Like Byron, Margaret awoke one day and found herself famous. The daily press, in keeping close watch of the anarchist movement, had reported nearly verbatim the speeches of both Gilbert and Margaret. Editorials had been written upon Margaret’s utterances, and one enterprising daily had printed a supposed portrait of her and given a brief account of her work in the tenement-house, wherein she had been glorified beyond her just deserts and made to wear the mantle of the professional reformer. Margaret was by no means pleased with this unexpected notoriety, and particularly displeasing to her sensitive nature was the attitude in which she had been made to stand with reference to those whom she had sought to aid in the quietness and sympathy of her home life. As a friend, she was sure of their appreciation and co-operation; as a reformer, she felt fearful of their mistrust and the gradual withdrawal of the sympathies she had grown to depend upon for her own guidance and happiness. It was, therefore, with no little vexation of spirit that she found herself waited upon one day by a committee of ladies who urged her going upon the platform as the advance agent of a board of foreign missions.
“It is impossible,” cried Margaret when the object of the visit had been explained. “I am not fitted for such work. Indeed, it was a mere accident which caused my appearance in public, and I hope never to repeat it.”
The ladies looked at each other aghast. Here was good timber obviously going to waste. Something must be done to secure it. “But,” they argued, “you must have the interests of our work at heart, as your utterances gave evidence and as your work in your own home circle proves. Why not be willing to broaden it and bring the suffering ones of earth, whom you evidently pity, a little relief?”
“Because,” said Margaret, smiling, “I believe, in the truest sense, in the old saying that ‘Charity begins at home.’ I have a home to make, first of all, for a young brother and sister who look upon me as mother and guardian. So long as they have need of me I shall always keep for them the one spot where home ties may reign supreme. In the next place, I shall doubtless horrify you by saying that I do not believe in charity.”
A look of wide-eyed dismay went around the little circle.
“But let me qualify the ruggedness of so bare a statement,” said Margaret as a look of quiet amusement crept over her face. “I have reference only to the charity which is practised under present conditions. In the first place, I think we have heathen enough to convert at home; in the second, if there were more of the genuine charity which was taught by our great Preceptor, there would be scant need of the various forms of associated charity. Modern charity belittles and robs men of the God-given sense of independent manhood which should be cultivated and respected in every one. The helping hand that is given by associated charity fosters a national laziness and sloth which grows every year more wide-spread and disgraceful.”
“That is a most astounding statement,” cried her hearers.
“I think you will find it true,” replied Margaret quietly. “Charity that is bestowed with the air of patronage which such organizations can scarcely fail to exhibit, must make its wards feel that independent effort is not respected as it should be. We do not give any more from a fraternal desire to see our fallen brother rise to his feet and work steadily toward the goal which we have reached or are nearing; but we give perhaps from a desire to display our importance, or from a philanthropy which expects to find its way into the newspapers and be talked about, or because it is fashionable to ‘assume a virtue if we have it not.’ If we gave from the standpoint of humanity and a desire to see all men on an equal footing before the law, do you suppose it would be necessary to announce such themes from the pulpits of elegant and exclusive churches as ‘How to reach the masses?’ The masses would be there to be reached. They would not be outside, because an exclusive sexton had found that he must look to the best interests of his patrons. The church is every day growing richer and more influential. How is it with the heaven-born principles of Him who toiled at the carpenter’s bench and proved to the fishermen of Galilee that a common bond of divine and human love held them together? What is the church to-day in a great measure but a business institution? How much of the old faith clings to the embroidered garment that has displaced the simple white robe of the Messiah of all men? It is useless to offer charity to a man whose rights you have denied, and expect thereby to build up a prosperous and God-fearing commonwealth. Ladies, I must forego the generous offer you make me, for the bread would be bitter in my mouth which I earned by upholding a belief that I felt to be fundamentally wrong. I ask nothing more than to be given strength to help wherever I can in the humblest way and with the sincerest love.”
