‘Yes,’ said Mary, her eyes falling, for a moment, beneath his earnest gaze; but suddenly she lifted them again as she said bravely, ‘I have a sermon, but it is one with a trumpet-call, and little balm in it. “Unto whomsoever anything is given, of him something shall be required.”’

When he reached the corner of the street he stopped, but instead of glancing four ways, as usual, he looked back at the porch where Mistress Mary stood. She carried Jenny Baker, a rosy sprig of babyhood, in the lovely curve of her arm; Bobby Baxter clasped her neck from behind in a strangling embrace; Johnny, and Meg, and Billy were tugging at her apron; and Marm Lisa was standing on tiptoe trying to put a rose in her hair. Then the Solitary passed into the crowd, and they saw him in the old places no more.

XIII
LEAVES FROM MISTRESS MARY’S GARDEN

‘We have an unknown benefactor. A fortnight ago came three bushels of flowers: two hundred tiny nosegays marked “For the children,” half a dozen knots of pink roses for the “little mothers,” a dozen scarlet carnations for Lisa, while one great bunch of white lilies bore the inscription, “For the Mother Superior.” Last week a barrel of apples and another of oranges appeared mysteriously, and to-day comes a note, written in a hand we do not recognise, saying we are not to buy holly, mistletoe, evergreens, Christmas tree, or baubles of any kind, as they will be sent to us on December 22. We have inquired of our friends, but have no clue as yet, further than it must be somebody who knows our needs and desires very thoroughly. We have certainly entertained an angel unawares, but which among the crowd of visitors is it most likely to be? The Solitary, I wonder? I should never have thought it, were it not for the memory of that last day, the scene at the piano, the “song of him that overcometh,” and the backward glance from the corner as he sprang, absolutely sprang, on the car. There was purpose in it, or I am greatly mistaken. Mr. Man’s eyes would be worth looking into, if one could find purpose in their brown depths! Moreover, though I am too notorious a dreamer of dreams to be trusted, I cannot help fancying he went back to something; it was not a mere forward move, not a sudden determination to find some new duty to do that life might grow nobler and sweeter, but a return to an old duty grown hateful. That was what I saw in his face as he stood on the crossing, with the noon sunshine caught in his tawny hair and beard. Rhoda, Edith, and I have each made a story about him, and each of us would vouch for the truth of her particular version. I will not tell mine, but this is Rhoda’s; and while it differs from my own in several important particulars, it yet bears an astonishing resemblance to it. It is rather romantic, but if one is to make any sort of story out of the Solitary it must be a romantic one, for he suggests no other.

‘Rhoda began her tale with a thrilling introduction that set us all laughing (we smile here when still the tears are close at hand; indeed, we must smile, or we could not live): the prelude being something about a lonely castle in the heart of the Hartz Mountains, and a prattling golden-haired babe stretching its arms across a ruined moat in the direction of its absent father. This was in the nature of an absurd prologue, but when she finally came to the Solitary she grew serious; for she made him in the bygone days a sensitive child and a dreamy, impetuous youth, with a domineering, ill-tempered father who was utterly unable and unwilling to understand or to sympathise with him. His younger brother (for Rhoda insists on a younger brother) lived at home, while he, the elder, spent, or misspent, his youth and early manhood in a German university. As the years went on, the relations between himself and his father grew more and more strained. Do as the son might, he could never please, either in his line of thought and study or in his practical pursuits. The father hated his books, his music, his poetry, and his artist friends, while he on his part found nothing to stimulate or content him in his father’s tasks and manner of life. His mother pined and died in the effort to keep peace between them, but the younger brother’s schemes were quite in an opposite direction. At this time, Mr. Man flung himself into a foolish marriage, one that promised little in the shape of the happiness he craved so eagerly. (Rhoda insists on this unhappy marriage; I am in doubt about it.) Finally his father died, and on being summoned home, as he supposed, to take his rightful place and assume the management of the estate, he found himself disinherited. He could have borne the loss of fortune and broad acres better than this convincing proof of his father’s dislike and distrust, and he could have endured even that, had it not befallen him through the perfidy of his brother. When, therefore, he was met by his wife’s bitter reproaches and persistent coldness he closed his heart against all the world, shook the dust of home from off his feet, left his own small fortune behind him, kissed his little son, and became a wanderer on the face of the earth.

