Chapter 6
Fortune smiled upon the naughty creatures at the very outset, for Pacific picked up a stick of candy in the street, and gave half of it to a pretty Chinese maiden whose name in English would have been Spring Blossom, and who looked, in any language, like a tropical flower, in her gown of blue-and-gold-embroidered satin and the sheaf of tiny fans in her glossy black hair. Spring Blossom accepted the gift with enthusiasm, since a sweet tooth is not a matter of nationality, and ran immediately to tell her mother, a childish instinct also of universal distribution. She climbed, as nimbly as her queer little shoes would permit, a flight of narrow steps leading to a balcony; while the twins followed close at her heels, and wedged their way through a forest of Mongolian legs till they reached the front, where they peeped through the spaces of the railings with Spring Blossom, Fairy Foot, Dewy Rose, and other Celestial babies, quite overlooked in the crowd and excitement and jollity. Such a very riot of confusion there was, it seemed as if Confucius might have originally spelled his name with an s in the middle; for every window was black with pigtailed highbinders, cobblers, pork butchers, and pawnbrokers. The narrow streets and alleys became one seething mass of Asiatic humanity; while the painted belles came out on their balconies like butterflies, sitting among a wealth of gaudy paper flowers that looked pale in comparison with the daubs of vermilion on their cheeks and the rainbow colours of their silken tunics.
At last the pageant had gathered itself together, and came into full view in all its magnificence. There were pagodas in teakwood inlaid with gold; and resting on ebony poles, and behind them, on a very tame Rosinante decked with leopard skins and gold bullion fringes, a Chinese maiden dressed to represent a queen of Celestial mythology. Then came more pagodas, and companies of standard-bearers in lavender tunics, red sashes, green and orange leggings and slippers; more and more splendid banners, painted with dragons sprawling in distressed attitudes; litters containing minor gods and the paraphernalia they were accustomed to need on a journey like this; more litters bearing Chinese orchestras, gongs going at full blast, fiddles squeaking, drums rumbling, trumpets shrieking, cymbals clashing,—just the sort of Babel that the twins adored.
And now came the chariot and throne of the great joss himself, and just behind him a riderless bay horse, intended for his imperial convenience should he tire of being swayed about on the shoulders of his twelve bearers, and elect to change his method of conveyance. Behind this honoured steed came a mammoth rock-cod in a pagoda of his own, and then, heralded by a fusilade of fire-crackers, the new dragon itself, stretching and wriggling its monster length through one entire block. A swarm of men cleared the way for it, gesticulating like madmen in their zeal to get swimming-room for the sacred monster. Never before in her brief existence had Pacific Simonson been afraid of anything, but if she had been in the street, and had so much as caught the wink of the dragon’s eye, or a wave of its consecrated fin, she would have dropped senseless to the earth; as it was, she turned her back to the procession, and, embracing with terror-stricken fervour the legs of the Chinaman standing behind her, made up her mind to be a better girl in the future. The monster was borne by seventy-four coolies who furnished legs for each of the seventy-four joints of its body, while another concealed in its head tossed it wildly about. Little pigtailed boys shrieked as they looked at its gaping mouth that would have shamed a man-eating shark, at the huge locomotive headlights that served for its various sets of eyes, at the horns made of barber poles, and the moustache of twisted hogshead hoops. Behind this baleful creature came other smaller ones, and more flags, and litters with sacrificial offerings, and more musicians, till all disappeared in the distance, and the crowd surged in the direction of the temple.