It was a silent and crestfallen committee that bowed itself from Margaret’s presence and whispered “quixotic,” “cranky,” “absurd,” when it reached the sidewalk. Margaret sank into a chair, after the committee had left her, with a feeling of vague discomfort and unrest. Did this invasion of her private work bear any occult meaning? Was there really a broader field of action awaiting her helping hand wherein she could better fulfill the principles she loved to disseminate? Suddenly, as if in revelation, she saw Gilbert’s impassioned face as he pleaded so eloquently for his brother toilers at the anarchist meeting. Here was work for Gilbert, stretching out into an indefinite and glowing future. A society of universal brotherhood! She remembered that once a stranger had preached in her father’s pulpit on that very topic, and she had never forgotten the five great principles he had enunciated. She had jotted them down in her note-book as truths worth remembering, and now they came back to her with the vividness and force with which a thinking brain is often overtaken by the ideas of the great minds of the world.
1. “A society of universal brotherhood must be founded on eternal truth.”
2. “It must permit full and free development to every member of the human race.”
3. “There must be perfect harmony between all its members.”
4. “It must attempt to secure happiness in this world. Here, now, on this planet, in this day and generation, it must give justice to all mankind.”
5. “It must make not only men, but nations, free.”[1]
She well remembered how the eloquent clergyman had enlarged upon this declaration of principles in glowing words.
“Tell me,” he had said, “would not such a society meet your desires? Yet such was the organization founded by Jesus Christ. Men have found occasion to depart a long way from it, but not till they retrace their steps and take up the work as He planned it, can they enjoy the fruits of the wisest law-giver the world ever beheld. He was the true leader of men. He was born in a manger and brought up in poverty. He preached the purest and truest democracy the world has ever listened to. The tramp, the outcast, the beggar were with Him the equals before the law of the richest man on the face of the earth. There was nothing narrow in His creed. But how shall men establish the new order? We must take the kingdom of heaven by storm; we must convert the boodlers and the aristocrats who now dominate the church. Let me tell you the rich are getting tired of the life they are living. They are beginning to see its falsity, and many of them are anxious to see some means adopted by which greater justice can be rendered to all. Work, then, my brothers, in behalf of the rich as well as the poor, and make the society of universal brotherhood the grand factor in a new civilization.”
1. These principles were recently enunciated by Father Huntington.
These impassioned words had burned themselves on Margaret’s memory, and in the light of later events seemed to have a peculiar force and significance. A society of universal brotherhood! How beautiful it seemed in theory; how easily, even on the basis of an eighteen-hundred-years-old truth, the theory might be evolved into established fact. Yet that mighty and eternal truth had been all these years, through innumerable persecutions and conflicts, vainly seeking its perfect flower and fruit. Where lay the difficulty? Why were its life-giving branches so persistently lopped, its trunk gashed and riven, its healing leaves stripped and torn, and its fruition hindered and obstructed? Margaret pondered long over the puzzling questions. It was a fundamental truth that mankind was seeking happiness and had the same general nature and desires. What, then, made the great divergence? The casuist and sophist might find deep within the logic of history and the philosophy of man a more lofty reason; but Margaret’s primitive nature saw only the main truth that men had departed from the underlying principle on which Christ had founded His church of the living gospel. Primitive ideas had been ignored, scoffed at, trampled in the dust, and yet the great Master had made those ideas the whole sum and substance of life when He enjoined upon man to love God and his neighbor, live soberly and righteously, visit the fatherless and widows in affliction, and keep himself unspotted from the world. Setting aside the divine emanation of such laws, they were the truest interpretation of natural law, for what is vicious is injurious. The divine virtues of truth and equity are the bulwarks of society; if they are transgressed, the whole body politic suffers, even as the transgression of natural law causes disease and dissolution. Surely, here “the steps are not straightened and he that runneth stumbleth not.”
To Gilbert, Margaret communicated all her doubts and fears as well as hopes upon this theme, and with the eagerness with which an awakened spirit seizes upon ideas, he followed her reasoning to a conclusion which would have been remarkable in one so young, if it had not been the logical result of Margaret’s training and practice.
“I can only work on the plan you outline by first finding out how those I desire to reach are striving for the happiness that is their aim. It will be a long and laborious effort, for I must truly prove myself the friend of every man. No thief, thug, criminal, outcast, or harlot must be too vile and degraded to receive the warm clasp of my hand and the hearty utterance of my good-will. Am I equal to it?” Gilbert buried his head in his hands with a sob that was wrung from the consciousness of a life-long sacrifice. Margaret knelt beside his chair and softly slipped an arm around his neck.
“A second Jean Valjean!” she whispered.
