CHAPTER IV.
DREAMS AND DREAMERS.
Dora Weglein belonged to that large class of women in whom the heart is far stronger than the head. Such women feel strongly, but reason weakly; if the feeling be pure and right, their actions are the same; but if selfishness clog the action of the heart, there is no head to appeal to. These are the women who never theorize, or else theorize wide of the mark, and whose husbands often are the happiest, whose children are the best-behaved in the world.
Alice Randolph, on the contrary, was a woman of theory. It was to her impossible to act without a clear knowledge of all the laws that ought to govern such action; hence, as time and tide wait for no man, the opportunity for action often passed while she was weighing pros and cons; and hence, also, she frequently came to doubt the correctness of her own conclusions, when their resulting action had lapsed into the past.
That two women so different, when placed in circumstances almost exactly similar, should choose the same course, is at least noteworthy; indeed Alice found it rather too much noted. She was not aware of any sort of reprehensible pride. It certainly would have mattered little to her if Frederick Richards had been the son of a hangman, to put it as strongly as possible, and she had proved herself not purse-proud; but it was—yes, it was—very galling to be always likened and compared to Dorothea Weglein, her sister’s German nursery governess. But in truth a woman of theory and one of feeling (or shall I say instinct? It is a good old word, and, while perhaps not strictly scientific, expresses my meaning fairly well)—women of theory and women of instinct, then, are only too apt mutually to look down upon and scorn one another. Dora, however, loved and admired Miss Alice, and was strengthened in allegiance to her lover by the knowledge of her young lady’s course.
“It is beautiful that she gives up all her money,” she said to Karl, as they walked towards his home on the Sunday afternoon when, as his betrothed, she was in all solemnity to take tea with his mother.
“She may be glad of it some day,” he answered grimly. “When the people get their rights, they will have a heavy score to settle with Henry Randolph. He has a heart as hard as his own nails.”
“Ach, how terrible!” sighed little Dora. “But the money is good all the same, Karl.”
“It is stained with blood,” he said. “I am glad you are to touch little more of it.”
Whereupon Dora began to cry, as she told him of the check Mr. Randolph had slipped into her hand that morning, and which would be so convenient in buying her wedding outfit.
“And he called me a good girl, Karl, and said you should be a happy man. I think his heart cannot be so very hard. Rich people are sometimes so kind, they cannot be all bad. Must I give him back the money?”
“Keep it, keep it,” said Karl gloomily. “You have a right to more than that, you who have slaved for him so long. And, for Heaven’s sake, don’t cry and spoil your pretty eyes,” he added tenderly.
Dora and Alice were married on the same day, though not by design, or even with the knowledge of the latter, who had, to the grief and dismay of the little governess, lately turned a deaf ear to all confidences, and even frowned coldly upon proffered sympathy. Unamiable, very; but Alice had never been particularly amiable. It was a necessity that both, if they married at all, should do so before the departure of Mr. and Mrs. Randolph for New York, whence they were to sail for Europe; and so, one morning, Alice Randolph, quite alone, stepped into the carriage her lover had brought, entered St. Mark’s Church a rich woman, and left it without a penny in the world, except what she had in her purse.
“And you are sure you will never repent, Alice, my darling?” asked her husband, when they stood together in the little parlor of the home he had prepared for her. “It was hard for you, dear, with not a sister or a friend to look on at your marriage. Are you quite sure you do not regret?”
“What, already?” she answered, laughing. “You might at least give me time. No, sir, I’m not sorry yet, and never expect to be, in spite of your pessimism.”
“I hope your optimism may be right, my darling.”
“I will make it right,” she cried defiantly, not of him but fate; “and as for friends, whom do I want but you? Don’t you suppose I could have had scores of bridemaids?—girls who would have called you ‘too sweet for anything,’ and considered it ‘so romantic’ to have one’s only brother”—her eyes filled, but she shook off the tears and went on merrily. “No, sir, I don’t repent as yet, and don’t mean to; but, if ever I should, I am very much afraid that you will be certain to find it out.”
