CHAPTER XXVII
I tire of shams, I rush to be.—Emerson.
I tire of shams, I rush to be.—Emerson.
I tire of shams, I rush to be.—Emerson.
I tire of shams, I rush to be.—Emerson.
Gertrude Ingraham was still unmarried, still pretty, still charming in her dainty, high-bred way.
Perhaps the thought crossed Keith Burgess’s mind as he joined her in her father’s library that evening, after their return from Gregory’s lecture, that she would have been, as a wife, a shade lessexigeantethan Anna.
Anna, shrinking from the small coin of discussion of so great themes, had gone directly to their room,—the room which had been Keith’s on his first visit to Burlington. Keith remained in the library to accept the refreshment which Gertrude had prepared for their return, and found the situation altogether pleasing. It was a rest to a sensitive, nervous man like himself to sit down with a pretty woman who had no startling theories of life and conduct; one who had always moved, and who would always choose to move, on the comfortable lines of convention, instead of seeking some other path for herself, rough and lonely.
Perhaps Keith lingered all the more willingly to-night because he perceived a rough and lonely path opening visibly before him, into which he must in all probability turn full soon.
“What did you think of Mr. Gregory?” asked Gertrude Ingraham over her tea-cups.
“He is a tremendous speaker,” said Keith, soberly;“I never heard a man who could mould an audience to his will as he does. You were not there to-night.”
“No, but I heard him before you and Mrs. Burgess came, night before last. I think he has the finest physique of any orator I ever heard. Don’t you think that is one source of his power? There is something absolutely majestic about him when he is speaking. He seems to overpower you—youmustagree with him, whether you do or not.”
“Then do you accept this new doctrine of his, Miss Ingraham?”
“You mean that there should be no social distinctions, no aristocratic and privileged class, no wealth and no poverty, and all that? I do not know what he said to-night, you see, but that is the line on which he has been speaking.”
“Yes, that is what it all comes to.”
“Why, no, of course I don’t believe in it, when I get away from Mr. Gregory,” said Gertrude, laughing prettily; “because I really think he is going against the fundamental laws of God. There have always been rich people and poor people, and it was intended that there always should be, I think.”
“It does seem absolutely impracticable to carry out any such theory in actual life. Certainly it would be under existing conditions. It can only be done by radical, by revolutionary methods. Have you heard what Mr. Gregory is actually doing to illustrate his theory? Have you heard of Fraternia?”
Gertrude Ingraham lifted her chin with a roguish little movement and nodded with a charming smile.
“Yes, I have heard of Fraternia too! Isn’t it droll? That is why I didn’t go to-night, you see. I was afraidMr. Gregory would get hold of me with that irresistible power of his, and then I should have to go and work in a cotton mill!” and with this Gertrude lifted her eyebrows with an expression of plaintive self-pity which Keith found very taking. “I’m afraid I shouldn’t like it,” she added archly; “it would be so new, and one’s hands would get so horrid!”
They laughed together, Keith naturally noting the delicacy of the small white hands which were manipulating the transparent china on the low table between them. Then Mrs. Ingraham and others coming into the room after them, Keith rose with graceful courtesy to serve them and to draw them into the conversation. But all the while Keith had a sense that he was turning against himself the sharpest weapons which could have been found, nothing being so instinctively dreaded by him as to put himself in an absurd situation, to awaken ridicule, even his own.
Just below the surface of his thought there lay two formidable facts, like sunk, threatening rocks seen darkly under smooth water. He knew that Anna would propose to him that they should throw themselves into Gregory’s enterprise, and become disciples of the new school; and he knew that having cut off hitherto, involuntarily or otherwise, each deepest desire of her soul for the service of others, he should not dare to thwart her in this. If she wished to do this thing, he must join her in it.
Keith had himself been deeply moved by Gregory. The old passion for sacrifice and self-devotion had stirred again within him. He felt the high courage, the generosity, the strong initiative of Gregory; he was thrilled at the sight of a man who could throw himself unreservedly into a difficult and dangerous crusade, simplyfor an ideal, with all to lose and nothing to gain. He too had once marched to that same music; his blood was stirred, and he felt something of the enthusiasm of his student years, rising warm within him. He perfectly understood the motions of Anna’s spirit, and shared in them, up to a certain point. This point was reached when he touched the limit set by his inborn and inherited conservatism, his constitutional preference for things as they were, and his quick dread of making himself absurd. And now, Gertrude Ingraham with her pretty mocking had suddenly put the whole thing before him in the light he dreaded most.
Anna was not thus divided in her mind, and could not have been. Something of the steadfast simplicity of her ancient German ancestry preserved her from this characteristically American form of sensitiveness. She could have adopted without hesitation, any outward forms, however out of conformity to usage, however grotesque in the eyes of others, if she had felt the inward call. Gregory’s stern and lofty utterances had come to her with full prophetic weight, and had left nothing in her to rise up in doubt or gainsaying.
In this mood Keith found her. She was standing, still fully dressed, before the chimney-piece, where he had sat one night and dreamed at once of her and Gertrude Ingraham. Her hands were clasped and hanging before her; her face was slightly pale, and her eyes strangely large and luminous. Standing before her, Keith took her clasped hands between his, and looked at her with a questioning smile.
“Well, dear,” he said, “what is it?”
