For some weeks Gilbert had been perfecting a number of handsomely finished medicine cabinets (which were furnished with racks for bottles and drawers for boxes, sponges, and all the various healing paraphernalia which every well-regulated household keeps at hand for emergencies), and now that the question of subsistence was so seriously confronting them once more, he determined to canvass from house to house and endeavor to sell them. Knowing that the homes of the rich would be closed against him, he could only hope to gain access to those of the middle and poorer classes, among whom he meant to provoke what thought and inquiry he could regarding the establishment of a society of universal brotherhood. Beyond the five great principles enunciated by the eloquent clergyman, all ideas were as yet in a nebulous state. Having established the fact of a desire for the proposed reform, the three instigators—for Elsie was already heart and hand in the projected work—believed that wisdom would be given them for the rounding and perfecting of details. “There is one thing to be remembered,” said Margaret, “that to-day no less than yesterday a tree is known by its fruit, and love to God can only be reached in the minds of the oppressed through love to man. First prove to men that you love their souls because you love the God that created them, and you will then be able to convey to them some of the greater truths of a divine and spiritual love.”
“Is not that material doctrine?” asked Elsie.
“No, I do not think so. The world has been mystified too long. The plain and simple doctrine of a human, interested, generous love even a child can understand, and God does not despise the day of small things.”
“How otherwise can you reach a material nature than by material symbols?” asked Gilbert.
“Even as a child learns to rely upon love and gradually reaches back to the motive and inspiration of that love, so back of this earthly brotherhood men will come to see the radiance and truth of divinity overshadowing it.”
“Ah, if mankind can only be made to look at it in that light! But what are we going to do, Gilbert, in this new order with the besotted and brutish natures that live only for self?”
“Give them all the personal friendliness we can and help them to outgrow their evil natures.”
“It will take generations of refining influences to do that, I am afraid. So much clings to the flesh that is bred in the bone.”
“True; but we are to-day only small factors in the great scheme of human civilization. What we leave unfinished other hands may take up. In any event, whether of failure or success, we three, weird fates maybe,” said Gilbert with a smile, “we know that for us happiness lies in doing what we can to lighten the heavy load of oppression and injustice under which our brothers are groaning.”
“Amen!” exclaimed Elsie, printing a resounding kiss upon Gilbert’s cheek. “You look like another Savonarola, only a trifle handsomer, I must admit.”
“Give me the inspiration of his genius and the force of his eloquence, and I’ll will you my good looks.”
“Thanks! Herbert says I’ll do as I am,” she exclaimed, drawing herself up to her full height and flushing and dimpling as roguishly as a mischievous child.
“By the way, Elsie, how are you and your millionaire lover going to reconcile the very opposite views you hold on various vital questions?”
Elsie’s face grew sober instantly. “I don’t like to think about it, Gilbert. I’m so happy now that I’m only waiting. Perhaps—some time—God knows!” and tears routed the smiles on the volatile face.
“There! don’t worry about it,” said Gilbert. “He’s a jolly good fellow, anyhow, and we wouldn’t be any worse than a number of well-known personages of history if we let conscience succumb to the narcotizing influence of his pieces of silver.”
There was an unusual twinkle in the eyes of the sober Gilbert, which provoked Elsie to say: “Go to, thou reformer! What need hast thou of any man’s silver?”
With Elsie’s return home, her faculty for turning off work, and her fund of good-humor, the circumference of the Busy Fingers Club was constantly increasing. Now that Gilbert was away so much, she took his place at the bench on the Saturdays allotted to the Club, and if she did not exhibit his dexterity in directing and executing work, she yet preserved order and made fast friends of the boys under her charge. She was so fertile in suggestion that a good many new ideas took shape in inventive heads and found expression in beautiful and useful things in wood. “Some day,” said Elsie sagely, “we’ll have a bazaar and sell these things, and oh, won’t we be rich!”
“What’ll we do with our money?” cried the boys.
“Put it in the bank until we can find some great and glorious need for it.”
“Like buying me a bicycle!” shouted one of the lads.
“And me a base-ball outfit!”
“And me a fiddle!”
“And me a musical top!”