‘This is substantially Rhoda’s story, but it does not satisfy her completely. She says, in her whimsical way, that it needs another villain to account properly for Mr. Man’s expression.

‘Would it not be strange if by any chance we have brought him to a happier frame of mind? Would it not be a lovely tribute to the secret power of this place, to the healing atmosphere of love that we try to create—that atmosphere in which we bathe our own tired spirits day by day, recreating ourselves with every new dawn? But whether our benefactor be the Solitary or not, some heart has been brought into new relation with us and with the world. It only confirms my opinion that everybody is at his or her best in the presence of children. In what does the magic of their influence consist? This morning I was riding down in the horse-cars, and a poor ragged Italian woman entered, a baby in her arms, and two other children following close behind. The girl was a mite of a thing, prematurely grave, serious, pretty, and she led a boy just old enough to toddle. She lifted him carefully up to the seat (she who should have been lifted herself!), took his hat, smoothed his damp, curly hair, and tucked his head down on her shoulder, a shoulder that had begun its life-work full early, poor tot! The boy was a feeble, frail, ill-nourished, dirty young urchin, who fell asleep as soon as his head touched her arm. His child-nurse, having made him comfortable, gave a sigh of relief, and looked up and down the car with a radiant smile of content. Presto, change! All the railroad magnates and clerks had been watching her over their newspapers, and in one instant she had captured the car. I saw tears in many eyes, and might have seen more had not my own been full. There was apparently no reason for the gay, winsome, enchanting smile that curved the red mouth, brought two dimples into the brown cheeks, and sunny gleams into two dark eyes. True, she was riding instead of walking, and her charge was sleeping instead of waking and wailing; but these surely were trifling matters on which to base such rare content. Yet there it was shining in her face as she met a dozen pairs of eyes, and saw in each of them love for her sweet motherly little self, and love for the “eternal womanly” of which she was the visible expression. There was a general exodus at Brett Street, and every man furtively slipped a piece of silver into the child’s lap as he left the car; each, I think, trying to hide his action from the others.

‘It is of threads such as these that I weave the fabric of my daily happiness,—a happiness that my friends never seem able to comprehend; the blindest of them pity me, indeed, but I consider myself like Mary of old, “blessed among women.”’

Another day.—‘God means all sorts of things when he sends men and women into the world. That he means marriage, and that it is the chiefest good, I have no doubt, but it is the love forces in it that make it so. I may, perhaps, reach my highest point of development without marriage, but I can never do it unless I truly and deeply love somebody or something. I am not sure, but it seems to me God intends me for other people’s children, not for my own. My heart is so entirely in my work that I fancy I have none left for a possible husband. If ever a man comes who is strong enough and determined enough to sweep things aside and make a place for himself willy-nilly, I shall ask him to come in and rest; but that seems very unlikely. What man have I ever seen who would help me to be the woman my work helps me to be? Of course there are such, but the Lord keeps them safely away from my humble notice, lest I should die of love or be guilty of hero-worship.

‘Men are so dull, for the most part! They are often tender and often loyal, but they seldom put any spiritual leaven into their tenderness, and their loyalty is apt to be rather unimaginative. Heigho! I wish we could make lovers as the book-writers do, by rolling the virtues and graces of two or three men into one! I’d almost like to be a man in this decade, a young, strong man, for there are such splendid giants to slay! To be sure, a woman can always buckle on the sword, and that is rather a delightful avocation, after all; but somehow there are comparatively few men nowadays who care greatly to wear swords or have them buckled on. There is no inspiration in trying to buckle on the sword of a man who never saw one, and who uses it wrong end foremost, and falls down on it, and entangles his legs in it, and scratches his lady’s hand with it whenever he kisses her! And therefore, these things, for aught I see, being unalterably so, I will take children’s love, woman’s love, and man’s friendship; man’s friendship, which, if it is not life’s poetry, is credible prose, says George Meredith,—“a land of low undulations, instead of Alps, beyond the terrors and deceptions.” That will fill to overflowing my life, already so full, and in time I shall grow from everybody’s Mistress Mary into everybody’s Mother Mary, and that will be the end of me in my present state of being. I am happy, yes, I am blessedly happy in this prospect, and yet—’