“You know,” she answered softly. “Was it not to you what it was to me? Is it not the very chance wewish, to redeem our poor lost hopes of service?—to leave all the luxuries and privileges and advantages, and share the world’s sorrows? to become poor and humble as our Master was? to give what we have received? Oh, Keith, is it to be, or must another hope go by?”
As Anna thus cried out, the solemn appeal of her nature, austere, and yet full-charged with noble passion, breaking at last through the barriers which had long held it back, gave her an extraordinary spiritual grandeur. There was something of awe in the look with which her husband regarded her. Weapons of fear and doubt and cavil fell before that celestial sternness in her eyes,—a look we see sometimes in the innocent eyes of young children.
“It is to be, Anna. You shall have your way this time, my wife.”
The words were spoken reverently, with grave gentleness, and Keith’s own sweet courtesy. Was it Anna’s fault that she failed, in the exaltation of her mood, to catch the sadness in them?
Keith was hardly conscious of it himself. He was thinking, on an unspoken parallel, that he would rather be privileged to adore Anna Mallison in a moment like this, even though she led him in a rough and lonely path, than to dally with another woman in smoothness and ease.
CHAPTER XXVIII
I took the power in my handAnd went against the world;’Twas not so much as David had,But I was twice as bold.I aimed my pebble, but myselfWas all the one that fell.Was it Goliath was too large,Or only I too small?—Emily Dickinson.
I took the power in my handAnd went against the world;’Twas not so much as David had,But I was twice as bold.I aimed my pebble, but myselfWas all the one that fell.Was it Goliath was too large,Or only I too small?—Emily Dickinson.
I took the power in my handAnd went against the world;’Twas not so much as David had,But I was twice as bold.
I took the power in my hand
And went against the world;
’Twas not so much as David had,
But I was twice as bold.
I aimed my pebble, but myselfWas all the one that fell.Was it Goliath was too large,Or only I too small?—Emily Dickinson.
I aimed my pebble, but myself
Was all the one that fell.
Was it Goliath was too large,
Or only I too small?
—Emily Dickinson.
We all have need of that prayer of the Breton mariner, “Save us, O God! Thine ocean is so large and our little boats are so small.”—Farrar.
“Trunks checked for Utopia! Direct passenger route without change of cars! Ye gods, it doth amaze me!”
Thus Professor Ward, with a sardonic and yet discomfited smile, standing in the studio of his friend Pierce Everett, in Fulham. The room was in the disorder of a radical breaking up; packing boxes standing about and litter strewn everywhere.
Everett in his shirt sleeves was piling on a table a mass of draperies which he had taken from the wall. He was covered with dust, but his face was full of joyous excitement.
“Yes, my good friend—straight for Utopia now!
“‘Get on board, chil’en,Get on board, chil’en,For there’s room for many a more.’”
“‘Get on board, chil’en,Get on board, chil’en,For there’s room for many a more.’”
“‘Get on board, chil’en,Get on board, chil’en,For there’s room for many a more.’”
“‘Get on board, chil’en,
Get on board, chil’en,
For there’s room for many a more.’”
Everett trolled out the old negro chorus with hilarious enjoyment.
“Quos Deus vult perdere—” began Ward, grimly.
“Oh, we’re all mad, you know. We are simply not so mad as the rest of you,” interrupted Everett, gayly. “We have intervals of sanity, and are taking advantage of one of them to get out of the mad-house, leaving you other fellows to keep up your unprofitable strife with phantoms by yourselves, while we actually—yes, we even dare to believe it—live. Think of that, Ward, if you have the imagination!” Ward shook his head. “No, you haven’t; that is so. If you had, you could not have listened to Gregory unmoved.”
“Confound Gregory,” muttered Ward. “What did you ever get the man here for, turning our world upside down!”
“That has been the occupation of seers and prophets from the beginning, I believe,” retorted Everett, carelessly.
“Seers and prophets!” cried Ward, angrily, “that is what I can stand least of all. This posing as a kind of nineteenth century John the Baptist strikes me as exquisitely ridiculous.”
Everett’s eyes flashed dangerously, but he made no rejoinder.
“I saw your John the Baptist this morning in the Central Station buying his railway ticket and morning paper like any other average man. The locusts and wild honey were not in evidence.”
“No, he doesn’t take nourishment habitually in railway stations,” put in Everett, coolly.
“I didn’t see any leathern girdle about his loins, either, although of course he may wear it next the skinfor penitential purposes. His clothing appeared to be a species of camel’s hair—”
“Falsely so called,” put in Everett; “it is really English tweed. Very good quality.”
“Yes, I’ll venture to say that is true. Your prophet of the wilderness strikes me as knowing a good thing when he sees it. Plague take the fellow! He has just that sort of brute force and sheer overbearing personal dominance, which you idealists and credulous take for spiritual authority.”
“Come now, Ward, we may as well keep our tempers and treat this matter decently. Nothing is gained by calling names. You are naturally prejudiced against a man who attacks the existing social order, and suggests that even the rulers of the synagogue and the great teachers of the schools have something yet to learn. Gregory is radical, revolutionary perhaps, but not a whit more so than the New Testament makes him. He is an absolutely conscientious man; he has given up every personal ambition, wealth, position, all that most men cling to—”
“In order to become a Dictator, in a field where there is very little competition.”
