many a time. So he said
today, in his simple way, he was as glad as anything that I had pulled
through life so splendidly; and was glad, in a way, that we didn’t in
the least care for each other, and could be divorced all comfortably.”
“It’s a queer case, and, in a way, uncommonly sweet, take it altogether,
as these sorts of confusing marital troubles go in these days. For I was
privately planning to marry him, so that he could have the house and
money that he thought were his own, without creating any fuss with old
Grove over the affair. And he was chivalrously going to marry me (in
fact did in a way) so as to deliver me and my money out of old Grove’s
clutches without disgracing his father. Of course it was all quite as if
the question of managing the money were the one question on earth to be
considered. Isn’t it disgraceful? Think of the confusion that comes of
unintelligent conduct, in regard to what real love and real marriage is.
In a way, Reg is a lovable fellow, and has some common sense in him. He
is my own cousin, anyway, and I would do anything to save him except to
marry him, and luckily he don’t want me to do that; so I can mother him
still, as I have always done. I promised his mother I would do my best
for him; and I find he had promised to do the same by me. And I think we
have both blunderingly tried.”
“Oh, he’ll be well mothered among them all,” said Robert, when Daniel
one day told him all this. “And the queer part is, it is my opinion that
Mrs. Mancredo loves him with the soundest kind of a real wife love,
whether she knows it or not. But as for him, he says he has never had a
permanent attraction toward any woman except the mother of his child.
And now she dreads him with a furious fear, lest he should somehow set
up a claim, and get power over her boy. I’ve seen women like that
before. I wonder where these transitional states will land us all.”
“It is the great question of the day,” said Daniel. “But manœuvres on
the part of men to disguise from women the conditions of this crucial
epoch will not help the cause along. Men must come into recognition of
the fact that perfect frankness between men and women will lead up to a
natural settlement of the matter as nothing else will do. In fact, it
depends altogether upon the courageous doings of the dualized.”
“Just what do you mean by dualized?” said Robert.
“I mean first, as Bacon says, the men and women ‘who have procured the
will to obey the reason, not to invade it.’”
“He called that the moralization of the whole being; you call it the
dualization. But you include something else,” said Robert, “in your last
meaning.”
“Oh, that last point comes later. And no person is ready even to discuss
that, until first the subjection of the will to the reason is
accomplished by them and in them. That includes the real moralization of
the whole being, body and spirit,” said Daniel.
“And so, Robert,” said Ethel, “it is mother-wisdom, full of divinest
love which impels Bertha to protect herself and child against what she
fears in Reginald. But perhaps the same mother-wisdom, full of divine
love, will—now that she is financially independent of him—bring her, in
the near future, to be as noble a wife-friend to Reginald as ever a
poor, struggling fellow-creature had. She is a noble woman, rightly
considered.”
“She is,” said Mrs. Mancredo. “And she is quite the person to never rest
until she puts one for whom she feels responsible (as she now does for
Reginald) into the way of finding his best self. She wants to help
Reginald exactly as she will Waldemar. That is, to tell him all the
facts, and then leave him free to become what he adores in—well—that
is—oh, how can one express it!
“For my part,” she resumed, “my love for humanity is and always has been
broader, more intelligent and spiritualizing than a self-arrested,
masculine soul can imagine. The fact is, men in the past have praised a
_simulacrum_ of womanhood which with dire ARTS and infernal-wizzardry
they, themselves demonologically concocted. Then they have set up before
the _androgynous_ mind of a vigorous, virginal womanhood, this unclean
SIMULACRUM of woman, as the thing that she must emulate, or be damned,
to use ‘pulpit words.’