Another day.—‘My beloved work! How beautiful it is! Toniella has not brought little Nino this week. She says he is ill, but that he sits every day in the orchard, singing our songs and modelling birds from the lump of clay we sent him. When I heard that phrase “in the orchard,” I felt a curious sensation, for I know they live in a tenement house; but I said nothing, and went to visit them.

‘The orchard is a few plants in pots and pans on a projecting window-sill!

‘My heart went down on its knees when I saw it. The divine spark is in those children; it will be a moving power, helping them to struggle out of their present environment into a wider, sunnier one—the one of the real orchards. How fresh, how full of possibilities, is the world to the people who can keep the child heart, and above all to the people who are able to see orchards in window-boxes!’

Another day.—‘Lisa’s daily lesson is just finished. It was in arithmetic, and I should have lost patience had it not been for her musical achievements this morning. Edith played the airs of twenty or thirty games, and without a word of help from us she associated the right memory with each, and illustrated it with pantomime. In some cases, she invented gestures of her own that showed deeper intuition than ours; and when, last of all, the air of the Carrier Doves was played, a vision of our Solitary must have come before her mind. Her lip trembling, she held an imaginary letter in her fingers, and, brushing back the hair from her forehead (his very gesture!), she passed her hand across her eyes, laid the make-believe note in Rhoda’s apron, and slipped out of the door without a word.

“‘Mr. Man! Mr. Man! It is Mr. Man when he couldn’t read his letter!” cried the children. “Why doesn’t he come to see us any more, Miss Rhoda?”

‘“He is doing some work for Miss Mary, I think,” answered Rhoda, with a teasing look at me.

‘Lisa came back just then, and rubbed her cheek against my arm. “I went to the corner,” she whispered, “but he wasn’t there; he is never there now!”

‘It was the remembrance of this astonishing morning that gave me courage in the later lesson. She seems to have no idea of numbers—there will be great difficulty there,—but she begins to read well, and the marvel of it is that she has various talents! She is weak, uneducated; many things are either latent or altogether missing in her as yet, and I do not know how many of them will appear, nor how long a process it will be; but her mind is full of compensations, and that is the last thing I expected. It is only with infinite struggle that she learns anything, though she is capable of struggle, and that is a good deal to say; but she has besides a precious heritage of instincts and insights, hitherto unsuspected and never drawn upon. It is precisely as if there had been a bundle of possibilities folded away somewhere in her brain, but hidden by an intervening veil, or crushed by some alien weight. We seem to have drawn away that curtain or lifted that weight, and the faculties so long obscured are stretching themselves and growing with their new freedom. It reminds me of the weak, stunted grass-blades under a stone. I am always lifting it and rolling it away, sentimentally trying to give the struggling shoots a chance. One can see for many a long day where the stone has been, but the grass forgets it after a while, when it breathes the air and sunshine, tastes the dew and rain, and feels the miracle of growth within its veins.’

Another day.—‘The twins are certainly improving a trifle. They are by no means angelic, but they are at least growing human; and if ever their tremendous energy—a very whirlwind—is once turned in the right direction, we shall see things move, I warrant you! Rhoda says truly that the improvement cannot be seen with the naked eye; but the naked eye is never in use with us, in our work, nor indeed with the Father of Lights, who teaches us all to see truly if we will.