Dora’s wedding took place that same afternoon, but with scarcely more pomp or circumstance. She had been staying for some days with Frau Kellar, and in the immediate neighborhood of the Herr Pastor, to whom, long ere this, the buxom Lottie had gained a legal title. The pastor’s experience in haling into the narrow path this wandering lamb had not been such as to encourage any further effort on her behalf; in fact, the lamb had shown, if not the teeth of a wolf, at least the claws of a cat, and had given her spiritual guide to understand that she was perfectly competent to direct her own goings in the way.
“We love each other, Herr Pastor,” she had said, “and the good God would not have put that into our hearts if He had wished us not to marry.”
“But the man is an infidel, Fräulein Dora; he does not believe in God.”
“That is nothing,” answered Dora, smiling. If she had been able to put into words what she meant, it would have been something like this, perhaps,—
“Love is of God, and God is love: Karl loves, therefore he partakes of the being of God; and whether he professes to believe in Him or not is of very little consequence.”
But carefully remember, dear reader, I am not justifying little Dora in this conclusion, only stating the argument as she would have done, had her mental powers been cultivated up to syllogisms.
The pastor, however, understood her to mean that belief or unbelief were equally Nichts, and went away sorrowful. But Karl Metzerott, when he heard of the conversation, was exceeding wroth, and expressed himself with great force, in a string of German nouns and adjectives, some of which began with “ver,” while others referred to well-known atmospheric phenomena. No such person, he said, should marry a dog or cat that belonged to him, Karl Metzerott; if Dora objected to a justice of the peace, there was the Calvinist minister, and plenty of Americans in the same business, more was the pity. All ministers were thieves and rogues, anyhow, said Karl Metzerott, living on the charity of their parishioners under pretence of saving their souls. Souls, indeed!
It was not often that Karl found words for his thoughts to such an extent as this; but gentle little Dora was unmoved by the torrent of eloquence. She would not be married by any one but a minister of God, she said; but that minister need be by no means the Rev. Otto Schaefer. “Though, for her part, and though she had been angry at the time, Dora would always believe that the Herr Pastor was a good little man, and meant well.”
“He meant to marry you himself, if you call that meaning well,” growled Karl.
And so they were married by the Episcopal clergyman, who in the morning of the same day had united Frederick and Alice; selected by Dora, indeed, for that very reason; a clergyman of the old, indolent sort, now happily almost unknown, who married all that were set before him, pocketed his fee, and asked no questions for conscience sake. He shall not trouble the reader again, and is of importance here only because, having been Alice’s pastor all her life, she was not likely to have been aroused by his walk or conversation to any consciousness of the deep things of the spiritual life.
After the ceremony, the happy pair and their friends, who had witnessed the marriage, partook of a social tea, for which Frau Kellar provided house-room, and the bridegroom paid; then, husband and wife went home to their little three-roomed dwelling, and the new life began.
And then—for a while—how Karl would have laughed at any pessimistic theories. As for Dora, she would not have known a theory of any description, if she had stumbled across one. But she was very, very happy, our little Dora! Life had not been easy to her,—an orphan, maintained and educated by grudging fraternal care, and with her early hope nipped, in its first flower, by the frost of death. Now, surrounded by love, her nature blossomed into a wonderful luxuriance; the wistful blue eyes grew full of laughter, the sad lips smiled, and the cheeks grew rosy. She was as merrily busy all day long as a child at play; and Frau Metzerott the elder found her a daughter beyond her dreams.
Shoemaker Karl said little; but no king upon his throne ever more intensely believed his wife a queen among women. All day he could hear her blithe, sweet voice, singing over her work, or chatting and laughing with his mother, who had suddenly failed, now that she had some one to rest her cares upon. It mattered little, she said; Dora was eyes, hands, and feet to her; she had worked hard enough in her time, now she could rest. And so she lay and rested under her gay, patchwork quilt, upon her testered bed, while Dora bustled cheerfully about the tiny kitchen. In the evening, when work was over, she would often draw the old candle-stand to the bedside, and, with the yellow lamplight shining on her golden hair, read aloud from the heavy yellowed pages of the old German Bible, while Karl sat near with his pipe. Not that he listened, except to the soft murmur of his wife’s sweet voice; yet the unheeded words returned to him in after years, stirring always a new throb of misery.
