Lilla was so full of what she had learned through Chrissalyn of the deathlessness of herself and fellow beings, that she bubbled over like a kettle filled to the brim and boiling. What was loss of money and a contest with poverty to one who knew that Death was dead? This knowledge was of a character too fermentative to remain bottled up within her. She went around talking of it, unmindful of the injunction not to cast pearls before swine. An enthusiast by nature, and endowed with power to carry conviction to an extraordinary degree, it is strange she did not succeed in the propaganda; but she did not. On the contrary the swine turned upon her and she was rended, like other prophets who have been guilty of similar indiscretion.
To each other some of the swine said: “Poor Lilla Joy. Burton’s failure has upset her after all. Talks about nothing but souls. Thinks she has had proof of dead folks being alive. It’s too bad.”
But Lilla refused to be cast down. After a time she gave up the hopeless work of letting her light shine too far, it is true, but she kept her strangely happy face and joyous ways—kept them through many a dark day, on many a stony road—kept them to the end. She met all things, troublous or pleasant, as Socrates said he wished to meet the gods—with a bright face.
This never-changing brightness made an impression on everybody who beheld it. One might feebly describe it by saying that her soul seemed too large and too happy for its mortal measure, and was always running over.
Perhaps the office boy of the Register hit it most felicitously, when he thus described her to Cartice, who had been out, when she called one day: “It was that lady who comes often and always looks as if she had just heard good news.” Mrs. Doring recognized the word photograph of Lilla Joy at once.
There are times in the lives of all when new departures are imminent, when a change is impending and obligatory, yet is slow to define itself. There is the feeling that other paths must be entered, but to the outer eye they are unblazed.
Such a time had come to Cartice Doring. She had long felt its approach, but knew not the end to which it pointed. Something more than impulse stirred within her. The Spirit of Destiny itself spoke the inexorable command to move on.
Whither? “Move on.” This was the only answer, for Destiny has a way of making us choose our roads, though for the most part the various whips within and without which play upon us seem to make the matter of choice largely a thing of name only. We do what we can rather than what we wish. This should give us a grain of comfort on dark days by relieving us of regrets, and settling us in the conviction that we are no more and no less than that which we must be. Even though our own nature be the compelling and directing force, we are none the less servants to its dicta. Call that which rules us by whatever name we choose, how supreme is the sway!
Looking over the situation Mrs. Doring summed up the reasons for making a change. First, she was not doing her best; she was letting down a little all the time, and that clearly was degeneration. Pleasure in her work had gone and perfunctory performance taken its place. She was weary of the miserable business of writing to please the many-headed multitude, which the late Dr. Charles Mackay was fond of describing as “fool of a public; pig of a public,” while her honest convictions had to be kept locked up in her soul and labeled, “Dangerous,” like a can of dynamite.