Everett suppressed the irritation which this interposition aroused, and continued in a lighter tone,—
“You are enough of a dictator yourself to see this point, which had escaped the rest of us. I can see that it is a little bitter to you to have Mrs. Burgess seeking another spiritual and intellectual adviser,—going after other gods, as it were.”
“Yes,” said Ward, gravely; “it makes me sick at heart to see a woman like Mrs. Burgess, with all that glorious power of self-devotion of hers, throwing herselfblindly into this wild, Quixotic experiment—sure to end in disappointment and defeat. It is mournful, most mournful,” and Ward shook his head in melancholy fashion. “And when it comes to Keith,” he resumed, “alas! our brother! Poor Keith, with his lifelong habits of luxurious ease, his conventional views of duty, his yardstick imagination, and his wretched health—to think of such a man being torn from all the amenities of a refined Christian home, and carted across lots, Government bonds and all, to be set down in some malarial swamp to dig ditches with a set of ploughmen, to prove, forsooth! that all men are created free and equal,” and Ward groaned and bent his head as if overcome by the picture he had called up.
Lifting his head suddenly, he added in a tone of pensive rumination.
“He is one of those men Thoreau tells of, who would not go a-huckleberrying without a medicine chest; and he would perish, I am convinced, if deprived of improved sanitary plumbing.”
“All very clever,” said Everett, “but I will take the liberty of mentioning the fact that the Burgess’s physician hails the North Carolina project as the very best thing which could happen for Keith’s health.”
Hardly had he finished the sentence when a light knock was heard on the half-open door of the studio, and Anna Burgess, at Everett’s word, stepped into the room.
She wore a thin black gown, for the day was warm, and a broad-brimmed hat of some transparent black substance threw the fine shape of her head and the pure tints of her face into striking relief. A handful of white jonquils was fastened into the front of her gown, andthe freshness of the June day seemed to enter the dusty, despoiled studio with her.
Both men stood at gaze before her with deference and admiration in every line and look. With a delicate flush rising in her cheeks, Anna gave her hand to each, and spoke a word of greeting in which her natural shyness and her acquired social grace were mingled to a manner of peculiar charm.
“I ran up to hand you these papers for Mr. Gregory,” she said to Everett, a vibration of suppressed joy in her full, low voice which he had never heard before. “You know he said he would like it if you would bring them,” and she placed a long envelope in his hand. “No, I cannot stop a moment, Keith is waiting for me in the carriage. I did not give the papers to the maid because I wanted to say to you, Mr. Everett, that Keith does not see it any differently,—about the estate, you know. He pledges the income, freely, altogether, but he feels that the estate itself should be kept intact.”
“Thank Heaven, he has a spark of reason left!” exclaimed Ward under his breath, adding quickly,—
“Pardon me, Mrs. Burgess, but you know I am not a Gregorian psalm myself, yet.”
Anna turned to him with her rare smile, less brilliant than clear and luminous.
“But I was so glad you came to the house, Professor Ward, and heard Mr. Gregory,” she said with gracious courtesy; “we cannot expect every one to follow out these new theories practically as we hope to do, but at least we want every one we care about to know really what they are.”
“Do you think that many of those present at your house that afternoon were inclined to accept Mr.Gregory’s gospel, if I may so call it?” asked Ward, respectfully.
“Of course not,” interjected Everett, “there was no one there but cranks and critics.”
Anna’s face clouded a little. “No,” she said simply. “Fulham is not a good field for such a message; it was quite different in Burlington. Most of them went away saying it would be very fine if it were not wholly impossible.”
“And it does not occur to you, does it, Mrs. Burgess,” Ward pressed the question with undisguised earnestness, “that perhaps they were right? that there is something to be said for the old order, as old as the race? that possibly certain distinctions are inherent in the nature of things? Such distinctions, for instance, as separate you,” and Ward gave the pronoun a freight of significance to carry, “from that man,” and he indicated a labourer who had just left the room with an immense box of merchandise on his broad, bent shoulders, and whose slow, heavy steps could now be heard on the stairs below.
He had struck the wrong chord.
“Professor Ward,” cried Anna, her voice even lower than its wont, but her emphasis the more intense, “did that man choose to be reduced to the life and little more than the faculties of a beast of burden, to be a brother to the ox, to live a blind, brutalized, animal existence, with neither joy nor star?”
She paused a moment, and then added, with indescribable pathos dimming the kindling light in her eyes:—
“It is that man, Professor Ward, and what he stands for, that sends me to Fraternia, if perhaps I can yet atone. It is I that have made that man what he is, andyou, and all of us who have clung gladly to our powers and privileges, and dared to believe that we were made for the heights of life, and men like him for the abyss. If we could read our New Testament once as if it were not an old story! If we, for one moment, could lay our social cruelties beside that pattern shown us in the mount!”
The deep heart of her and the innermost motive power broke forth from Anna’s usual quiet and reserve in these last words with thrilling influence upon both men. She was beautiful as she spoke, but with the beauty of some Miriam or Cassandra,—a woman, as had been said of her long before, “to die for, not to play games with.”
Professor Ward, the irritation of his earlier mood quite gone, stood regarding Anna as she spoke with a sadness as profound as it was wholly unaffected. Having spoken, she turned to go.