There was no such good fortune for the twins as an entrance into this holy of holies, for it held comparatively few besides the dignitaries, aristocrats, and wealthy merchants of the colony; but there was still ample material for entertainment, and they paid no heed to the going down of the sun. Why should they, indeed, when there were fascinating opium dens standing hospitably open, where they could have the excitement of entrance even if it were followed by immediate ejectment? As it grew darker, the scene grew more weird and fairylike, for the scarlet, orange, and blue lanterns began to gleam one by one in the narrow doorways, and from the shadowy corners of the rooms behind them. In every shop were tables laden with Chinese delicacies,—fish, flesh, fowl, tea, rice, whisky, lichee nuts, preserved limes, ginger, and other sweetmeats; all of which, when not proffered, could be easily purloined, for there was no spirit of parsimony or hostility afloat in the air. In cubby-holes back of the counters, behind the stoves, wherever they could find room for a table, groups of moon-eyed men began to congregate for their nightly game of fan-tan, some of the players and onlookers smoking, while others chewed lengths of peeled sugar-cane.
In the midst of festivities like these the twins would have gone on from bliss to bliss without consciousness of time or place, had not hunger suddenly descended upon them and sleep begun to tug at their eyelids, changing in a trice their joy into sorrow and their mirth into mourning. Not that they were troubled with any doubts, fears, or perplexities. True, they had wandered away from Eden Place, and had not the slightest idea of their whereabouts. If they had been a couple of babes in a wood, or any two respectable lost children of romance, memories of lullabies and prayers at mother’s knee would have precipitated them at this juncture into floods of tears; but home to them was simply supper and bed. The situation did not seem complex to their minds; the only plan was, of course, to howl, and to do it thoroughly,—stand in a corner of the market-place, and howl in such a manner that there could be no mistake as to the significance of the proceeding; when the crowd collected,—for naturally a crowd would collect,—simply demand supper and bed, no matter what supper nor which bed; eat the first, lie down in the second, and there you are! If the twins had been older and more experienced, they would have known that people occasionally do demand the necessities of life without receiving them; but in that case they would also have known that such a misfortune would never fall upon a couple of lost children who confide their woes to the public. There was no preconcerted plan between them, no system. They acted without invention, premonition, or reflection. It was their habit to scream, while holding the breath as long as possible, whenever the universe was unfriendly, and particularly when Nature asserted herself in any way; it was a curious fact that they resented the intervention of Nature and Providence with just as much energy as they did the discipline of their caretakers. They screamed now, the moment that the entertainment palled and they could not keep their eyes open without effort; and never had they been more successful in holding their breath and growing black in the face; indeed, Pacific, in the midst of her performance, said to Atlantic, ‘Yours is purple, how is mine?’
A crowd did gather, inevitably, for the twins’ lungs were capable of a body of tone more piercing than that of a Chinese orchestra, and the wonder is that poor Lisa did not hear them as she sat shivering on the curbstone, miles away; for it was her name with which they conjured.
The populace amused itself for a short space of time, watching the fine but misdirected zeal of the performance, and supposing that the parents of the chanting cherubs were within easy reach. It became unpleasant after a while, however, and a policeman, inquiring into the matter, marched the two dirty, weary little protestants off to a station near by,—a march nearly as difficult and bloody as Sherman’s memorable ‘march to the sea’; for the children associated nothing so pleasant as supper and bed with a blue-coated, brass-buttoned person, and resisted his well-meant advances with might and main, and tooth and nail.
The policeman was at last obliged to confine himself to Atlantic, and called a brother-in-arms to take charge of Pacific. He was a man who had achieved distinction in putting down railroad riots, so he was well calculated for the task, although he was somewhat embarrassed by the laughter of the bystanders when his comrade called out to him, ‘Take your club, Mike, but don’t use firearms unless your life’s in danger!’
The station reached, the usual examination took place. Atlantic never could tell the name of the street in which he lived, nor the number of the house. Pacific could, perhaps, but would not; and it must be said, in apology for her abnormal defiance, that her mental operations were somewhat confused, owing to copious indulgence in strong tea, ginger, sugar-cane, and dried fish. She had not been wisely approached in the first place, and she was in her sulkiest and most combative humour; in fact, when too urgently pressed for information as to her age, ancestry, and abiding-place, she told the worthy police-officer to go to a locality for which he felt utterly unsuited, after a life spent in the exaltation of virtue and the suppression of vice. (The vocabulary of the twins was somewhat poverty-stricken in respect to the polite phrases of society, but in profanity it would have been rich for a parrot or a pirate.) The waifs were presently given to the care of the police matron, and her advice, sought later, was to the effect that the children had better be fed and put to bed, and as little trouble expended upon them as was consistent with a Christian city government.