But at the time the Bible-reading served as a not unpleasant accompaniment to his pipe, which he would not for worlds have disturbed or interfered with. “Religion was an excellent thing for women,” said Karl Metzerott.
During the following summer occurred the great Sängerfest, the first held by the Sängerbund to which belonged the Micklegard Männerchor. Karl had been married nearly six months at the time, and when we say that in all probability he would not have gone if he could not have taken Dora, we have sufficiently indicated that he was still very much in love with his wife. Fortunately, Laketon, where the Fest was held, is only a short journey by rail from Micklegard, so that travelling expenses were light; and he had cousins in Laketon with whom they could board very reasonably; nevertheless, the sum expended made a hole in Karl’s savings-bank account, at which he would have shaken his head dismally a year before.
With the Sängerfest itself we have nothing to do. Of course there were processions, concerts, balls, and all the rest of the routine with which Americans have since become so familiar; but the only noticeable incident for us is that when, as their contribution to the prize singing, the Micklegard Männerchor gave that sweetest of German Volkslieder, “Bei’m Liebchen zu Haus,” the audience arose as one man and applauded to the very echo. The prize was theirs; a result to which, in Dora’s opinion, Karl’s rich bass had not a little contributed.
She was thinking blissfully of this and other matters, in the train that bore her homewards, when her attention was attracted to a conversation going on between two young men who occupied the seat before her. They were students of the Laketon University, though this Dora could not be expected to know; and as one was Irish and the other a German, even more prone than is the case with students in general to discuss all things in heaven above, the earth beneath, and the waters under the earth. They spoke in English or German as suited their subject-matter or the impulse of the moment, and the first words that caught Dora’s attention were these:—
“Have I ever objected to Socialism in itself?”
“What do you call its Self? You seem to object to its most necessary elements.”
“By no means. I only say that you Socialists are short-sighted, and seem to adopt the very measures best calculated to defeat your own ends.”
“Specify, specify!” growled the German.
“With pleasure. The end at which you profess to aim is a universal brotherhood among men, a sort of lion and lamb lying down together all over the world; yet you go to work, with your secret plots and your assassinations, as if you were preparing for another Reign of Terror.”
“The Reign of Terror may be necessary beforehand.”
“Very long beforehand, then. You know the story of the tiger who has once tasted blood. Teaching men to murder makes them murderers; no less. You can’t build your social republic out of unsocial Republicans, dear boy.”
“Oh! get along with your Irish sophistry! A social republic, as you call it, seems to be, in your eyes, another Donnybrook Fair!”
“Take your time,” said the Irishman. “When a fellow falls back on old Donnybrook, I know he’s hard pressed for an argument.”
“I could prove to you in five minutes that tyrannicide is not murder, any more than tiger-hunting; and”—warned by a twinkle in the blue Irish eye,—“far more righteous than ordinary capital punishment. But, passing that over for the time, I should like to know what means you would employ to build a social republic, supposing you wanted one?”
“Do you suppose I should not hail the advent of true Socialism as the dawn of new light and life for the world?”
“Eh? a new convert! But stop! there was a qualifying word. True Socialism; that is, with all its distinctive features omitted.”
“Not at all. Socialism with all its vital organs strengthened and purified; in short—Christianity.”
“I thought so! Christianity! Why, Christianity has had her fling for eighteen centuries, and what has she done?”
“The first thing she did was to establish a commune,” replied the Irishman. “You can read a full account of it in the Book of Acts, including the history of some weak disciples, who, having perhaps been trained in tiger-hunting, were not fully equal to the occasion during a reign of peace. As the first recorded experiment in Socialism, it ought to interest you.”
“But the experiment failed.”
“Failed? In the reign of Tiberius, with Nero and Caligula and all those fellows to come after? Well, rather! The world wasn’t quite ready for it, not by some eighteen centuries, so Christianity fell back on her intrenchments, as you might say, and, while she reserved the spirit of Socialism, let go the letter.”
