LOVE MANIFOLD
Thewoods on the shores of Massabesic Pond were stretches of tapestry, where every shade of green and gold, olive and brown, orange and scarlet, melted the one into the other. The sombre pines made a deep-toned background; patches of sumach gave their flaming crimson; the goldenrod grew rank and tall in glorious profusion, and the maples outside the Office Building were balls of brilliant carmine. The air was like crystal, and the landscape might have been bathed in liquid amber, it was so saturated with October yellow.
Susanna caught her breath as she threw her chamber window wider open in the earlymorning; for the greater part of the picture had been painted during the frosty night.
"Throw your little cape round your shoulders and come quickly, Sue!" she exclaimed.
The child ran to her side. "Oh, what a goldy, goldy morning!" she cried.
One crimson leaf with a long heavy stem that acted as a sort of rudder, came down to the window-sill with a sidelong scooping flight, while two or three gayly painted ones, parted from the tree by the same breeze, floated airily along as if borne on unseen wings, finally alighting on Sue's head and shoulders like tropical birds.
"You cried in the night, Mardie!" said Sue. "I heard you snifferling and getting up for your hank'chief; but I didn't speak 'cause it's so dreadful to becatchedcrying."
"Kneel down beside me and give me part of your cape," her mother answered. "I'm going to let my sad heart fly right out of the window into those beautiful trees."
"And maybe a glad heart will fly right in!" the child suggested.
"Maybe.—Oh! we must cuddle close and be still; Elder Gray's going to sit down under the great maple; and do you see, all the Brothers seem to be up early this morning, just as we are?"
"More love, Elder Gray!" called Issachar, on his way to the tool-house.
"More love, Brother Issachar!"
"More love, Brother Ansel!"
"More love, Brother Calvin!"
"More love!" "More love!" "More love!" So the quaint but not uncommon Shaker greeting passed from Brother to Brother; and as Tabitha and Martha and Rosetta met on their way to dairy and laundry and seed-house, they, too, hearing the salutation, took up the refrain, and Susanna and Sue heard again from the women's voices that beautiful morning wish, "More love!" "More love!" speeding from heart to heart and lip to lip.
Mother and child were very quiet.
"More love, Sue!" said Susanna, clasping her closely.
"More love, Mardie!" whispered the child, smiling and entering into the spirit of the salutation. "Let's turn our heads Farnham way! I'll take Jack and you take Fardie, and we'll say togedder, 'More love'; shall we?"
"More love, John."
"More love, Jack."
The words floated out over the trees in the woman's trembling voice and the child's treble.
"Elder Gray looks tired though he's just got up," Sue continued.
"He is not strong," replied her mother, remembering Brother Ansel's statement that the Elder "wa'n't diseased anywheres, but didn't have no durability."
"The Elder would have a lovely lap," Sue remarked presently.
"What?"
"A nice lap to sit in. Fardie has a nice lap,too, and Uncle Joel Atterbury, but not Aunt Louisa; she lets you slide right off; it's a bony, hard lap. I love Elder Gray, and I climbed on his lap one day. He put me right down, but I'm sure he likes children. I wish I could take right hold of his hand and walk all over the farm, but he wouldn't let me, I s'pose.—More love, Elder Gray!" she cried suddenly, bobbing up above the window-sill and shaking her fairy hand at him.
The Elder looked up at the sound of the glad voice. No human creature could have failed to smile back into the roguish face or have treated churlishly the sweet, confident little greeting. The heart of a real man must have an occasional throb of the father, and when Daniel Gray rose from his seat under the maple and called, "More love, child!" there was something strange and touching in his tone. He moved away from the tree to his morning labors with the consciousness of something new to conquer. Long, long ago he had risenvictorious above many of the temptations that flesh is heir to. Women were his good friends, his comrades, his sisters; they no longer troubled the waters of his soul; but here was a child who stirred the depths; who awakened the potential father in him so suddenly and so strongly that he longed for the sweetness of a human tie that could bind him to her. But the current of the Elder's being was set towards sacrifice and holiness, and the common joys of human life he felt could never and must never be his; so he went to the daily round, the common task, only a little paler, a little soberer than was his wont.
"More love, Martha!" said Susanna when she met Martha a little later in the day.
