CHAPTER I.
This was the way it happened. Like all beginnings of things, the roots were in the dark. Ethelbert Daksha came of a family in which girls counted for a big half of all that was bright and interesting.
The Dakshas were a delightful family every way, except, perhaps, in the matter of money-wealth. That seemed constitutionally lacking, because you will see yourself that people who take great interest in devising ways of spending money, and very little in devising ways of getting it to spend, in the constitution of things are lacking in money-wealth. But they had everything else except money, and their chief thought in regard to that lack was an amiable perplexity that it seemed to be such a desideratum in affairs of society. There was a big but exhausted English property on the mother’s side; and this strain of high English blood was mixed with a dash of hard-headed German culture and a few drops from the veins of a Spanish dame, lady-mother of the Hidalgos. So, you see, when, ninety years before, a discontent with something in the Old World society had set the elder Daksha down on American soil, various European nationalities were transplanted to root as best might be in American civilization. In addition to all this, as faith in all things high, bounded brightly in the Daniel O’Connell blood which coursed through Daniel Daksha’s veins, it was very natural that his daughter Ethelbert, considering as she did that all nationalities were equally admirable for different virtues, should be greatly astonished that there should be quarrels between those of different countries, when the blood of four nations coursed so amicably in her own veins. If ever there were a girl who, in the nature of things was a typical American, it was Ethelbert Daksha, with the race-drift of Europe, Asia and Africa in her individual veins, as our nation carries it in its aggregated citizenship.
Mr. Daksha recognized all this. He was one of the dreamers who work, at whose feet life lays its crown of success; although so far his many admirable schemes for regenerating society had made him at once the most serviceable and the most impecunious of mortals. He had abundant means, but little money; and while it might be stretching a point to say the Dakshas cultivated a life of beauty on a little oatmeal, yet it would give a hint at the way in which beauty was cultivated in that simple home, where oatmeal was the chief of their diet; that is, if you leave out of the reckoning the best periodicals and old writings of all climes and ages. These things were really the chief of their diet, and had much to do with the fact that they, like the old lady who lived on the hill, were scarce ever quiet concerning the topic of the ideal order of society which is soon coming to our nation, and through us to the world.
Life among the Dakshas was like a bit of Greek art transplanted to the robust civilization of this country, which is trying so hard to assimilate its many diverse elements. The theory of the elegant Greeks was: “What the spirit wills, the body must.” This theory had been practicalized more or less fully by O’Connell, who knew no law stronger than that of the necessities, which he deemed were laid on him as liberator of his people. The same theory had been the impelling power of the Spanish proverb which, translated, reads: “In his own soul, and not in that of another, must the principle of one’s actions be established.” While the German element, which fills the veins of England’s crowned family, in quick response to the same idea, cried out: “Let every man hear for himself, and hearing, then speak.”
So as you may well suppose, the theory that spirit is master and body is only the good servant to do the spirit’s bidding, met some rebuffs as the Dakshas lived it out midst that portion of the newly rich who devote their energies to saving—not MAN, but money. And so much were the Dakshas in love with their beautiful ideals that but for their good common sense they would have become domineering dogmatists; and thus, properly, would have made themselves greatly disliked, and therefore, incapacitated for service.
About forty odd years before this episode the heads of the Daksha family had settled themselves to the recognition that the inordinate frenzy for money-making which was deluging its possessors, would insure many low tragedies in high (?) life; and to the recognition that society was becoming but like a witch’s caldron with its seethe and bubble of toil and trouble, and with its inodorous stench of poison things, flung into it by the witches and wizards, as they carry out their passion-dance on the old Harry’s pavilion.
Of course the Dakshas had their opinion of this besotted high (?) life, with its stimulation of that excitement which wrecks nerve and brain. But they did not presume to force the virtues of self-culture on persons whose highest dream of success was TO INCREASE THEIR CHANCES FOR THIS INDULGENCE IN HIGH OLD TIMES, and who were more than willing to pay for them, with the after years of that disease, remorse and reek of ill-fame in which “the name of the wicked rots.”
Whatever they might choose to do with their knowledge, the fact remained that the younger Dakshas knew that they, by inheritance, were rooted in different purposes and back-history than such as this, which reveals itself in these forms of faith-breaking, love-outraging, humanity-destroying bewilderments. So when this other kind of girls and boys, with their mothers and fathers flying around in society’s whirligig, flitted about them, the Dakshas thought steadily on the truth as they knew it; and “hearing for themselves, then spoke,” thus giving their companions a chance to catch on at any point of spiritual contact which they found available.
So the roots of Ethelbert Daksha’s life had gathered force and fibre in wisdom religions known in ancient America, Europe, Asia and Africa; and the might of this force was now annealed in her nature, and was forming into a unified strength of character, which to the ignorant seemed like a thing of very different quality.