“It is of no use opening your eyes, Robert; I may take my departure the
_next_ moment, but I will tell the truth _this_. But the best way to
stop talking disagreeable things is to set vigorously about doing
agreeable things. So now what I have to propose is this: In this house
we bachelor-maids (glancing toward Ethel) and MAIDENLY-MOTHERS who
_enjoy_ a celibate life, and who are legally and financially independent
of men, should hold on to our shekels and our homes (NOT AS FOOLISH
SOCIAL-CENTERS or as unremunerative idols, to be scrubbed and garnished,
but) as centers where we can do what the Bible speaks of when it says,
‘He sets the solitary in families.’
“It takes so much time to run up and down the earth and to salary
officers to show us how _not_ to do it, that I would rather permanently
go right on here, ready for emergencies, with an occasional timely
home-extension.”
“Oh, I imagine that really would be about like our Daniel’s idea, when I
was a little fellow,” said Robert. “When we first came out West, and
when we had plenty of grain and three or four cows, and a well-built,
sunny house, and the big windows full of plants, and an outfit of
kinder-garden ‘gifts’ and Daniel’s perfect knowledge of the
philosophically-religious-science of child-gardening; and when I had
agreed to buy all the clothes for as many children as happened to come
to the door, and when we were hindered, because the mother there,” he
said, halting with a quizzical glance at Althea, “would not have all
sorts of nondescript children homing themselves in our house. Your
thought, Mrs. Mancredo, is about like Daniel’s and mine then was.
“But, Mrs. Mancredo, my mother was queen of that home, and was a
splendid homemaker, with Daniel’s help; only in our case she was the
money-maker, and Daniel was the family philosopher. Yet she would no
more tolerate the thought than as if there were some moral taint, in
being simply good to folks. And as Daniel was taking the part of
mother-man and Althea of the _man-mother_, Daniel succumbed. Now seeing
we are all telling the truth, JUST AS IF THE LIGHT THAT LIGHTETH EVERY
MAN WAS SHINING RIGHT THROUGH US, REVEALING ALL THAT IN EACH OF US
HINDERS THE GROWTH OF ‘THE LILIES’ OF THIS RESURRECTION TIME,—let’s have
the man-mother tell us, if she can, why she did not let other children
share Ethel’s ideal surroundings and true academical-advantages, which
that man-of-men, Daniel, was so lavishly bestowing on one little
solitary girl. Will you tell us, lady?” said Robert.
The giant was timid and fragmentary in his statements, like one whose
brain was crowded full of self-adjusting ideals. His headaches made him
distrustful of himself in these days. But better times were coming.
Althea, the man-mother, the business head of the family (for that she
had been), looked perturbed. She wished Robert had not brought up that
question, either publicly or privately. She looked at him in a way that
meant: “Robert, tell them it’s no matter about it.” But he did not tell
them so; he wanted to know. They were all hunting for truth, and women
were wanting men to tell the truth squarely to them, so that men could
start _and eventually_ “square the circle.” By inference, women are to
now explicitly unveil the remote recesses of their mental-hidingplaces;
and that was what the judicial-looking Robert now said blankly to
Althea.
Althea, quite amazed, raised her eyes, so like Robert’s, with a
half-challenging shake of the head. But he looked stringent and unmoved.
She rose a little uneasily on her chair, quaintly folding her handsome
hands, like a child who “did not know the answer.” No one smiled. All
gazed at her unflinchingly, every eye magisterially beholding her.
For all the years of the children’s lives _she_ had taken _them_ to task
like this, saying: “Of course you know _why_ you do each act; or, of
course you would refrain from action till you found out.”
_She_ had never been taken to task before, and had rushed through too
many strokes of big business to submit to much interference.
It was not that she was unwilling to explain the facts of this affair;
it was that she did not “understand such a little thing.” So she said:
“I do not know.”
“Oh, oh, Robert, would _you_ ever dare to ‘NOT KNOW’?” said Ethel,
folding her hands in imitation of Althea.
“Not in my wildest moments,” said Robert.