“It is at most an experiment,” said Gilbert later, “and even in the event of failure must do more good than harm. I will try it.”
The loss of Elsie’s abundant wages had been a trying matter to the little household. Gilbert’s attendance at the manual-training school had been perforce curtailed, and the question of subsistence became a serious one. Herbert had begged to be allowed to supply their needs, since his indiscretion had been the cause of their loss, but the ingrained independence of both sisters rebelled at the suggestion.
“No,” exclaimed Elsie emphatically, “not until I say ‘yes’ at the altar—and that day is still so remote as to be almost nebulous—shall I permit any expenditure of your money on my behalf.”
“Not even for this?” and Herbert drew from his pocket a small velvet case and flashed a brilliant diamond ring before Elsie’s eyes. She took it, flushing with pleasure over its beauty, and held it up over her head to watch the play of translucent light on its polished surface.
“Oh, what beautiful things God makes in His laboratory!” she cried, “and how I do love beauty! But take it back, Herbert; it would be out of place on the hand of a working girl.”
“I’m tempted to quarrel with you all the time,” said Herbert petulantly. “What shall I get you—an iron ring?”
“You might have it silver-plated,” suggested Elsie soberly, “so that, like the majority of my sex, I would not know it was iron until after marriage.”
“You are incorrigible! But what are you going to do with yourself, anyway, while you are waiting for that haughty sister of mine to come under my soothing ministrations?”
“Something new—work!”
“At what?”
“Slop-work, like Margaret. I’ve already bought a new sewing-machine—on part payments, of course—and I am going to break the record on hickory shirts and blue jeans overalls.”
“Absurd! quixotic! outrageous!” exclaimed Herbert, springing to his feet and pacing the room with an excited air. “I tell you, Elsie, you and Margaret will kill yourselves in endeavoring to uphold the dignity of woman or labor or some other foolish notion.”
“Herbert!” Elsie’s eyes flashed ominously. “If the whole world were like you—Supreme Sultans of Gilded Leisure—you might make your uncomplimentary classifications; but under existing conditions, I think—well, I think you ought to be ashamed of yourself; so there!”
“I am,” said Herbert contritely, as he took her in his arms. “I don’t in the least question the nobility of motive that inspires all this heroism, but I do question its result. Do you think the fate of the world is hanging on the struggles of two such admittedly unselfish and uplifted slips of girls?”
“You’re just like the old heathen masters of morality!” ejaculated Elsie. “They gave such excellent rules for other men’s guidance, but they hadn’t the courage to try their arguments on themselves. Of course Margaret and I are very heroic in trying to live up to our principles—but very silly!”
Herbert’s laugh was so contagious that even Elsie joined in it.
“I am afraid I’m a heathen,” he said dubiously, “if in this day and age, when the air is blue with reforms, I object to seeing the girl I love wearing her life away for a mere chimera.”
“Herbert Lynn!” exclaimed Elsie impetuously as she drew away from his embrace and looked him earnestly in the face. “Do you look upon the question of the day, the question that occupies all tongues and speaks a heart-rending language in every half-starved wretch that walks the street, as a chimera?”
“It is a phantom that has been chased a good many thousand years,” he answered, “and the end is not yet.”
“Have you no interest in the question?”
“Specifically, yes; generally, no.”
“Then you have no heart!” exclaimed Elsie warmly.
“I confess that it has left me and is in the keeping of a fierce little radical.”
“Who wishes your judgment was with it, for I think such conservatism as yours is dangerous and—yes, positively wicked!”
“You are charming when you wear that look,” said Herbert critically.
“Just wait till I find you are as obstinate as you are evasive, and I shall not look so charming. But really I wish you would go away. Do you see that pile of blue jeans? Every moment wasted on you is just so much stolen from my beauty sleep, and of course you care more for that than for any purpose of mine.”
“Well, then, if you’ll remember that all I shall ask of you at our next meeting will be to look pretty and talk nonsense I’ll go.” Suiting the action to the word, he left the room.
“Elsie,” he called a moment later as he put his head in the open door, “may I send you a violet if it’s a very small and stingy one?”
Herbert dodged just in time to escape the pin-cushion Elsie threw at his head, but the supper-table that night was graced with a generous bouquet of Parmesan violets, and they nestled lovingly in Elsie’s dark locks, under her plump chin, and in the cincture of her slender waist.