‘The young minister has spent a morning with us. He came to make my acquaintance, shook me warmly by the hand, and—that was the last I saw of him, for he kept as close to Rhoda’s side as circumstances would permit! The naked eye is all one needs to discern his motives! Psychological observations, indeed! Child study, forsooth! It was lovely to see Rhoda’s freshness, spontaneity, and unconsciousness, as she flitted about like a pretty cardinal-bird. Poor young minister, whose heart is dangling at the strings of her scarlet apron! Lucky young minister, if his arm ever goes about that slender red-ribboned waist, and his lips ever touch that glowing cheek! But poor me! what will the garden be without our crimson rose?’

XIV
MORE LEAVES

‘It has been one of the discouraging days. Lisa was wilful; the twins had a moral relapse; the young minister came again, and, oh, the interminable length of time he held Rhoda’s hand at parting! Is it not strange that, with the whole universe to choose from, his predatory eye must fall upon my blooming Rhoda? I wonder whether the fragrance she will shed upon that one small parsonage will be as widely disseminated as the sweetness she exhales here, day by day, among our “little people all in a row”? I am not sure; I hope so; at any rate, selfishness must not be suffered to eclipse my common-sense, and the young minister seems a promising, manly fellow.

‘When we have had a difficult day, I go home and sit down in my cosy corner in the twilight, the time and place where I always repeat my credo, which is this:—

‘It is the children of this year, of every new year, who are to bring the full dawn, that dawn that has been growing since first the world began. It is not only that children re-create the world year by year, decade by decade, by making over human nature; by transforming trivial, thoughtless men and women into serious, earnest ones; by waking in arid natures slumbering seeds of generosity, self-sacrifice, and helpfulness. It is not alone in this way that children are bringing the dawn of the perfect day. It is the children (bless them! how naughty they were to-day!) who are going to do all we have left undone, all we have failed to do, all we might have done had we been wise enough, all we have been too weak and stupid to do.

‘Among the thousands of tiny things growing up all over the land, some of them under my very wing—watched and tended, unwatched and untended, loved, unloved, protected from danger, thrust into temptation, among them somewhere is the child who will write a great poem that will live for ever and ever, kindling every generation to a loftier ideal. There is the child who will write the novel that is to stir men’s hearts to nobler issues and incite them to better deeds. There is the child (perhaps it is Nino) who will paint the greatest picture or carve the greatest statue of the age; another who will deliver his country in an hour of peril; another who will give his life for a great principle; and another, born more of the spirit than the flesh, who will live continually on the heights of moral being, and, dying, draw men after him. It may be I shall preserve one of these children to the race—who knows? It is a peg big enough on which to hang a hope, for every child born into the world is a new incarnate thought of God, an ever fresh and radiant possibility.’

Another day.—‘Would I had the gift to capture Mrs. Grubb and put her between the covers of a book!’

‘It tickles Rhoda’s fancy mightily that the Vague Lady (as we call her) should take Lisa before the Commissioners of Lunacy! Rhoda says that if she has an opportunity to talk freely with them, they will inevitably jump at the conclusion that Lisa has brought her for examination, as she is so much the more irrational of the two! Rhoda facetiously imagines a scene in which a reverend member of the body takes Lisa aside and says solemnly, “My dear child, you have been wise beyond your years in bringing us your guardian, and we cannot allow her to be at large another day, lest she becomes suddenly violent.”

‘Of late I have noticed that she has gradually dropped one club and society after another, concentrating her attention more and more upon Theosophy. Every strange weed and sucker that can grow anywhere flourishes in the soil of her mind, and if a germ of truth or common-sense does chance to exist in any absurd theory, it is choked by the time it has lain there among the underbrush for a little space; so that when she begins her harvesting (which is always a long while before anything is ripe), one can never tell precisely what sort of crop was planted.