“And me a white elephant!” cried Elsie. But the laugh did not rout the idea of doing something in the way of a bazaar. It spread among the girls and incited them to renewed effort; and it grew to be an open secret in the neighborhood that in the glowing but indefinite sometime, great things were to be achieved by the now well-known Busy Fingers Club.
It was the last of November and Antoine had returned from the hospital, able to walk with the aid of one crutch and the promise of discarding that when exercise and development had perfected the cure. A happier woman than Lizzette Minaud seldom walked the earth. All her dreams and anticipations of good fortune seemed to be winging their way to realization. Antoine was getting well; for now that the lad had been lifted to his full stature, the deformed shoulders seemed to be straightening, the color came and went in the once pale cheeks, and the laughter in his heart made a constant music for her.
“Oh, eet ees all von blessed Providence, mon Herbeart,” she cried as he sat at her right hand, the honored guest at the little banquet she had prepared at Idlewild to welcome Antoine’s home-coming. “Surely le bon Dieu direct ze noble heart to help my boy, and——”
“Fall in love with Elsie,” suggested Herbert, who felt a little fearful of a lachrymose scene in which he might be called upon to play actor.
“Certainement!” laughed Lizzette. “Eet ees ze match made in heaven.”
“Occasional sulphurous fumes about it when I scold, eh, Herbert?” cried Elsie.
“Oh, just enough as yet to light the flame of a ready wit. Whether there’ll ever be any greater combustion remains to be seen.”
“Well, I couldn’t be any happier over it if I stood in Herbert’s place,” ejaculated Antoine, which grave announcement, in view of his twelve years of maturity, was met with marked hilarity by the little circle. “And I’m sure,” added Antoine, in no way abashed, “if Herbert is never blown up until Elsie lights the fuse he’ll walk the earth a good while; for I don’t believe she knows how to scold.”
“Antoine, my lad, six months of seclusion have made you singularly trustful. Elsie has scolded me ever since I knew her, and I’ve grown so used to it in the last few weeks that I regard it in the light of a tonic—like quinine or any other excellent bitter.”
“Antoine,” said Elsie in a stage whisper, “have you noticed how improved in health and appearance our mutual friend Mr. Lynn seems to be? It is all the result of the exercise induced by trying to ward off some home truths I’ve been thrusting at him.”
“Ze fumes of sulphur!” cried Lizzette. “I protest zey rise no higher. I fear ze combustion.”
“They are a somewhat singular pair of lovers,” interposed Margaret. “It is a rare thing when they are not sparring, but as they seem to enjoy it and Herbert has not yet asked for a body-guard, I seldom interpose an objection.”
“Which, in view of the young man’s unprotected situation, is very considerate of you,” said Elsie with a defiant toss of her head. “It is my opinion, however, that there are more entertaining themes than the peculiarities of a couple of commonplace individuals. Mr. Lynn, will you please give us a lecture on good manners?”
“I shall be most happy to do so when my audience narrows to one listener.”
“And he is before the mirror,” retorted Elsie.
“Hush!” said Antoine; “stop that quarrelling! I’m going to sing.” And closing his eyes and crossing his hands before him, he began to croon, in well-portrayed negro accent and intonation, the lines of a little dialect song:
“De way is dark an’ rough an’ long,
Go slow, hol’ hard, chillun!
Doan’t git too deep in de slew ob wrong,
Go slow, hol’ hard, chillun!
“Dey’s cross-roads heah an’ cross-roads dar,
Go slow, hol’ hard, chillun!
But hope is de sign-board shinin’ like a star,
Go slow, hol’ hard, chillun!
“Jes’ keep a-joggin’ tru’ de san’ an’ clay,
Go slow, hol’ hard, chillun!
Dar’s lub at de eend ob de ’arthly way,
Go slow, hol’ hard, chillun!
“De eyes some time mighty full ob teahs,
Go slow, hol’ hard, chillun!
But lub is de lawd ob de slabe ob feahs,
Go slow, hol’ hard, chillun!
“So jes’ keep smilin’ in de face ob woe,
Go slow, hol’ hard, chillun!
Dar’s a happy lan’ whar de good shall go,
Go slow, hol’ hard, chillun!”
The clear soprano voice rolled out the words and notes with the abandon of his Ethiopian prototype, and Elsie turned and laid an arm around the lad’s neck as she exclaimed: “Antoine Minaud! Where in the world did you find that song?”