“Let me say one word, Mrs. Burgess,” he said, extending his hand to detain her a moment. “I sympathize deeply with your purposes, and I am not wholly incapable of appreciating your motives. From my heart I shall bid you God-speed on your way when your time comes to go out into this new spiritual adventure. It will be none the less noble because it is impossible.”
“Good-by,” she said, and smiled.
CHAPTER XXIX
Canst drink the waters of the crispèd spring?O sweet Content!Swim’st thou in wealth, yet sink’st in thine own tears?O Punishment!Then he that patiently Want’s burden bearsNo burden bears, but is a king, a king.O sweet Content, O sweet, O sweet Content!Work apace, apace, apace, apace,Honest labour bears a lovely face.—Thomas Dekker, 1600.
Canst drink the waters of the crispèd spring?O sweet Content!Swim’st thou in wealth, yet sink’st in thine own tears?O Punishment!Then he that patiently Want’s burden bearsNo burden bears, but is a king, a king.O sweet Content, O sweet, O sweet Content!Work apace, apace, apace, apace,Honest labour bears a lovely face.—Thomas Dekker, 1600.
Canst drink the waters of the crispèd spring?O sweet Content!Swim’st thou in wealth, yet sink’st in thine own tears?O Punishment!Then he that patiently Want’s burden bearsNo burden bears, but is a king, a king.O sweet Content, O sweet, O sweet Content!Work apace, apace, apace, apace,Honest labour bears a lovely face.—Thomas Dekker, 1600.
Canst drink the waters of the crispèd spring?
O sweet Content!
Swim’st thou in wealth, yet sink’st in thine own tears?
O Punishment!
Then he that patiently Want’s burden bears
No burden bears, but is a king, a king.
O sweet Content, O sweet, O sweet Content!
Work apace, apace, apace, apace,
Honest labour bears a lovely face.
—Thomas Dekker, 1600.
A valley, two thousand feet above the sea level, narrowing at its upper or northern end to a ravine piercing thickly wooded hills, but widening gradually southward, until, a mile lower down the mountain stream which issues from the gorge, it becomes a broad sunny meadow land.
On a day in the middle of March, when the sun shone warm and a turquoise sky arched smiling over this valley, signs of human activity and energy prevailed on every side. In the bottom lands men were ploughing the broad level fields; here the river had been dammed, forming a pond, on the bank of which stood a large picturesque building sheathed with dark-green shingles. From the wide and open windows of this building the sound of whirring spindles and the joyous laughter of girls and men issued.
Higher up the valley men were at work building a light bridge of plank across the creek, while others were carting newly sawed lumber, with its strong pungentsmell, from the sawmill below. On the eastern side of the valley, between this bridge and the mills half a mile south, were scattered or grouped at irregular intervals, forty or fifty small cabins, some of log, others of unplaned boards; thatched, or covered in red tile. Men and women were at work in the damp mould of the gardens by which these cabins were surrounded, and fresh green things were shooting up. On the opposite side of the stream, on a wooded knoll, stood a large, low, barrack-like building with a red roof, and near it a few cabins. It was opposite this group of buildings that the foot-bridge was in process of making, to supersede a single plank and rail which had hitherto connected the banks of the stream. Down the valley from this small and separate settlement stretched fields already under cultivation, for corn, potatoes, and cotton.
There were no streets in this rustic settlement. Footpaths led to the cottage doors through the thin, coarse grass, and along the eastern side of the little river; and between its bank and the houses ran a rough wagon road, deeply rutted now by the wheels of the lumber wagons in the soft, red soil. To the north and east the hills rose abruptly, covered with oak and pine, and the aromatic fragrance of the latter was in the air, mingling with the scent of the soil. Beyond the lower hills to the west loomed the shoulders of dim, blue mountains, while looking south, down the shining river, beyond a belt of woodland, the valley broadened out to the sunny plain stretching to the horizon line.
The limpid clearness of the air, the fragrance of the forest and the earth, the musical flow of the little river, the wonderful brilliancy of the sky, with the vast uplift of the mountains, gave a sense of wild perfection to theensemble. Such was Fraternia in the morning of its second spring.
It was during that decade which saw the sudden springing into life of so large a number of communistic organizations and settlements throughout the country, mainly in the south and west. Many of these experiments were crude and obscure; most of them were shortlived. They were founded on widely different social conceptions, ranging from those of unlimited license and rank anarchism up to the high ideals of the life of Christian brotherhood set forth in the early church.
The latter was the foundation of John Gregory’s colony in Fraternia. Inflexible morality and blamelessness of Christian living were his cardinal laws. Built upon them was the superstructure of economic and social equality, of labour sharing, and of domestic simplicity.
Thus far unusual promise attended the adventure, and peace and good will reigned in the little community.
Toward the upper end of the village half a dozen men were at work around a circular excavation not more than five or six feet in diameter, which had been lined with irregular slabs and blocks of stone patched together with clay. In blue overalls thickly bespattered with red mud and the sticky clay, a man was working on his knees at the edge of this basin. It was Keith Burgess. Near him, measuring with rule and line and marking out the width of the coping, stood the artist, Pierce Everett. Their fellow-workmen were two Irishmen—big, active fellows, with honest eyes—and a wiry little black-a-vised Jew, a quondam foreman in a New York sweat-shop. He was mixing clay and laying thestone of the coping, while the Irishmen were at work in an open trench through which ran the pipe which was to conduct the water from a spring in the ravine above into the new reservoir.