‘It seems that the Theosophists are considering the establishment of a colony of Mahatmas at Mojave, on the summit of the Tehachapi Mountains. Their present habitat is the Himalayas, but there is no reason why we should not encourage them to settle in this country. The Tehachapis would give as complete retirement as the Himalayas, while the spiritual advantages to be derived from an infusion of Mahatmas into our population are self-evident. “Think, my sisters,” Mrs. Grubb would say, “think, that our mountain ranges may some time be peopled by omniscient beings thousands of years old and still growing!” Up to this last aberration I have had some hope of Grubb o’ Dreams. I thought it a good sign, her giving up so many societies and meetings. The house is not any tidier, but at least she stays in it occasionally. In the privacy of my own mind I have been ascribing this slight reformation to the most ordinary cause,—namely, a Particular Man. It would never have occurred to me in her case had not Edith received confidential advices from Mrs. Sylvester.

‘“We’re going to lose her, I feel it!” said Mrs. Sylvester. “I feel it, and she alludes to it herself. There ain’t but two ways of her classes losing her, death and marriage; and as she looks too healthy to die, it must be the other one. She’s never accepted any special attentions till about a month ago, when the Improved Order of Red Men held their Great Council here. You see she used to be Worthy Wenonah of Pocahontas Lodge years ago, when my husband was Great Keeper of the Wampum, but she hasn’t attended regularly; a woman is so handicapped, when it comes to any kind of public work, by her home and her children.—I do hope I shall live long enough to see all those kind of harassing duties performed in public, co-operative institutions.—She went to the Council to keep me company, mostly, but the very first evening I could see that William Burkhardt, of Bald Eagle No. 62, was struck with her; she lights up splendidly, Mrs. Grubb does. He stayed with her every chance he got during the week: but I didn’t see her give him any encouragement, and I should never have thought of it again if she hadn’t come home late from one of the Council Fires at the Wigwam. I was just shutting my bedroom blinds. I tried not to listen, for I despise eavesdropping, of all things, but I couldn’t help hearing her say, “No, Mr. Burkhardt, you are only a Junior Sagamore, and I am ambitious. When you are a Great Sachem, it will be time enough to consider the matter.”’

‘Mrs. Sylvester, Edith, and I agreed that this was most significant, but we may have been mistaken, according to her latest development. The “passing away” so feelingly alluded to by Mrs. Sylvester is to be of a different sort. She has spoken mysteriously to me before of her reasons for denying herself luxuries; of the goal she expected to reach through rigid denial of the body and training of the spirit; of her longing to come less in contact with the foul magnetism of the common herd, so detrimental to her growth; but she formally announced to me in strict confidence to-day her ambition to be a Mahatma. Of course she has been so many things that there are comparatively few left; still, say whatever we like, she has the spirit of all the Argonauts, that woman! She has been an Initiate for some time, and considers herself quite ready for the next step, which is to be a Chela. It is unnecessary to state that she climbs the ladder of evolution much faster than the ordinary Theosophist, who is somewhat slow in his movements, and often deals in centuries, or even æons.

‘I did not know that there were female Mahatmas, reasoning unconsciously from the fact that an Adept is supposed to hold his peace for many years before he can even contemplate the possibility of being a Mahatma. (The idea of Grubb o’ Dreams holding her peace is too absurd for argument.) There are many grades of Adepts, it seems, ranging from the “topmost” Mahatmas down. The highest of all, the Nirmanakayas, are self-conscious without the body, travelling hither and thither with but one object, that of helping humanity. As we descend the scale, we find Adepts (and a few second-class Mahatmas) living in the body, for the wheel of Karma has not entirely revolved for them; but they have a key to their “prison” (that is what Mrs. Grubb calls her nice, pretty body!), and can emerge from it at pleasure. That is, any really capable and energetic Adept can project his soul from its prison to any place that he pleases, with the rapidity of thought. I may have my personal doubts as to the possibilities of this gymnastic feat, but Mrs. Grubb’s intellectual somersaults have been of such thoroughness and frequency that I am sure, if anybody can perform the gyration, she can! Meantime, there are decades of retirement, meditation, and preparation necessary, and she can endure nothing of that sort in this present incarnation, so the parting does not seem imminent!

‘She came to consult me about Soul Haven for the twins. I don’t think it a wholly bad plan. The country is better for them than the city; we can manage occasional news of their welfare; it will tide to get over the brief interval of time needed by Mrs. Grubb for growing into a Chela; and in any event, they are sure to run away from the Haven as soon as they become at all conscious of their souls, a moment which I think will be considerably delayed.