“In here,” said Antoine, significantly tapping his temple.
“An improvisator!” cried Elsie ecstatically. “Herbert, we’re in the presence of genius.”
“So I perceive. Where did you discover the faculty, Antoine?”
“At the hospital.”
“Can you improvise instantly?”
“Give me a theme and see.”
“Well, take my lady’s eyes,” said Herbert with a low bow to Elsie.
“Her nose rather! That would be more in keeping,” retorted Elsie.
“All right,” laughed Antoine, and scarcely a moment later he was carolling a rollicking Irish jig to words that seemed to follow the tune as if they had been fitted with the utmost carefulness.
“My lady’s nose—
You wouldn’t suppose
A poet could rave about it,
But as it lies
Between her eyes,
She wouldn’t look well without it!
“An ‘ornery’ nose
Can smell a rose,
But hers has more to do, sir!
It scornful tips
Above her lips,
At follies she finds in you, sir!”
“Bravo, Antoine!” cried Elsie, jumping up and bringing his violin. “Now play it.”
And as the violin dashed into the abandon of the melody, she grasped Gilbert by the shoulders and the two went whirling off into a jig.
“That’s inspiring,” cried Herbert, catching up Lizzette and dashing after them. The dishes rattled, the pictures shook, the stove trembled, the floors creaked, but on they danced, madder and merrier as the violin actually shrieked in glee, until Margaret cried aghast:
“Ho! ‘Tom the Piper’s Son!’ Stop! Stop! I beg. It is a veritable witches’ dance.”
“Come on, my solemn sister,” and Elsie caught Margaret around the waist and dragged her into the merry scramble.
“My poor old bones!” cried Lizzette, sinking into a chair. “Antoine’s a necromancer! I almost grow young again.” The fiddle stopped, but only for a moment, for by a sudden transition it swept away into an old-time melody:
“Sleep on thy pillow,
Happy and light,
As the moon on the billow
Reposes at night.”
The old fiddle seemed to have awakened to new life under the touch of the new Antoine, and Herbert could scarcely repress a glow of satisfaction as he looked at the lad. “Specific kindness does vastly more for the world than general good-will. If I might be permitted to spend the better part of my income on this little circle, I should feel that I had done enough for humanity; but the worst part of it is, this little circle has such exalted ideas of independence, and Elsie—bless her and bother her!—shuts the door in my face continually. I don’t more than half like the muddle, anyway!”
The winter wore away with but few radical changes. Mrs. Mason’s opposition to Herbert’s marriage to Elsie showed no diminution, and after numberless and fruitless intercessions on his part he finally took up his quarters at a hotel, and Mrs. Mason closed her house and went to Europe. His sister’s opposition and Elsie’s persistent refusal to marry him as long as the present bitterness remained between them, kept Herbert in a constant state of dissatisfaction. The world was quite too much upside down with the conflict of ideas, and men no longer seemed to be permitted to work out their own lines of happiness without treading on somebody’s toes. Helen’s sole objection to Elsie had been the capacity in which she had served them, and the consequent fear of society’s verdict. He didn’t care a bit more for Helen’s narrow world, than he did for Elsie’s quixotic schemes for a regenerated humanity. He wanted simply to be happy in his own way and according to his highest light. Helen and Elsie had both called him selfish, and both from opposite standpoints. As to the truth of their judgments, he didn’t care. He only knew that an overmastering love for Elsie as the sweetest-natured, most piquant, and original woman he had ever met held him fast in an irrevocable bondage, and but for an obstinacy on Elsie’s part, as settled as it was difficult to understand, he would have cut the Gordian knot by an immediate marriage and absolute defiance of Helen. Lizzette had been right when she told Herbert he did not know Elsie’s nature. It was developing a faculty for self-abnegation that alarmed him. There were times when the sweetest and most sacred love shone in her eyes, and the barriers of restraint were broken down by the utmost sympathy of thought and feeling; at others the spirit of a martyr looked out from their translucent depths and an invisible yet conscious wall seemed to separate them. Herbert trembled in vague alarm whenever he encountered this look, lying but thinly veiled beneath the mobile face. But with a man’s blindness he could not see that the love which he arrogated to himself and which shut out the world as of little moment, was only broadening her sympathies and making divine revelations of its beauty and value. Love with all its sacredness and possibilities, holding close to the one dear image enshrined in the holy of holies of her heart, had opened wide its door to suffering mankind. So vividly burned the fire on the altar of her love that she turned as if with outstretched arms, crying: “O ye who are cold and hungry! Here ye will find warmth and shelter.”