Emerging from the woods below the dam a little crowd of children came straying up the valley, laughing and shouting, and jumping gayly over the pools of red mud in the road. Their hands were full of wild flowers,—bloodroot, and anemones, and arbutus; their hair was blown about in the wind; their eyes were shining. Among them, giving her hand to a little girl who walked with a crutch, walked Anna Burgess, her face as joyous as theirs, and a free, unhampered vigour and grace in every line of her figure. She was the head teacher in the village school, and was known to her scholars, and, indeed, quite generally in the little community, as “Sister Benigna.”
This name, “Benigna,” which had come down in Anna’s family for generations, and had been given her as a second name, had not been used for many years, save by her mother, who still clung loyally to the full “Anna Benigna.” Who it was in Fraternia who had revived the beautiful old Moravian name was not known, but the use of it had been quickly established, especially among the children and the foreign folk.
The habit of using “Brother” and “Sister” with the given name in ordinary social intercourse was common, although not universal, in Fraternia. Anna’s assistants in the school—a pale, little English governess, who had apparently never known stronger food than tea and bread until she came to Fraternia, and a rosy-cheeked German kindergartner—were among the little flock, their hands overflowing with wild flowers, and their faceswith the high delight the spring day brought them. It was Saturday morning, and a holiday.
Suddenly there was a shout from some boys who were foremost in the company, and they came scampering back to Anna exclaiming that the “fountain” was almost finished, and, perhaps, the water would soon be turned into it. By common consent the whole party hastened on and soon encircled the workmen at the basin with noisy questions and merry chatter. It was to be so fine not to have to go up to the spring in the ravine with pails and pitchers any more. Could they surely have the water here for Sunday? Then Fräulein Frieda told them how the girls in her country came to such fountains with their jugs, and carried them away full on their heads. She showed them with a tin pail, found lying in the clay, just how it was done, walking away with firm, balanced step, the pail unsupported on her pretty flaxen-haired head, on which the sun shone dazzlingly. The little girls were greatly delighted, and all declared they should learn to carry their water pots home on their heads from theQuelle, as Fräulein Frieda called it.
Anna stood at the edge of the basin, Keith at her feet, on his knees, with the trowel in his hands, smiling up at her, the little lame girl still at her side, a trace of wistfulness in her eyes as she watched the others.
“We will not carry our water pails on our heads, you and I, will we, little Judith?” Anna asked, kind and motherly. “Wewant our brains to grow, and it might crowd them down; don’t you think so?”
The swarthy Jew looked up from the clay he was mixing with quick, instinctive gratitude. Judith washis child. He grinned a broad and rather hideous grin, and exclaimed in a broken dialect:—
“Das ist so, Kleine; shust listen to our lady! She knows. She says it right.”
Pierce Everett’s dark eyes flashed with sudden enthusiasm. Turning to Anna he bowed profoundly and said low to Keith, as well as to her:—
“There you have it! Barnabas has found your title—‘our lady’!”
Anna looked into Everett’s dark eager eyes with her quiet smile, and was about to speak, when a sudden noise of grating and rattling and horses’ hoofs behind them caused them all three to turn and look down the river. A horse and stone drag were approaching rapidly, driven by John Gregory, who stood on the drag, which was loaded with big clean pebbles from the river-bed. He wore a coarse grey flannel shirt, the collar turned off a little at the throat, and rough grey trousers tucked into high rubber boots, which reached to the thighs. The cloth cap on his head with its vizor bore a certain resemblance to a helmet, and altogether the likeness of the whole appearance to that of a Roman warrior in his chariot did not escape the three friends who watched its approach in the motley crowd around the basin.
Gregory drove his drag close up to the edge of the coping, now nearly laid, greeted the company with a courteous removal of his hat and a cordial Good-morning, then discharged the load of pebbles in a glinting heap on the soft red earth.
There was no conscious assumption of mastery or direction in Gregory’s manner, nothing could have been simpler or more democratic than the impartial comraderywith which he joined the others, nevertheless the sense that the master was among them was instantly communicated throughout the little group. Up in the trench, nearly to the base of the cliffs which marked the entrance to the ravine, one Irishman said to the other, in a tone of satisfaction not unmixed with good-natured sarcasm:—
“Himsilf’s come now. The gintlemin masons will git to rights or they’ll lose their job, d’ye mind, Patrick?”
“Oh, ay,” said the other, “an’ the same to yersilf, if ye ivir noticed it.”
There was a little silence even among the chattering children as Gregory stooped by Everett’s side, pulled up with the ease of mighty muscle two or three stones, took the trowel from Keith’s hand and a hod of mortar from the waiting Barnabas, and set the stones over on a truer line, laughing the while with the men and turning aside the edge of criticism with frank self-disparagement, as being himself but a tyro.
A curious consequence of Gregory’s appearance on the scene after this sort, was the dwarfed effect of the men around him, who suddenly seemed to have shrunk in stature and proportions, and whose motions, beside the virile force and confident freedom of his, appeared incompetent and weak.
