“I do,” said Ethelbert; “and ‘equal exchange is no robbery.’ You take me so, too, do you not?” And a hand-grasp, peculiar and vitalizing, sealed the compact. And this was the last reference made to that matter till years afterward.
The house had not only been promptly enlarged, and Mrs. Mancredo very promptly domiciled there as she desired, but also within two years other developments had taken place. Mrs. Mancredo was now “one of them,” and participated in their many other lines of work, an account of which in the limits of this little booklet will not appear. This is but an episode in the doings of the dualized, and it must suffice to say that, under the best health conditions, physical and psychical, Reginald so improved that strangers recognized him but as a lame man, who had been paralyzed, but who was a person of winsome, gentle manners. His speech was inconsequent, and often polyglot and startling in its sudden outbreaks into good English concerning unknown themes related to realms unknown, and intangible to those who could not comprehend his mental movement.
The home of the Dakshas was more than ever like themselves; or it would be truer to say, was as much as ever like themselves, since the changes which had developed were but outward signs of the average spiritual state of the occupants of that home.
The house eventually was greatly enlarged. For Mrs. Mancredo and her servant having come to stay, the sustained condition of spiritual attraction necessitated a steady extension of the outward buildings.
As, for instance, when Bertha Gemacht (whose life was a romance) had first heard of Reginald’s attack, and of Miss Daksha’s intention of restoring his faculties, she had presented herself to Ethelbert, internally necessitated to explain her relation to the problem in hand. For the memorable scene and conversation on the balcony had left with her a fixed belief that the vital force of vein and brain is the vigor of Jehovah in us; and that those who reverence it according to the law of right use, having englobed that vital force, are thereby enriched, and fitted for a great order of service. For that this wealth of vein and brain is wealth, indeed, of an absolutely empowering sort; and is, in itself, power. And she had fully learned that by its inherent empowerment it naturally introduces its possessor to services which can only be carried forward on the plane of superordinary intelligence.
Bertha had taken to this philosophy as naturally as she had to breathing. But her heart had lately become very sore with the fear that, as the workers were to be “the pure in heart” who see good and God, she, for cause known to herself, might not be considered “pure in heart,” and so might be rejected as not fitted to help even in the humblest way, in the splendid work here opening up. The bitterness of this dread had filled her mind for weeks,—yes, from the first. And the bitterness was none the less bitter from the fact that the very circumstance in her life which she felt would be taken as ground for her rejection from this work for the new age, was in her good judgment the circumstance which had educated her to well do one line of work, that ought to be a collateral to the rest of it, as carried on here.
So one day she came suddenly to see Miss Daksha, appearing at the sunlighted stretch of rooms, the abutting tower-end of which was connected with Reginald’s suite. She glanced furtively at him, halting as she knocked, and Ethel, understanding all, said at once:
“Bertha, I call him—not bad, but bewildered; not sick, but being healed; not lost, but in process of finding himself. His helplessness now exists because Mother Wisdom Divine has arrested him, by putting to sleep certain of his faculties, in order to the better releasement of his higher nature. As we understand this matter, he is mentally in communion now with saintly spirits. And if your angel and mine can but wisely conspire with angels higher yet, he will be safely carried through this crisis; and in a few years he will have forgotten all of the evil things of the past, and will be ready for a new life. And then all will go well, if but only people will then not remember against him his follies and transgressions.
“For Bertha,” Ethel said, curiously looking into the steadfast German eyes, as if showing her a sight of “those invisible things of God, which are clearly seen, being understood by things which are made.” “Bertha, Reginald ought not to die yet physically. Dying as he now is would but necessitate that at his next incarnation some other woman would be tortured to give birth to perhaps an unchanged distracted being, with the same self-destructive tendencies as those evinced the day when, years ago, he was beating the rosebush to pieces.