The Invisible Garden

THERE are many gates that open into the invisible garden, as many gates as there are many men; and the gates are all unlike, as the men are unlike, yet, like the men, are like. And so I cannot say just how, on that particular day, I entered the garden. I could not see it at first, but I could feel it—as if on a dark, soft, velvet night, when I could not see my hand before me, I had strayed from the beaten path into a wayside garden. Would I then have to see the flowers to know they were there?

The first persons I met that day in the garden were a picture and a certain rich man. On ordinary days, I would never have known the two belonged together. But in the garden, I saw the invisible chain that bound them.

I hurried with the hurrying crowd across Forty-Second Street. I was late to my office that morning, but I stopped to look at the pictures in the windows of the Holland Galleries at Forty-Second Street and Fifth Avenue. There was a new picture in the window this morning — small, and on the Fifth Avenue side. It was a picture of a house, away off, as though one saw it from a row-boat far down the little river which led past the house. And the banks of the little river were low and yellow with grain, and the stream was foreign-looking, without the eagerness of an American stream. The walls of the house were yellowish, and flavored with years, unlike an American house. And beyond the house was a green hill far away. It was not an American picture, though the name of the artist was American; and I could not quite be sure what country it was.

Then I became conscious that beside me a man was gazing with surprise and concentration at the picture. He was striking in build, large, and with a face that on ordinary days I should have called formidable. His bearing was that of a person of great affairs — not affairs of art, or literature, or philosophy, but affairs of finance, doubtless. His hair was of that blond color, not flecked, but rather dulled all over, with gray, his complexion hardy and full, and about the upper lip the odd sagging lines by which one recognizes a face long accustomed to a moustache, and but recently clean shaven.

He was German; and suddenly I realized, and wondered that I had not seen it at once, that the picture was a German landscape, a German Heim. The man stood looking at the picture for what seemed like a long time. I knew, in some strange, way, that he was going to turn upon me in a moment for the answer to the surprise in his face. I did not want him to do this. I did not know why he should, except that it was a day in my invisible garden.

And so I stood and waited for him to speak to me. I remember recalling as I waited that I had read somewhere that more people passed this corner in a given time than passed any other spot in the world, and I wondered why, of them all, I should be the one to answer whatever question this strange man was going to ask.

And then his eyes came eagerly from the picture to mine, and I started — for they were wet with tears.

I had not expected to say what I did, or to say anything; but suddenly, when his eyes met mine, I knew. And I said, ‘Oh, that is a picture of your home!’

And as simply as if he had known that I knew, he said, ‘Yes. See that, little window, high by the red chimney: that was my mother’s room.’

We stood there silent for a moment, looking at the high little window together. And then he said, or asked, for there was always a question in his voice, ‘I shall go back? Back to my home? I shall buy the picture? And take it with me? And hang it on the walls of the room where I was born?’ And he pointed a gloved forefinger at the high little window, as if we stood far distant, and he was pointing it out to me amid a confusion of other objects.

And as we stood so, the confusion of objects seemed to grow, and to be tremendous, and almost to shut out the sight of the window. And I felt that I was seeing through his mind the things that lay between his home and him.

He turned toward the door of the art gallery, and looked back at me with the questions still in his face. I said, ‘ Yes ’; or I think I said, ‘Yes.’ Anyway, he disappeared down t he brass-railed steps that lead to the exhibition rooms, and after a moment, I went on across FortySecond Street to my office.

While I had my luncheon that day, I thought about the strange man and the picture of his home. And after luncheon, as I walked down town, I still thought of him.

At Broadway and Thirty-Fifth Street, a fringy crowd was gathering. I was unwilling to stop. I did not want to be interrupted in my thoughts about the man and the picture. I hurried on.

But out of the corner of my eye, I saw that the crowd gathered about a young girl, an unprepossessing young man, and a very old man in worn clerical dress. The young girl stood up on a box on the curb, and pul a megaphone to her lips. I hurried faster.