Anna had drawn back from her place near the basin’s edge. Gregory had not looked at her nor she at him directly. In fact, they habitually, for some reason they themselves could not define, avoided each other, and yet could not avoid a piercing consciousness, when together, of every look and word of the other. A sudden shyness and subduing had fallen instantly upon Anna’s bright mood, and, while the others watched every look andmotion of Gregory with almost breathless interest, she stood apart and arranged little Judith’s flowers with apparent preoccupation.
Tossing the trowel back to Keith, with whom he exchanged a few words of question, Gregory next hastened with long strides up the line of the trench to the place where the Irishmen were at work. Here was a primitive moss-grown trough, into which the water of the spring had hitherto been conducted, and to which all the people had been obliged to come for their supply of drinking water. The new iron pipe already replaced the rude wooden conduit which had done duty until now, but the water still flowed into the trough, and would do so until, the basin completed, the connection might be made between the two sections of pipe.
Under Gregory’s direction this was now effected, and the water of the spring, if there was no flaw, should now flow unimpeded into the basin below. To test the basin, it was Gregory’s purpose to make the experiment at once.
Presently there was a shout, exulting and joyous, from the company below.
“The water is here! The water! The water!” rose the cry into the stillness of the valley. The men at work upon the bridge left their work, and hastened to join the little crowd.
With strides even longer than before, Gregory came down again, the Irishmen following him in a scramble to keep up. Joy was in all their faces, and the deepest joy of all in that of Gregory. They stood together and watched the jet of water as it sprang from the mouth of the pipe, turbid at first, but gradually becoming clear and sparkling, and fell with a gentle,musical plashing into the stone fountain. There was complete silence for a little space, as they looked intently at the increasing depth of the gathering pool, and then, bringing down his hands with a will on the shoulders of Keith and Everett, Gregory exclaimed:—
“Men, you have done well, all of you! It holds, do you see? It is tight as a ship. Hurrah!”
They all joined in a great cheer, and then, swiftly finding where she stood, or knowing, as he always seemed to know, instinctively, Gregory’s eyes sought Anna Burgess.
“Will Sister Benigna come up here?” he asked quietly, with the unhesitating steadiness of the man who knows just what he means to do.
Anna came slowly forward, and stood on the new-laid coping, by the side of Gregory, greatly wondering. Just beyond her was Keith, side by side with Barnabas Rosenblatt. Meanwhile, Gregory had taken from his pocket a small folding drinking cup of shining metal, which he had held in the flow of the spring water until it was thoroughly purified. Turning now to look at all those who stood round about, he said:—
“Brothers, sisters, little children, this water is the good gift of God. Let this fountain be now consecrated to all pure and holy uses. By the wish which I believe to be in every one of you, let the first who shall drink of this living water from the new fountain be our Sister Benigna.”
With these words Gregory filled the cup from the sparkling outgush of the spring, the water so cold that the polished cup was covered with frosty dimness, and with simple seriousness handed it to Anna. Affection and reverence were in the eyes of all the people as theywatched her while with uncovered head, calm brow, and the fine simplicity of unconsciousness she took the cup and drank. But with the first touch of her lips to the cup the hand in which she held it trembled; and when she drained the last drop, it trembled still. As Anna stepped back, having drunk, into the ranks, Gregory lifted his hand, and with the gesture which commands devotion repeated the ancient words,—
“‘O most high, almighty, good Lord God, to thee belong praise, glory, honour, and all blessing!
“‘Praised be my Lord for our brother the wind, and for air and cloud, calms and all weather, by the which thou upholdest in life all creatures.
“‘Praised be my Lord for our sister, water, who is very serviceable unto us, and humble, and precious, and clear.’”
Then with a deeper solemnity and significance in face and voice, he continued:—
“‘If thou knewest the gift of God and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of him and he would have given thee living water.’
“‘Jesus said, If any man thirst, let him come to me and drink.’”
It was noon, and turning they all dispersed, each to his own place, a deepened gladness in their faces. But as for Anna Burgess, a dimness was upon her joy, a thrilling undercurrent of dread and wonder which she could not understand; for she had drunk of the Cup of Trembling—and knew it not.
CHAPTER XXX
We’ve toiled and failed; we spake the word;None hearkened; dumb we lie;Our Hope is dead, the seed we spreadFell o’er the earth to die.What’s this? For joy our hearts stand still,And life is loved and dear,The lost and found the cause hath crowned,The Day of Days is here.—William Morris.
We’ve toiled and failed; we spake the word;None hearkened; dumb we lie;Our Hope is dead, the seed we spreadFell o’er the earth to die.What’s this? For joy our hearts stand still,And life is loved and dear,The lost and found the cause hath crowned,The Day of Days is here.—William Morris.
We’ve toiled and failed; we spake the word;None hearkened; dumb we lie;Our Hope is dead, the seed we spreadFell o’er the earth to die.
We’ve toiled and failed; we spake the word;
None hearkened; dumb we lie;
Our Hope is dead, the seed we spread
Fell o’er the earth to die.
What’s this? For joy our hearts stand still,And life is loved and dear,The lost and found the cause hath crowned,The Day of Days is here.—William Morris.
What’s this? For joy our hearts stand still,
And life is loved and dear,
The lost and found the cause hath crowned,
The Day of Days is here.
—William Morris.