It is rarely that a man understands either the motive or development of a love like this, and he is quite apt through ignorance or jealousy to quarrel with any of its various manifestations. To Herbert many of Elsie’s ideas on the great and vexed social questions of the day seemed the acme of absurdity, and he cherished the fond hope that when she was once transplanted to regions of luxurious ease, they would die from inanition. He looked upon them as the natural outgrowth of a circumscribed horizon and constant association with the seamy side of life. “When she sees what art, science, culture, and wealth can do for those she loves, her sympathies will not wander so far, but will narrow down to an area wherein we can walk hand in hand.”
Thus Herbert often assured himself as he became daily more conscious of the undercurrent of feeling and belief that was gradually widening in her nature.
The winter had been an unusually long and severe one, and the resources of the little family had often been severely taxed to keep the wolf from the door. Herbert’s alert eyes had discovered this fact, and he had taken to leaving sundry packages of groceries and provisions of various kinds in the most unheard-of places, trusting to time to discover them and good sense to appropriate and say nothing. Margaret had found them stuffed under the cushions of the chairs, behind pictures, tucked under the book-rack, and impelled by a need sharper than even Elsie had guessed, since into Margaret’s hands had been transferred the domestic machinery, had, as Herbert hoped, used them without inquiry. “It is one of God’s balances,” she said to herself, “that may one day even up. It is a delicate and generous act for which I can only be thankful and keep silent.”
To Gilbert the winter had been a revelation of suffering and vice that had only stirred deeper the pool of the living faith within his heart. In his vocation as peddler he had found access to much of the hidden life of poverty and crime which escapes even the most far-sighted general observers. Wherever he had been able to pierce the strata of callousness which the severest forms of poverty invariably create, he had found the same helpless appeal that has for so many generations sounded down the aisles of time—give us something to hope for, believe in, trust in! Something palpable that we can touch, feel, and know. Inquiry as to churches surrounding them usually elicited a shrug of the shoulders and the reply: “They are not for such as me. If I dares to go, they talks about a far-off God that I doesn’t understand, and hitches their fine clothes away from me as if my rags would pisen ’em!”
The more that Gilbert came to know the impulses stirring in these benumbed hearts, the more he and Margaret felt the need of establishing a ground of intercommunication between them. To be able to meet these wretched mortals upon their own plane and lead them along, by paths they could understand, up to the great truths of time and eternity, and to make palpable to them that God’s love is not a mere abstraction, but a revivifying, humanizing influence—what dearer work could one ask? And yet how was it possible in their straightened circumstances to make even a beginning of this work? Elsie’s fertility of resource solved the problem.
“Make the Busy Fingers Club a factor in the case. Let them hold their long-talked-of bazaar, rent the necessary room, and christen the project ‘The Children’s Home Meeting.’ Then let Gilbert go among his poor, tell them of the wonderful violinist and improvisator, Antoine Minaud, and promise them a free concert on some Sunday night. After the concert, have a few moments for social intercourse, in which all four of the principal instigators and abettors in the scheme endeavor to make the acquaintance of those in the room, and then let Gilbert or Margaret give them a few—only a few—of the simple truths of every-day living and learning. It is a very simple beginning,” added Elsie dubiously.
“And for that reason the best,” said Margaret decidedly.
The members of the little club were enthusiastic abettors of the scheme as outlined to them by Margaret and Elsie. The name which Elsie had so happily bestowed upon the project instantly won upon their regard and made them noisy advertisers of their work throughout the neighborhood. The rooms of a member occupying the lower floor of the tenement-house were secured for the use of the bazaar, and what audience the handiwork of the little folks did not attract, the music of Antoine’s violin succeeded in catching and holding. Altogether the bazaar was pronounced a success by its delighted originators, and at its close there was money enough to pay the rent of the hall for one night and possibly two. Then came the work of training the children for the concert. Elsie took especial care that every song should breathe the tenderness, the mercy, the helpfulness of divine love, and the sweet, clear voices of the children, trained to the subtile sympathy of expression by her innate appreciation, made many of the songs long to be remembered.