“She did, did she? why, Christians.”
“I’m not talking about Christians. We’re a bad lot, most of us, but it’s because we don’t live up to our principles. You read over your Gospels, old boy, and tell me whether, if they really and vitally influenced the lives of the majority of Americans, Socialism in its essence—that is, Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity—would not follow as a matter of course.”
“Oh! perhaps, yes. I don’t quarrel with your religion as a system of morality, Clare. It is”—
“I know; miracles. But how a fellow who, not content with making bricks without straw, tries to build a house by tearing up the foundations, can quarrel with miracles, passes my comprehension. Look here. Do you not know that it is a waste of time to reform society from the outside, and especially by main force? The worm at the root of the social tree, my dear fellow, is sin. How do you propose to get rid of it?”
“Ah, there indeed,” sighed the German, his metaphysical soul rising to the bait, “you start the great religious problem, my friend, with which Zoroaster, Buddha, and other religious teachers have grappled.”
“And which only Christ has solved,” said Ernest Clare.
Whereupon they rushed into a discussion which, taking by and by another turn, led them into transcendental mathematics, and the possible existence of worlds or universes where a fourth dimension forms part of the usual order of things; with many wild fancies as to the type of inhabitants such universes may possess. When Karl hurried back from the other end of the car to fetch his wife and change cars for Micklegard, they were still hard at it.
That night Dora had a singular dream. She stood in a world which formed part of one of those universes of which Clare and his companion had spoken; a universe which admits a fourth, even perhaps a fifth, dimension, and which must therefore differ so widely from our earth even in the primary elements that compose what here we call land and water, that any attempt to describe it were but as the meaningless babble of an infant.
In the world whereon she stood or floated—for our commonplace to them would be miraculous, while what we call miracle is there a daily happening—there was a stir and moving to and fro, as of leaves swayed by a sudden breeze. One of their number had willed to leave them, and seeking our earth—known to him as the theatre of the wondrous drama of redemption—to don our uniform of flesh and strike one good blow against sin. And this, by a law of his world, was possible to him.
He stood, a tall, radiant figure, before One appointed to hear such requests and decide upon them.
“Have you thought well upon the matter?” it was asked him. “It is nothing that, though you may choose to go or stay, you may by no means choose your post in the battle. No good soldier would grumble at that; nor, to say truth, is the difference between what there they call riches and poverty, high and low, happiness and misery, at all worth considering. But have you thought upon the horribleness, the awful, slimy infectiousness, of the foe you must close with in a death grapple? Have you considered the sinfulness of sin?”
“I have looked upward to the midnight sky,” he made answer, “and have beheld the universe that contains earth floating there, a pale, translucent disk. And when the thought of sin had stained its purity with the hue of blood, I have been as one who, bound and helpless, beholds a fiery serpent approaching, to devour before his eyes a sleeping, innocent babe.”
“But what,” it was urged, “if you should be overcome in the struggle? For the serpent is very strong, and his poison is death.”
“The Life of our King,” he replied, “is stronger than the death of the serpent.”
“But the choice is forever,” he was told. “Victor or vanquished, hither you can never return, save as others have done, in passing from world to world. Man you will be, and man you must remain forever. Also, you will forget your world, your friends; and, though broken visions may float about your infancy, like rainbow hues above the dewdrops of morning, they will vanish all too soon before the coming of that sun of earth.”
“Morning and evening are alike His handiwork,” he replied. “Everywhere and always I shall have Him.”
Then He who had questioned him arose solemnly. “Thou bearest with thee the sign of victory,” He said. “Go in peace.”
And it seemed to Dora as if the tall, radiant form turned upon her, her alone in all that illimitable throng, a face of wondrous and eternal beauty. Close it came, and closer still; now they two were alone in all that measureless universe, and his lips smiled, and the eyes were the eyes of a little child.
“Mother!” he said, and kissed her on the lips; wherewith a strange shuddering thrill of utter bliss shot through every member. She woke to find the daylight streaming in at the curtainless window. Her heart was throbbing heavily, her limbs trembled, and her eyes were full of tears.