The Burgesses had come to Fraternia in the preceding December, although Keith had soon left again, having still many business concerns to recall him to Fulham. The house there was now closed, and the life there for them presumably ended, and, late in February, Keith had returned to Fraternia.
Anna had employed the months between their decision to join the coöperative colony and their actual journey to the South, in taking a short course in nursing in a Fulham hospital, reviving her old knowledge of the subject, gained in her girlhood in Burlington. She had it in mind to fit herself thus as thoroughly as the brief interval allowed, for the duties of a trained nurse to the little community, this being an occupation at once congenial to herself and important for the general good. For uniformity of service was by no means according to John Gregory’s plan, and Gertrude Ingraham might not have found herself shut up to the cotton mill even if she had done so incredible a thing as to throw in herfortunes with Fraternia. All must labour, and all must labour for the general good,—one of Gregory’s prime maxims being, If a man will not work, neither shall he eat; but as far as practicable that labour was to be on the line of each person’s best capacity, choice, and development. Thus Keith Burgess’s feat of stonelaying had not been enforced, but self-chosen, as an expression of his good will in the sharing the coarser labours of the people. The work to which he had been assigned by Gregory was clerical, not manual, being that of secretary to the colony.
Anna, thus far, had had no opportunity for any especial use of her vocation as nurse, the families of Fraternia being remarkably healthy under the simple and wholesome conditions of their life, and serious illness unknown during that winter. Her trained and well-equipped mind obviously fitted her for a work of intellectual rather than industrial character, and the duties of teaching the children of the colony five hours a day—the required time of service for the women—were given to her by common consent.
Neither at the time when she was chosen to this service, nor at any other, had John Gregory directly communicated his wishes to Anna or discussed his plans with her; and yet, from the day of her arrival in Fraternia he had perhaps never formed a plan which was not in some subtle manner shaped by unconscious reference to her. In her own way, Anna’s personality was hardly less conspicuous than his; and these two invisibly and involuntarily modified each the other’s action and deliberation as the orbits of two stars are influenced by their mutual attraction and repulsion.
By the whole habit and choice of his life John Gregorywas a purist in morals and in his personal practice of simplicity. The most frugal fare and the simplest domestic appliances served his turn by preference, although he had been born and bred in comparative luxury. He was free and fraternal with men; gently respectful to women, whom he yet never treated as if they were superior to men by force of their weakness, but rather as being on a basis of accepted equality; while to little children he always showed winning tenderness. Socially, however, he scrupulously avoided intercourse with women, with a curious, undeviating persistency which almost suggested ascetic withdrawal. The other men of the colony, several of whom were men of some social rank and mental culture, found it pleasant to stop on the woodland paths or by the stream, all the more in these soft spring days, and exchange thought and word, light or grave, with the girls and women, but never once had Gregory been seen to do this, or to visit the households presided over by women on any errand whatever. Whether a line of action which thus inevitably separated him more and more from the domestic life of the people, was pursued by deliberate purpose or by the accident of personal inclination was not clear, but certain it was that the fact contributed to the distinction and separation which seemed inevitably to belong to Gregory. With all his simplicity of life and democratic brotherliness of conversation, he lived and moved in Fraternia with an effect of one on a wholly different plane from the others, and with the full practical exercise of a dictatorship which no one resented because all regarded him with a species of hero-worship as manifestly the master of the situation.
His residence was in one of the small cabins on the western side of the river, to which the bridge gave convenient access. The other cabins served, one as a rude, temporary library, the other as storehouse, while the large barrack-like building furnished bachelor quarters for the unmarried men. Gregory, since Everett’s arrival, had shared his house with the artist. Their meals were taken in common with the other men. No one was in the habit of entering the house, Gregory having a kind of office, agreeably furnished, at the cotton mill, where he was usually to be found when not at work in field or wood. This was, however, often the case, for he never failed to discharge the daily quota of manual labour which he had assigned himself; and it was noticeable to all that if any task were of an offensive or difficult nature, he was the one to assume it first and as a matter of course. It was owing to this characteristic, perhaps more than to any other, save his singular personal ascendency, that the silent dictatorship of Gregory in the little community was so cheerfully accepted. Nominally the government of the village was in the hands of a board of directors, with an inner executive committee, and of which Gregory was chairman. Several women served on the larger board. Keith Burgess was a director; Anna’s name had not been proposed for the office. There had been but one vacancy in the board on their arrival, which was sufficient reason. The councils of the directors were held weekly in Gregory’s office, and thus far a good degree of harmony prevailed.
Again it was Saturday morning. A week had passed which had brought many days of heavy rain. The river, swollen and yellow, dashed noisily down from the gorge and filled its channel below with deep and urgentcurrent. On its turbid flood appeared from time to time newly felled logs, floated down from the regions above, where Fraternia men were at work, taking advantage of the swollen river for conveying their lumber to the sawmill. A west wind, the night before, had blown the clouds before it, and this morning the sun shone from an effulgent sky; the wind had died to a soft breeze laden with manifold fragrance; and in place of the chill of the north, the air possessed the indescribable softness and balm of the southern spring.