‘It is possible their parents may call for them in the morning,’ she said acidly, ‘but I think it is more than likely that they have been deserted. I know if they belonged to me they’d be lost for ever before I tried to find them!’ and she rubbed a black-and-blue spot on her person, which, if exposed, would have betrayed the shape, size, and general ground-plan of Pacific’s boot.
XI RHODA FREES HER MIND
MORNING dawned, and Mistress Mary and Rhoda went up the flight of broad steps rather earlier than usual,—so early that the janitress, who had been awake half the night with an ailing baby, was just going in to dust the rooms.
It was she who first caught sight of the old sofa and its occupant, and her exclamation drew Mary and Rhoda to the spot. There lay poor Marm Lisa in the dead sleep of exhaustion, her dress torn and wrinkled, her shoes travel-stained, her hair tangled and matted. Their first idea was that the dreaded foe might have descended upon her, and that she had had some terrible seizure with no one near to aid and relieve her. But the longer they looked, the less they feared this; her face, though white and tear-stained, was tranquil, her lips only slightly pale, and her breathing calm and steady. Mary finally noted the pathetic grouping of little objects in the red chair, and, touched by this, began to apprehend the significance of her own white apron close clasped in the child’s loyal arms, and fell a-weeping softly on Rhoda’s shoulder. ‘She needed me, Rhoda,’ she said. ‘I do not know for what, but I am sure she needed me.’
‘I see it all,’ said Rhoda, administering soft strokes of consolation: ‘it is something to do with those little beasts; yes, I will call them beasts, and if you don’t let me, I’ll call them brutes. They lost themselves yesterday, of course, and dear old Lisa searched for them all the afternoon and half the night, for aught we know, and then came here to be comforted, I suppose—the blessed thing!’
‘Hush! don’t touch her,’ Mary whispered, as Rhoda went impetuously down on her knees by the sofa; ‘and we must not talk in this room, for fear of waking her. Suppose you go at once to Mrs. Grubb’s, dear, and, whatever you learn about the twins there, I shall meanwhile call a carriage and take Lisa home to my own bed. The janitress can send Edith to me as soon as she comes, and I will leave her with Lisa while I run back here to consult with you and Helen. I shall telegraph for Dr. Thorne, also, to be sure that this sleep is as natural and healing a thing as it appears to be.’
Mrs. Grubb was surprised, even amused, at Rhoda’s exciting piece of news, but she was perfectly tranquil.
‘Well, don’t they beat all!’ she exclaimed, leaning against the door-frame and taking her side hair out of waving-pins as she talked. ‘No, I haven’t seen them since noon yesterday. I was out to a picnic supper at the Army Headquarters at night, and didn’t get home till later than usual, so I didn’t go up to their room. I thought they were in bed; they always have been in bed when it was bedtime, ever since they were born.’ Here she removed the last pin, and put it with the others in the bosom of her dress for safe-keeping. ‘This morning, when they didn’t turn up, I thought some of you girls had taken a fancy to keep them overnight; I didn’t worry, supposing that Lisa was with them.’
‘Nobody on earth could take a fancy to the twins or keep them an hour longer than necessary, and you know it, Mrs. Grubb,’ said Rhoda, who seldom minced matters; ‘and in case no one should ever have the bad manners to tell you the whole truth, I want to say here and now that you neglect everything good and sensible and practical,—all the plain, simple duties that stare you directly in the face,—and waste yourself on matters that are of no earthly use to anybody. Those children would have been missed last night if you had one drop of mother’s blood in your veins! You have three helpless children under what you are pleased to call your care’ (and here Rhoda’s lip curled so scornfully that Mrs. Grubb was tempted to stab her with a curling-pin), ‘and you went to sleep without knowing to a certainty whether they had had supper or bed! I don’t believe you are a woman at all—you are just a vague abstraction; and the only things you’ve ever borne or nursed or brooded in your life have been your miserable, bloodless little clubs and bands and unions!’