“Why,” interposed Althea, “what else would you have me say, when I
don’t? Doubtless it is something to do with some two or
three-thousand-year-old-scare which some antediluvian ghost of you men
put on my ancient shade, when you tried to tell as bad falsehoods as are
betimes told now, concerning woman’s nature, duty and—concerning the
_secrecy_ necessary to be sustained about home-affairs, because of the
untellable horrors prevalent within palace and hut,—where worse than
brute passions usurp control over the priestesses of what—home? No, that
is a word very generally needing to be illustrated by a new style of
marital life. However, Daniel and I know what home is; and so do my
children. There was nothing in our home which would not have bettered
the world to know about. That is the reason I can’t tell you _why_ I was
averse to have a lot of little children educated and homed and cared for
with Ethel,” she said perplexed. “Perhaps I was feeling stingy and
tired. At any rate, I remember I wanted to get rich.
“But Daniel; consider what an exclusive home I was born and bred in, and
how long ago it was, and what departures from old-fashioned dependency I
even then had risked. The fact that of old, woman was chiefly protected
in an enforced-penury, of which she was bitterly ashamed, tended to give
her that preposterous fashion of (metaphorically) peeping out of doors
and windows, and scurrying round to make the best of things before
admitting eyes (much less individuals) into the secrets of the domicile
where she slaved (as I never did); but where she did not intellectually
and morally reign, as Daniel and I together did.
“Now, Robert, I hope you are satisfied. I have told the truth as to an
age-long tendency in women ‘to want their home all to themselves.’ But
other things and complications there might have been about it, too. I am
tired of that subject now, Robert.”
“But just one word. Why should women feel so afflicted about this penury
business?”
Althea, for reasons of her own, did not like this following up of this
matter, and Ethel took on herself to answer:
“The reason was and is, because the world is the continent of every form
of life, knowledge and beauty necessary for all the needs and delights
of an intellectualized humanity. So woman’s discontent, anger and unrest
at stagnant, self-stultifying conditions, are elements especially
serviceable to her less alert and foreseeing companion.”
Adding: “‘The sense of beauty, _next to the miraculous, divine suasion_,
is the means through which HUMAN character is purified and elevated.’”
“I like that answer well,” said Robert. “And I think the power which
beauty has over us all makes us more amenable to that ‘miraculous,
divine suasion’ through which man is finally purified and elevated.
“Well, that’s finely finished, and I think we are to be congratulated on
the success of our attempt at square dealing,” continued Robert. “But
you know, Ethel, in the old days you and Daniel had some mysterious
talisman by which you discovered if any _goddesses_ came to town in the
Civil (?) War-time days, when so many unhappy babies were likely to be
neglected. Other kinds than the goddess sort you seemed to think were
material not worth your time and attention. I have thought of your way
of discriminating then, in association with the amount of time which you
blessed souls have since seen fit to give to that Reginald?”
He put this in the form of a question, and Ethel said:
“There is in Reginald ‘a little seed of immortal power, which will save
its kind alive.’ Therefore he was especially worth saving. He will help
progress toward conditions in which the ARTS OF PEACE will prosper. For
this progress is dependent on the _intelligibility of the doings of
dualized_—self-harmonized natures. _He_ will make such things
intelligible when he gains equilibrium.
“Bertha, now, is such an one. She has come up out of the scarth of great
tribulation, and she has washed her robes white in the life-blood of her
own bleeding heart, image as it is of the bleeding heart of the Mother
of divine Humanity. She, the outraged, has become pitiful to him who
crucified her and put her to open shame—a shame which she will never
forget. And,” continued Ethel, after a strange pause, “which I should be
sorry to see her forget. For such dealings with woman are not to be
permitted nor condoned. Nevertheless, Reginald is worth saving, though
he should not be encouraged, Mrs. Mancredo, to suppose Bertha will have
anything more to say to him than to—”
“What, Miss Ethel, do you really mean that you women are going to
conspire to make all other women leave us men alone in peace?” said
Reginald, walking out from his secluded chair in the corner behind the
portières, where he had half relapsed into his old fashion of floating
away into union with _reflective agencies_. “Do you mean,” he repeated
stumblingly, as he came into their circle, “Do you mean that women are
to be taught somehow to leave us men to mind our business? We men are
dead tired of women, all of us; but we can’t really get rid of them. We
often feel like shrieking out at women: ‘For heaven’s sake, take
yourselves out of sight and hearing for a thousand years. Get out of our
light, and give us a chance to find _ourselves_!’