"More love, Susanna!" Martha replied cheerily. "You heard our Shaker greeting, I see! It was the beautiful weather, the fine air and glorious colors, that brought the inspiration this morning, I guess! It took us all out of doors, and then it seemed to get into the blood.Besides, to-morrow's the Day of Sacrifice, and that takes us all on to the mountain-tops of feeling. There have been times when I had to own up to a lack of love."
"You, Martha, who have such wonderful influence over the children, such patience, such affection!"
"It wasn't always so. When I was first put in charge of the children, I didn't like the work. They didn't respond to me somehow, and when they were out of my sight they were ugly and disobedient. My natural mother, Maria Holmes, took care of the girls' clothing. One day she said to me, 'Martha, do you love the girls?'
"'Some of them are very unlovely,' I replied.
"'I know that,' she said, 'but you can never help them unless you love them.'
"I thought mother very critical, for I strove scrupulously to do my duty. A few days after this the Elder said to me: Martha, do you love the girls?' I responded, 'Not very much.'
"'You cannot save them unless you love them,' he said.
"Then I answered, 'I will labor for a gift of love.'
"When the work of the day was over, and the girls were in bed, I would take off my shoes and spend several hours of the night walking the floor, kneeling in prayer that I might obtain the coveted gift. For five weeks I did this without avail, when suddenly one night when the moon was full and I was kneeling by the window, a glory seemed to overshadow the crest of a high mountain in the distance. I thought I heard a voice say: 'Martha, I baptize you into the spirit of love!' I sat there trembling for more than an hour, and when I rose, I felt that I could love the meanest human being that ever walked the earth. I have never had any trouble with children since that night of the vision. They seem different to me, and I dare say I am different to them."
"I wish I could see visions!" exclaimedSusanna. "Oh, for a glory that would speak to me and teach me truth and duty! Life is all mist, whichever way I turn. I'd like to be lifted on to a high place where I could see clearly."
She leaned against the frame of the open kitchen door, her delicate face quivering with emotion and longing, her attitude simplicity and unconsciousness itself. The baldest of Shaker prose turned to purest poetry when Susanna dipped it in the alembic of her own imagination.
"Labor for the gift of sight!" said Martha, who believed implicitly in spirits and visions. "Labor this very night."
It must be said for Susanna that she had never ceased laboring in her own way for many days. The truth was that she felt herself turning from marriage. She had lived now so long in the society of men and women who regarded it as an institution not compatible with the highest spiritual development that unconsciously her point of view had changed; changed all the more because she had been so unhappy with the man she had chosen. Curiously enough, and unfortunately enough for Susanna Hathaway's peace of mind, the greater aversion she felt towards the burden of the old life, towards the irksomeness of guiding a weaker soul, towards the claims of husband on wife, the stronger those claims appeared. If they had never been assumed!—Ah, but they had; there was the rub! One sight of little Sue sleeping tranquilly beside her; one memory of rebellious, faulty Jack; one vision of John, either as needing or missing her, the rightful woman, or falling deeper in the wiles of the wrong one for very helplessness;—any of these changed Susanna the would-be saint, in an instant into Susanna the wife and mother.
"Speak to me for Thy Compassion's sake," she prayed from the little book of Confessions that her mother had given her. "I will follow after Thy Voice!"
"Would you betray your trust?" asked conscience.
"No, not intentionally."
"Would you desert your post?"
"Never, willingly."
"You have divided the family; taken a little quail bird out of the home-nest and left sorrow behind you. Would God justify you in that?"
For the first time Susanna's "No" rang clearly enough for her to hear it plainly; for the first time it was followed by no vague misgivings, no bewilderment, no unrest or indecision. "I turn hither and thither; Thy purposes are hid from me, but I commend my soul to Thee!"
Then a sentence from the dear old book came into her memory: "And thy dead things shall revive, and thy weak things shall be made whole."
She listened, laying hold of every word, till the nervous clenching of her hands subsided, her face relaxed into peace. Then she lay downbeside Sue, creeping close to her for the warmth and comfort and healing of her innocent touch, and, closing her eyes serenely, knew no more till the morning broke, the Sabbath morning of Confession Day.
