“No, I don’t mistake one bit. Let Mary Winkle, if she is communistic in all the moods and tenses, lump her child with the two little Carpenters and draw lots to take one of the three for her own. Would that satisfy her heart, although the precious principles would be right enough? Of course not, because her heart would step in and claim its own by the divine right of love. I should be thoroughly communistic on the score of these children. I shouldn’t mind to draw lots as to whether Willette or Nelly or Johnny Carpenter was going to come to live with me. One would do as well as another, and I could be thoroughly communistic, because I don’t love any of them very deeply. My little flowers I did love. It wasn’t that I had worked for them and grudged the fruit of my labour. I would work in a turnip field and let anyone who liked have the turnips, nasty, watery, pulpy things, but I loved those flowers and tended them and they were mine. I don’t care about the philosophy of the question. You will perhaps some day see what I mean, Ezra, and understand me. I know you don’t now. You think me a silly child.”
In his own heart he thought he understood more clearly than he liked to confess, that Olive was speaking more than philosophy, she was announcing stubborn facts. However, he strove his utmost to soothe her feelings, for he could see that if an attitude of strife and hostility were once set up between her and Mary Winkle, it would not only affect his wife’s happiness but might have very serious results upon the future of Perfection City. There were only a very few of them, and if the experiment was to succeed it could only do so through unity, while strife and internal dissensions would certainly destroy it without giving it a chance. This point was fruitful of deep meditation, and occasioned heart-searchings to Ezra. It indeed augured ill for the future, not only of Perfection City, but of all those other cities of their imagination which should spring from this mother plant, if the personal feelings of a couple of good women were potent enough to wreck the scheme. Surely, in the dozen or so choice spirits who now formed the entire population of that City, there could be none of those latent forces making for destruction which would have to be reckoned with in the future and larger experiments in communism they were leading up to. If it was so difficult to soothe ruffled feelings in Perfection City now, and to compose a quarrel about some wretched little balsams, what would happen when, in a larger Perfection City, deeper cause of dispute arose between numbers of persons? Ezra’s mind recoiled aghast at the answer which rose up in his mind in reply to that question. There would have to be some strong, some overwhelming central power, a despot in short. Was this then the goal which they were to reach after toiling along a hard and stony road of personal effort? A despotism or a monasticism, in either case tyranny and subjection. Surely, oh surely, there must be some other solution which his mind, disturbed by the sight of his little wife’s distress, had unaccountably failed to formulate. He would go to Madame and would seek guidance from her illumined mind.
Olive, spent by her emotions, had gone to sleep quite early, so Ezra sallied forth to seek counsel where he was used to find it. Madame would be sure to be still up—though it was late by prairie hours, after nine o’clock—as he knew by experience, for in his bachelor days he had often spent long evenings in discussion and talk with her. Since his marriage, however, he had never gone alone in the evening to talk with Madame. Happy in his own love, he had felt no need of other companionship, and now as he walked along to her house, he began to wonder if she had noticed the sudden cessation of the evening talks, and also to wonder if she had missed them. It was thoughtless never to have gone near her during all these weeks. It was selfish, seeing how kind, how always sympathetic she had been to him for so many months, during the time when he felt lonely and full of undefined longings, before his heart had found complete rest in Olive’s love and above all in his love for her. Ezra thinking of these things was smitten with remorse, and made a resolution to go and see Madame of an evening sometimes and to bring Olive with him. Meantime he walked along and in a few moments knocked at the familiar door. Madame opened it herself, with Balthasar in close attendance. The latter, on satisfying himself that it was a person of friendly intentions who claimed admittance, walked back to the spot where he had been lying, and resumed the thread of his interrupted slumbers.
“Brother Ezra, this is indeed a most unexpected visit. I hope it is not because there is anything wrong in your little home,” said Madame gravely.
Ezra felt much embarrassed. He could hardly say there was nothing the matter, and still less could he apologise for having forgotten during all these happy weeks to come to see her. He did the best thing under the circumstances. He ignored Madame’s remark and question, and plunged boldly into the business which had brought him.
She listened gravely without making any observation, but occasionally the faintest shadow of a smile fluttered around her lips. Ezra watched her face somewhat anxiously. In the old days, he had been used to read her face when they talked together, and to catch the meaning of her words from the mobile and everchanging expression of her clear blue eyes. But to-day, somehow, as he looked, he felt he had lost the power to read. The face was now a mask which seemed to conceal the real woman underneath, and yet it was the same fair smooth brow, the same sharply defined eyebrows, and, beneath, the same eyes. No, the eyes were not the same. They no longer looked clear and full at Ezra, but were often averted in a strange and uncertain manner, as if seeking to hide or to flee. At least such was the curious impression they produced upon him, as he sat looking at her and telling of the mighty wave of wrath that had surged up about that handful of balsam blossoms.
“It is a most singular cause of division, and one I could almost laugh at, except for the very real passions of anger and of hatred it has aroused,” he said in conclusion.
“One often sees terrible bursts of anger and fury in immature minds,” observed Madame in the preamble of her answer. “Young children and people of weak intellect frequently exhibit the most pitiable extremes of fury over trifling causes.”
Ezra was not quite certain to what she referred. If to Olive, then she was mistaken in considering her a child. He recalled very vividly what she had said about communism in what one loves, and he was not at all prepared to admit that her arguments were those of a person of weak intellect.
“I don’t think this is a case for ‘criticism-cure’ in the Assembly, do you?” she said.