“They take too much out of our self-esteem when they tell the truth; and
when they don’t, they take too much out of our esteem for _them_, which
is worse yet, for our comfort. We know there is something wrong about
us, but as we don’t quite understand ourselves, of course we can’t make
them understand us. The reason I want to shriek out at them is—well—it
is queer, but it is because I like _them so much_.”
Robert laughed out, as if he had a fellow feeling for Reginald in this
difficulty.
“Now that sounds queer, but it is the truth, isn’t it, Robert?” he said,
with translucent, beautiful orbs raised in integrity. For Reginald was
having an amazing good time, telling the truth as he understood it. But
then he went on and told other truths so simply and helpfully, that they
began to fear he was really getting sick again.
“See that? Now look at that,” he said. “I have been listening to you, to
see how much you would bear in the way of real endeavor at
truth-tellings. And now, when I speak as plainly as I can, you think my
brain is giving way. Now listen to me. If a lot of good men and women
don’t speak the truth about this matter of love, a lot of good brains
will give way under the contradictory teachings that some sorts of
churches are by silence consenting to, while protecting men in
debauching woman-power, in marriage and out. Protestant churches never,
in my experience of their doings, assist women to establish themselves
on their own moral heights; even though these churches know that,
standing thus and there, women would lift men up to these heights, and
so easily hasten forward man’s truly human development. Besides, such
women’s sons would be born right the first time, and have less need of a
second birth. Woman could do so much for us if we would only give her a
fair chance to work according to her genius.
“You know how it was with LAURA?” Nothing could exceed his tenderness
and devotion as Reginald uttered this name, once so dear to Petrarch.
And then, as if reciting a memorized matter he went on in his distant,
ventriloquized voice:
“If that idolized object of Petrarch’s vehement passion had not held to
her rectitude (notwithstanding the harsh vicissitudes of her home), that
man Petrarch would never have known that _that_ woman’s personal
attractions were not her _real_ charm for him. For that _they_ were
excelled by her inherent moral glory and her spiritual-percipience.
“He would not have known that what he really adored was her _interior_
SELF, which SELF it was his business by the grace of HE-VAH to develop
_in himself_. And if by lack of rectitude she had failed of holding him
up to the business of understanding her spirit (instead of merely
possessing her personal attractions), he might not have learned the
truth as to WHAT LOVE FOR WOMAN IS FOUNDATIONED UPON EVEN IN THIS LIFE.
And in that case he would not, at her translation to the unseen world,
have been carried forward by his love to THE TRIUMPHS OF SELF-DISCOVERY
which befalls us when the Lord into his garden comes and the LILIES GROW
AND THRIVE.”
He was looking straight into the air as one does when remembering (or
putting together again) the parts of a total, which, though perfect in
its whole, is yet painfully puzzling in its stages of partial
development.
He was looking into the air much as he had been used to do before his
recovery of speech, when in mellifluous tones, scarcely audible, he had
talked on in a language quite unknown as the listening Ethel upbore his
highest intelligence, aiding him as he tried to tell what Petrarch had
sought and at last had found in his “VITA SOLITARIA.”
“As it was, after Laura’s translation to the unseen world his love for
her spiritualized into a worship for that _love-full-of wisdom_ which
our Lord promised to send to lead us into all truth, and which he called
‘the Comforter,’ which was to dwell in disciples of holiness.