And then she began to sing, and through the brazen clangor of the city street came the words of an old song my grandmother used to sing, as in her arms I drifted off to sleep on summer nights: —

The street-cars clanged, an advertiser with an automobile full of chewing-gum brayed, ‘If you must chew gum chew Wrigley’s,The elevated train rumbled by, soldiers strode past, their fieldequipment strapped to their shoulders.

The crowd was so thin about the girl that, even from where I stood, I could see her poor little jacket, badly made, her badly chosen plaid skirt, her unbecoming hat.

But her voice was exquisitely high and sweet and swinging, and the words of the second verse floated out and suspended over Broadway: —

Still t he stream of Broadway flowed past unbroken, and only a fragment here and there caught on the outskirts of the little crowd about the singer. I nodded encouragingly to a half-indifferent matron near me, and crossed the street to stand in the front row of the meagre gathering, the recruit I had beguiled beside me.

The girl finished her song, and then, with the red flushing all over her face under the thin white skin, she asked if anyone wished to come forward to be prayed for, and not. a soul moved in his tracks. Then the unprepossessing young man gave a short talk. He also finished by saying t hat, if anyone would come forward, they would be prayed for now, and also, later, by the congregation of the church on Lexington Avenue. And none of us dared breathe easy even, for fear we should be prayed for.

Then there was something different, a sort of hush, as when in a great cathedral a great man ascends a pulpit, with something momentous to be said. But there was nothing momentous here, no hallowed lights, no perfume of lilies — only a very old man, the garish st reet, a shabby crowd. Slowly, stiffly, with the aid of the poorly dressed girl, he mounted the rude box. For a moment he stood quite still and straight; then he stretched out his arms, and bowed his head in silence — a strange imposing figure, large, gaunt, his gray hair stirred a little in the breeze, his eyes heavylidded like a piece of sculpture, his face seamed with study.

And then, without preface, without beginning and without ending of his own, he spoke: —

‘Verily I say unto you, that whosoever shall say unto this mountain, he thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith. Therefore I say unto you, what things soever ye desire when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.’

When he had finished speaking after t his manner, he held out his arms again, and closed his eyes, and said, ‘If there be among you one who wishes to be prayed for, let him come forward.’ And he did not open his eyes to see if any stirred among the people.

And not a living soul flecked an eyelash. I looked about the circle, thickened now, and six or eight deep all around, — say a hundred people, — and not one would permit this old man to pray for him. And lest he should t hink that his great personal effort had been in vain, and that he had cast, his master’s pearls before the unappreciative, I stepped out of the circle, quite close under the shadow of his thin white hands.

And he did not open his eyes to see what manner of person he prayed for. What manner of man or of woman he had drawn from the multi-throng of Broadway mattered not to one so soon himself to come into the presence of that one Indivisible and Omniscient, to whom all are alike.

I did not hear the words of the old man’s prayer, but his voice ceased so soon t hat I was surprised, and raised my head, and saw that all the people had moved forward as he spoke, and that, instead of standing alone in the shadow of his extended hands, I was but one of all t he crowd come forward to be prayed for.

And nearest me was the certain rich man I had seen that morning at the art gallery.

‘After I left you,’he said, ‘I remembered anew the great sorrow that lay between my home and me, between my people and my father’s people, between my sons and my brothers’ sons. And I gave up hope that I should be able to remove the mountains of grief, and hang the picture on the walls of the house where I was born.’

My lips seemed dumb, but I remembered that the old man had prayed for me, and that if it was for me to speak, I would know what to say.

And the strange man continued, ‘ But now we have met again, and I have found my hope again, and I shall remove the mountains; for has not the prophet just said, “Verily I say unto you, that whosoever shall say unto this mountain, be thou removed, and shall not doubt, in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass, he shall have whatsoever he saith"?’

And as there was a question in his voice, as there had been in the morning, I said, ‘Yes,’ again, as I had said yes in the morning; and we went our separate ways.

Do not ask me who the strange man was, he whom I met in the morning and again at noon, for I do not know. I know only that it was one of those days when I walked in my invisible garden, as you sometimes walk in yours, and that the next morning, when I looked in the window of the art gallery, the new small picture was gone. In its place Avas a ballerina with red-laced cothurns, and I paused to look at her, though I was late to my office already.