It was a curious and motley throng that assembled in the hall one Sunday night in response to Gilbert’s invitation, as he stood at the door and took every comer by the hand. Women with shawls over their heads, with babies asleep on their breasts, men with hats pulled low over eyes that cast furtive glances of unrest and suspicion, brazen-faced and gaudily-dressed creatures with their calling stamped upon their countenances, ragged and barefooted children, pale-faced and distorted cripples, came slowly and half-reluctantly into the room. It was something so new, so unlike anything they had ever been offered, that they were more than half afraid it was a trap, and that it would end in their being preached at, told how vile they were, and warned to flee from the wrath of an angry and a jealous God. They had heard these words so many times and had felt, deep within disquieted and tumultuous bosoms, the wide gulf between the prosperous promulgators of the church and their own degraded and unhappy condition. Yet somehow they all trusted Gilbert; there was something in the clear, earnest, boyish face that won the most suspicious nature, and it was because they had felt that he was truly their friend that they had ventured to come. The hall was a barren, smoke-begrimed, illy-ventilated room, but Elsie and the children had made what effort they could with meagreness of material to brighten it up. Above the platform, where stood Elsie’s organ and where the semicircle of children was ranged, those in the audience who could read beheld in large letters, “Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so unto them.” Over the windows hung gay cotton banners bearing such inscriptions as “Love is lord of all.” “A cup of cold water to the thirsty.” “A kind word maketh the heart glad.” “A true heart is one of earth’s jewels.” “A little child shall lead them.”
Antoine’s violin caught the inspiration of the hour and spoke in almost human tones the pathos, the prayer, and the hope of each bosom. The airs were those of simple, well-known hymns, many of them so familiar as to be almost household words, and when in response to Gilbert’s invitation the audience arose and sang the choruses, there were not many lips that remained motionless. They had doubtless heretofore been hummed many times by the same careless, unthinking voices; now they seemed to strike deep into some inner fibre of feeling, and many a furtive tear rolled from beneath quivering and downcast lashes. The children sang, as Elsie declared, “like little angels;” but the crowning event of the evening was Antoine’s improvisation. Advancing to the center of the platform on his one crutch, he began in a low, plaintive, and touchingly-sweet voice:
“My heart is sair wi’ muckle woe,
God knows! God knows!
I ken nae mair the way to go,
God knows!
“My feet are cut, my shoon are gane,
God knows! God knows!
And every step is hurt wi’ pain,
God knows!
“Nae light is roun’ aboot my way,
God knows! God knows!
I canna see the sun of day,
God knows!
“I faint and fall in sairest need,
God knows! God knows!
And men go by wi’ little heed,
God knows!
“Sae little costs the kindly word,
God knows! God knows!
Sae sad it is sae seldom heard,
God knows!
“Sae bitter is the thirsting lip,
God knows! God knows!
Some time mayhap love’s cup we’ll sip,
God knows!”
Before Antoine had finished, men and women were rocking back and forth and sobbing like children, and when the last strains of the song died away, it seemed minutes before any one spoke, and then a woman, who an hour before had entered the room with a brazen face and a foul-mouthed ejaculation, cried out in heart-broken tones: “Oh, sing it again—God knows! God knows!”
Softly, as if taken up and echoed by angel voices, Antoine sang once more the last stanza, and before the lingering notes were lost on the air, he was at the woman’s side clasping her hand in his.
Instantly Gilbert, with Margaret and Elsie on either side and Lizzette and the children following, left the platform to mingle with and take the hands of those present. They passed among them with words of cheer and good-will, and when order was again called, there was an unmistakable look of eager expectancy upon the faces that was balm to the watchful eyes of Margaret and Gilbert. Advancing to the front of the platform, the latter said simply:
“My friends: I am glad you trusted me sufficiently to come here to-night. We hope to have many more such nights together, and I only ask you in going away to remember that, sad as is the pathway of life for many of us, there is light ahead. The soul of man through which God seeks to work the salvation of the world is not dead but sleepeth. Slowly it is awaking, and love that abides in the world shall some time teach men that its universal practice must be ‘Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so unto them.’”