Rhoda’s eyes flashed summer lightning, her nostrils quivered, her cheeks flamed scarlet, and Mrs. Grubb sat down suddenly and heavily on the front stairs and gasped for breath. According to her own belief, her whole life had been passed in a search for truth, but it is safe to say she had never before met it in so uncompromising and disagreeable a shape.
‘Perhaps when you are quite through with your billingsgate,’ she finally said, ‘you will take yourself off my steps before you are ejected. You! to presume to criticise me! You, that are so low in the scale of being, you can no more understand my feelings and motives than a jellyfish can comprehend a star! Go back and tell Miss Mary,’ she went on majestically, as she gained confidence and breath, ‘that it is her duty and business to find the children, since they were last seen with her, and unless she proves more trustworthy they will not be allowed to return to her. Tell her, too, that when she wishes to communicate with me, she must choose some other messenger besides you, you impudent, grovelling little earthworm! Get out of my sight, or you will unfit me for my classes!’
Mrs. Grubb was fairly superb as she launched these thunderbolts of invective; the staircase her rostrum, her left hand poised impressively on the baluster, and the three snaky strands of brown hair that had writhed out of the waving-pins hissing Medusa-wise on each side of her bead.
Rhoda was considerably taken aback by the sudden and violent slamming of the door of No. 1 Eden Place, and she felt an unwelcome misgiving as to her wisdom in bringing Mrs. Grubb face to face with truth. Her rage had somewhat subsided by the time she reached Mistress Mary’s side, for she had stopped on the way to ask a policeman to telephone the various stations for news of the lost children, and report at once to her. ‘There is one good thing,’ she thought: ‘wherever they may be, their light cannot be hid any more than that of a city that is set on a hill. There will be plenty of traces of their journey, for once seen they are never forgotten. Nobody but a hero would think of kidnapping them, and nobody but an idiot would expect a ransom for them!’
‘I hope you didn’t upbraid Mrs. Grubb,’ said Mary, divining from Rhoda’s clouded brow that her interview had not been a pleasant one. ‘You know our only peaceful way of rescuing Lisa from her hold is to make a friend of her, and convert her to our way of thinking. Was she much disturbed about the children?’
‘Disturbed!’ sniffed Rhoda disdainfully. ‘Imagine Mrs. Grubb disturbed about anything so trivial as a lost child! If it had been a lost amendment, she might have been ruffled!’
‘What is she doing about it, and in what direction is she searching?’
‘She is doing nothing, and she will do nothing; she has gone to a Theosophy lecture, and we are to find the twins; and she says it’s your fault, anyway, and unless you prove more trustworthy the seraphs will be removed from your care; and you are not to send me again as a messenger, if you please, because I am an impudent, grovelling little earthworm!’
‘Rhoda!’
‘Yes’m!’
‘Did she call you that?’
‘Yes’m, and a jellyfish besides; in fact, she dragged me through the entire animal kingdom; but she is a stellar being—she said so.’
‘What did you say to her to provoke that, Rhoda? She is thoroughly illogical and perverse, but she is very amiable.’
‘Yes, when you don’t interfere with her. You should catch her with her hair in waving-pins, just after she has imbibed apple-sauce! Oh, I can’t remember exactly what I said, for I confess I was a trifle heated, and at the moment I thought only of freeing my mind. Let me see: I told her she neglected all the practical duties that stared her directly in the face, and squandered herself on useless fads and vagaries—that’s about all. No-o, now that I come to think of it, I did say that the children would have been missed and found last night, if she had had a drop of mother’s blood in her veins.’
‘That’s terse and strong—and tactful,’ said Mary; ‘anything more?’