It was again a busy morning in Fraternia, and everywhere, and in all the homely tasks, thrilled the unchecked joy in simple existence of innocent hearts living out their normal bent for mutual help and burden-sharing. In the garden ground around their house, which was high up the valley in a group of three others, one of which contained the common kitchen and dining room for the inmates of all, Anna Burgess was at work in her garden, sowing and planting in the damp soil. Glancing down the valley, she could see Everett hard at work with another man, who had been an architect in Burlington, erecting a little thatched pavilion, of original design, graceful and rustic, to protect the new and precious fountain from the sun, and keep its water clean and serviceable. Across the river, in the library, Keith, she knew, was at work at his bookkeeping, and also at the task of collecting excerpts from the writings of social economists for use in an address which he was preparing. A new mental activity had been stimulated in Keith by the change of climate and conditions, and the influx of new ideas; and the ease and cheerfulness with which he had adapted himself to the primitive habits of pioneer life, would have amazed his friend Ward.
Barnabas had been gathering one or two sizable slabs of stone which had been left from the lining and coping of the fountain, and Anna watched him a moment as, having loaded them into a wheelbarrow, he proceeded to carry them down to the new bridge, and so across to the west side of the river. She hardly cared to wonder what he was about to do, being otherwise absorbed, and her eyes did not follow him as he wheeled his burden on up the knoll on which were the library and the house of Gregory, set in their bit of pine wood.
The door of Gregory’s cabin stood open, as was customary in Fraternia in mild weather. Barnabas dropped the burden from his barrow just before the open door, stood to wipe the sweat from his forehead, and then, kneeling, began the self-imposed effort of placing the stones together for a low step, which was yet lacking to the rudely finished house. As he worked, he now and then lifted his eyes and glanced into the interior of the house which he had never entered. It had the walls and ceiling of unplaned, uncovered boards of all the Fraternia houses; the floor was absolutely bare and absolutely clean, damp in spots and redolent of soap from recent scrubbing. The open windows let in the sun-warmed, piney air, but the light was obscured, the trees growing close to the house, and a dim gold-green twilight reigned in the silent room. A door stood open into the second room where two narrow iron beds came within the field of vision. There was the ordinary chimney, built of brick, of ample proportions, with a pine shelf running across, and in the fireplace logs of fat pine laid for a blaze in the evening, which was still sure to be cool. Plain wooden arm-chairs stood near thehearth; an uncovered table of home manufacture, clumsy and heavy, in the middle of the room, was thickly strewn with books and papers and writing materials. It was the typical Fraternia interior,—bare, and yet not comfortless, and with its own effect of simple distinction, conveyed by absolute cleanness, order, and the absence of the superfluous.
But it was none of these details which caught the eye of Barnabas. Above the chimney there was fastened by hidden screws close against the wall, so that it had the effect of a panel, a picture, unframed, showing the figure of a slender girl with uplifted head and solemn eyes, set against an Oriental background. It was Everett’s study of the Girlhood of the Virgin, and besides it there was no picture nor decoration of any sort in the place.
Each time he lifted his eyes from the stones before him to the picture whose high lights gleamed strangely through the dimness of the room within, Barnabas was more impressed with some elusive resemblance in the face; and at last, striking the stone with his hand, he murmured to himself in his native tongue, “Now I have it! The damsel there is like our lady when she prays.”
Meanwhile the river ran between and thundered over the dam below; the red roofs gleamed warm in the sun, and Anna, down on her knees like Barnabas, on a bit of board, was tending her bulbs with loving hands, while within her was springing a very rapture of poetic joy. Almost for the first time in her life she was conscious of unalloyed happiness. Was it because the sky was blue? or because the vital flood of spring beat and surged about her in the river, in the forest, in the air?Not wholly; nor even because under these kindly influences all the dormant poetic and creative instincts of her nature were stirring into luxuriant blossoming, although all these things filled her with throbbing delight. The deeper root of her joy was in the satisfaction, so long delayed, of her passion for brotherhood with lowly men and poor; the release from the constraint of artificial conventions, and from the painful sense, which she could never escape in the years of her Fulham life, that she owed to every weary toiler who passed her on the street an apology for her own leisure, her luxury and ease.
Suddenly Anna rose, and stood facing the west, her eyes full of light. A voice within her had called and said:—
“I can write poetry now, and I will!” The fulness of energy of joy and fulfilment in her spirit sought expression as naturally as the mountain spring sought its outlet in the fountain below.
Just then her neighbour, in the house on the left,—it was the dining-house,—put her head out of the window and said, reflectively:—
“Say, Sister Benigna, I wish I knew how to get the dinner up into the woods to the men-folks. It’s half-past eleven and time it went this minute, and Charley has gone down to Spalding after the mail; but I suppose it’s late or something. Anyway he ain’t here, and I’ve got the rest to wait on.”
“Why, I could take the dinner pails up to them, Sister Amanda,” answered Anna, obligingly. The “men-folks” alluded to were of her own group of families and were felling lumber in the woods north of the valley.
“You couldn’t do it alone, but Fräulein Frieda,she’d be tickled to death to go with you. There she is now,” and Sister Amanda flew to the cabin door through which a neatly ordered dinner table could be seen, and shouted down the slope to the young German teacher who had just come over the bridge with some books on her arm from the library.
A few moments later Anna sallied out from the house with Frieda, both carrying well-stored dinner pails.
“No matter,” said Anna, smiling at the sudden diversion from her poetic inspiration; “it is better to live brotherhood than to sing brotherhood. But some day, maybe, yet, I shall sing.”