‘Mrs. Grubb will not yield Lisa until she is certain that the Soul Haven colonists will accept the twins without a caretaker; but unless the matter is quietly settled by the new year I shall find some heroic means of changing her mind. I have considered the matter earnestly for many months without knowing precisely how to find sufficient money for the undertaking. My own income can be stretched to cover her maintenance, but it is not sufficient to give her the proper sort of education. She is beyond my powers now, and perhaps—nay, of a certainty, if her health continue to improve—five years of skilful teaching will make her—what it will make her no one can prophesy, but it is sure to be something worth working for. No doubt I can get the money by a public appeal, and if it were for a dozen children instead of one I would willingly do it, as indeed I have done it many times in the past.

‘That was a beautiful thought of Pastor Von Bodelschwingh, of the Colony of Mercy in Germany. “Mr. Man” told me about him in one of the very few long talks we had together. He had a home for adults and children of ailing mind and body, and when he wanted a new house for the little ones, and there was no money to build or equip it, he asked every parent in Germany for a thank-offering to the Lord of one penny for each well child. Within a short fortnight four hundred thousand pennies flowed in—four hundred thousand thank-offerings for children strong and well. The good pastor’s wish was realised, and his Baby Castle an accomplished fact. Not only did the four hundred thousand pennies come, but the appeal for them stimulated a new sense of gratitude among all the parents who responded, so that there came pretty, touching messages from all sides, such as: “Four pennies for four living children; for a child in heaven, two.” “Six pennies for a happy home.” “One penny for the child we never had.” “Five pennies for a good wife.”

‘Ah! never, surely, was a Baby Castle framed of such lovely timber as this! It seems as if heaven’s sweet air must play about the towers, and heaven’s sunshine stream in at every window, of a house built from turret to foundation-stone of such royal material. The Castle might look like other castles, but every enchanted brick and stone and block of wood, every grain of mortar, every bit of glass and marble, unlike all others of its kind, would be transformed by the thought it represented and thrilled with the message it bore.

‘Such an appeal I could make for my whole great family, but somehow this seems almost a private matter, and I am sensitive about giving it publicity. My love and hope for Lisa are so great, I cannot bear to describe her “case,” nor paint her unhappy childhood in the hues it deserves, for the sake of gaining sympathy and aid. I may have to do it, but would I were the little Croesus of a day! Still, Christmas is coming, and who knows?

“Everywhere the Feast o’ the Babe,
Joy upon earth, peace and good-will to men!
We are baptized.”

Merry Christmas is coming. Everybody’s hand-grasp is warmer because of it, though of course it is the children whose merriment rings truest.

‘There are just one or two things, grown up as I am, that I should like to find in the toe of my stocking on Christmas morning; only they are impalpable things that could neither be put in nor taken out of real stockings.

‘Old as we are, we are most of us mere children in this, that we go on hoping that next Christmas all the delicious happenings we have missed in other Christmases may descend upon us by the old and reliable chimney-route! A Santa Claus that had any bowels of compassion would rush down the narrowest and sootiest chimney in the world to give me my simple wishes. It isn’t as if I were petitioning nightly for a grand house, a yacht, a four-in-hand, a diamond necklace, and a particular man for a husband; but I don’t see that modesty finds any special favour with St. Nick. Now and then I harbour a rascally suspicion that he is an indolent, time-serving person, who slips down the widest, cleanest chimneys to the people who clamour the loudest; but this abominable cynicism melts into thin air the moment that I look at his jolly visage on the cover of a picture-book. Dear, fat, rosy, radiant Being! Surely he is incapable of any but the highest motives! I am twenty-eight years old, but age shall never make any difference in the number or extent of my absurdities. I am going to write a letter and send it up the chimney! It never used to fail in the long-ago; but ah! then there were two dear, faithful go-betweens to interpret my childish messages of longing to Santa Claus, and jog his memory at the critical time!’