‘No, I don’t think so. Oh yes! now that I reflect, I said I didn’t believe she was a woman at all. That seemed to enrage her beyond anything, somehow; and when I explained it, and tried to modify it by saying I meant that she had never borne or loved or brooded anything in her life but her nasty little clubs, she was white with anger, and told me I was too low in the scale of being to understand her. Good gracious! I wish she understood herself half as well as I understand her!’
Mary gave a hysterical laugh. ‘I can’t pretend you didn’t speak the truth, Rhoda, but I am sadly afraid it was ill advised to wound Mrs. Grubb’s vanity. Do you feel a good deal better?’
‘No,’ confessed Rhoda penitently. ‘I did for fifteen minutes,—yes, nearly half an hour; but now I feel worse than ever.’
‘That is one of the commonest symptoms of freeing one’s mind,’ observed Mary quietly.
It was scarcely an hour later when Atlantic and Pacific were brought in by an officer, very dirty and dishevelled, but gay and irresponsible as larks, nonchalant, amiable, and unrepentant. As Rhoda had prophesied, there had been no difficulty in finding them; and as everybody had prophesied, once found there had not been a second’s delay in delivery. Moved by fiery hatred of the police matron, who had illustrated justice more than mercy, and illustrated it with the back of a hair-brush on their reversed persons; lured also by two popcorn balls, a jumping-jack, and a tin horse, they accepted the municipal escort with alacrity; and nothing was ever jauntier than the manner in which Pacific, all smiles and molasses, held up her sticky lips for an expected salute—an unusual offer which was respectfully declined as a matter of discipline.
Mary longed for Rhoda’s young minister in the next half-hour, which she devoted to private spiritual instruction. Psychology proved wholly unequal to the task of fathoming the twins, and she fancied that theology might have been more helpful. Their idea seemed to be—if the rudimentary thing she unearthed from their consciousness could be called an idea—that they would not mind repenting if they could see anything of which to repent. Of sin, as sin, they had no apparent knowledge, either by sight, by hearsay or by actual acquaintance. They sat stolidly in their little chairs, eyes roving to the windows, the blackboard, the pictures; they clubbed together and fished a pin from a crack in the floor during one of Mary’s most thrilling appeals; finally they appeared so bored by the whole proceeding that she felt a certain sense of embarrassment in the midst of her despair. She took them home herself at noon, apologised to the injured Mrs. Grubb for Rhoda’s unfortunate remarks, and told that lady, gently but firmly, that Lisa could not be moved until she was decidedly better.
‘She was wandering about the streets searching for the twins from noon till long after dark, Mrs. Grubb—there can be no doubt of it; and she bears unmistakable signs of having suffered deeply. I have called in a physician, and we must all abide by his advice.’
‘That’s well enough for the present,’ agreed Mrs. Grubb reluctantly, ‘but I cannot continue to have my studies broken in upon by these excitements. I really cannot. I thought I had made an arrangement with Madame Goldmarker to relieve me, but she has just served me a most unladylike and deceitful trick, and the outcome of it will be that I shall have to send Lisa to the asylum. I can get her examined by the commissioners some time before Christmas, and if they decide she’s imbecile they’ll take her off my hands. I didn’t want to part with her till the twins got older, but I’ve just found a possible home for them if I can endure their actions until New Year’s. Our Army of Present Perfection isn’t progressing as it ought to, and it’s going to found a colony down in San Diego County, and advertise for children to bring up in the faith. A certain number of men and women have agreed to go and start the thing and I’m sure my sister, if she was alive would be glad to donate her children to such a splendid enterprise. If the commissioners won’t take Lisa, she can go to Soul Haven, too—that’s the name of the place;—but no, of course they wouldn’t want any but bright children, that would grow up and spread the light.’ (Mary smiled at the thought of the twins engaged in the occupation of spreading light.) ‘I shall not join the community myself, though I believe it’s a good thing; but a very different future is unveiling itself before me’ (her tone was full of mystery here), ‘and some time, if I can ever pursue my investigations in peace, you will knock at this door and I shall have vanished! But I shall know of your visit, and the very sound of your footfall will reach my ear, even if I am inhabiting some remote mountain fastness!’
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