“Well would it be for us if we could first, chastely love all womanhood
as sisters; and then as mothers, noble and dignified, which is far from
being cold and proud. I am sure woman could (if we cleared her way
respectfully) put us at our ease with her on her own supernal plane,
without descending to us from it. If woman remained on her lawful
heights she would leave us men always aspiring toward some veiled and
virgin loveliness which would quicken each dulled spirit, and set it
free from the chains that bind _thought_ to the person, instead of to
the _spiritual-principle_ toward which, in reality, man’s interior
nature aspires.
“Of course all this is only saying that woman is a help, able to meet
her brother’s painful needs at this _fin de siècle_. And that she is
awfully benevolent to do it, when she has a right to better enjoyments
than that of the misery of birthing and burying babies—many of whom are
not fit to be born—and to better enjoyment than this taking care of men,
who are not fair enough to secure to _her_ those advantages which would
enable her to act freely, according to the teachings of supernal light.
“I have always been sure,” added Reginald, “that at a certain stage in
man’s development the best thing a wisely-helpful-woman can do for a
man, is to set him absolutely free from love to _her_. That, chained to
_her no more_, she can then, with kind demeanor and dear reserve,
explain him to himself by revealing to him the mental-mystery of that
finished femininity, which is type and potency of the ‘sleeping beauty’
within his own being,—a sleeping beauty yet to be electrified into
activity by man’s strenuous englobement of his brain substance. Thus, a
fair face will conduct men by a fairer way to his one means of
self-releasement from loving an extraneous self, and will bring him to
the treasured bliss which will ne’er abandon the man who attains it!
Thus man—like woman—will become wholly sexed: neither male nor female,
but-both; being self-whole, self-harmonized, like the lilies of the
Resurrection.”
Robert had grasped Reginald’s hand.
A silence had settled upon them.
Then Robert, with smouldering rage, broke forth relative to
he—knew—what—
“And yet in the face of all this, think of the embrutalized form of
marriage-ceremony which thrusts words into the mouth of a spiritual man
who is suitor for a life-long union with a woman who is an image of the
feminine in Deity! Think of a decent man having to take into his mouth
that indecent, shoppy remark; a remark which is prescribed to him by a
shoppy-church in response to woman’s enforced promise that she will obey
him. The decent man is made to say (and worse still, the
intellectually-hungry maiden is made to hear him say) ‘With my body (why
not with my brain?) I thee worship.’ ‘And with all my worldly goods (why
not with his best intelligence?) I thee endow.’”
“Is there not some immediate way to lift the grace of fine living out of
the sloughs with which a most materialistic on-striding form of religion
is saturating it?” he asked impatiently. “It is you women who are to
blame for upholding this materialistic-sacerdotalism,” continued Robert.
“There is a way,” said Daniel.
“And we will fetch it forward,” said they all at once, steadying poor
Robert, who had had a peculiar state of nature, added to a sight of “the
better way,” to rightly adjust.
“Yes,” said Daniel, “there is a way; and it is bourgeoning forth on
every side. It is the Resurrection-dawn, for now the Lord into his
garden has come, and the lilies grow and thrive.”
AD FINIS.
“... the lover ascends to the highest beauty (to the love and knowledge
of the Divinity) by steps on this ladder of created souls. Somewhat like
this the truly-wise have told us of love, in all ages; the doctrine is
not old nor is it new.
“If Plato, Plutarch and Apuleius taught it, so have Petrarch, Angelo and
Milton. It awaits a truer unfolding in opposition and rebuke to that
subterranean prudence which presides at marriage, with words that take
hold on the upper world, whilst one eye is prowling in the cellar; so
that its greatest discourse has a savor of hams and powdering tubs.
“Worst, when this sensualism intrudes on the education of young women,
and teaches that marriage means nothing but a housewife’s thrift; and
that woman’s life has no other aim.”—_Emerson._
_FINIS._
[Illustration: EASTERTIDE OF 1898.]
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in
spelling.
2. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.
3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.