BROTHER AND SISTER
IfSusanna's path had grown more difficult, more filled with anxieties, so had John Hathaway's. The protracted absence of his wife made the gossips conclude that the break was a final one. Jack was only half contented with his aunt, and would be fairly mutinous in the winter, while Louisa's general attitude was such as to show clearly that she only kept the boy for Susanna's sake.
Now and then there was a terrifying hint of winter in the air, and the days of Susanna's absence seemed eternal to John Hathaway. Yet he was a man about whom there would have been but one opinion: that when deprived of a rathersuperior and high-minded wife and the steadying influence of home and children, he would go completely "to the dogs," whither he seemed to be hurrying when Susanna's wifely courage failed. That he had done precisely the opposite and the unexpected thing, shows us perhaps that men are not on the whole as capable of estimating the forces of their fellow men as is God the maker of men, who probably expects something of the worst of them up to the very last.
It was at the end of a hopeless Sunday when John took his boy back to his aunt's towards night. He wondered drearily how a woman dealt with a ten-year-old boy who from sunrise to sunset had done every mortal thing he ought not to have done, and had left undone everything that he had been told to do; and, as if to carry out the very words of the church service, neither was there any health in him; for he had an inflamed throat and a whining, irritable, discontented temper that could be borneonly by a mother, a father being wholly inadequate and apparently never destined for the purpose.
It was a mild evening late in October, and Louisa sat on the porch with her pepper-and-salt shawl on and a black wool "rigolette" tied over her head. Jack, very sulky and unresigned, was dispatched to bed under the care of the one servant, who was provided with a cupful of vinegar, salt, and water, for a gargle. John had more than an hour to wait for a returning train to Farnham, and although ordinarily he would have preferred to spend the time in the silent and unreproachful cemetery rather than in the society of his sister Louisa, he was too tired and hopeless to do anything but sit on the steps and smoke fitfully in the semi-darkness.
Louisa was much as usual. She well knew—who better?—her brother's changed course of life, but neither encouragement nor compliment were in her line. Why should a man bepraised for living a respectable life? That John had really turned a sort of moral somersault and come up a different creature, she did not realize in the least, nor the difficulties surmounted in such a feat; but she did give him credit secretly for turning about face and behaving far more decently than she could ever have believed possible. She had no conception of his mental torture at the time, but if he kept on doing well, she privately intended to inform Susanna and at least give her a chance of trying him again, if absence had diminished her sense of injury. One thing that she did not know was that John was on the eve of losing his partnership. When Jack had said that his father was not going back to the store the next week, she thought it meant simply a vacation. Divided hearts, broken vows, ruined lives—she could bear the sight of these with considerable philosophy, but a lost income was a very different, a very tangible thing. She almost lost her breath when her brother knocked theashes from his meerschaum and curtly told her of the proposed change in his business relations.
"I don't know what I shall do yet," he said, "whether I shall set up for myself in a small way or take a position in another concern—that is, if I can get one—my stock of popularity seems to be pretty low just now in Farnham. I'd move away to-morrow and cut the whole gossipy, deceitful, hypocritical lot of 'em if I wasn't afraid of closing the house and so losing Susanna, if she should ever feel like coming back to us."
These words and the thought back of them were too much for John's self-control. The darkness helped him and his need of comfort was abject. Suddenly he burst out, "Oh, Louisa, for heaven's sake, give me a little crumb of comfort, if you have any! How can you stand like a stone all these months and see a man suffering as I have suffered, without giving him a word?"
"You brought it on yourself," said Louisa, in self-exculpation.
"Does that make it any easier to bear?" cried John. "Don't you suppose I remember it every hour, and curse myself the more? You know perfectly well that I'm a different man to-day. I don't know what made me change; it was as if something had been injected into my blood that turned me against everything I had liked best before. I hate the sight of the men and the women I used to go with, not because they are any worse, but because they remind me of what I have lost. I have reached the point now where I have got to have news of Susanna or go and shoot myself."
"That would be about the only piece of foolishness you haven't committed already!" replied Louisa, with a biting satire that would have made any man let go of the trigger in case he had gone so far as to begin pulling it.
"Where is she?" John went on, without anger at her sarcasm. "Where is she, how isshe, what is she living on, is she well, is she just as bitter as she was at first, does she ever speak of coming back?—Tell me something, tell me anything. I will know something. I say Iwill!"
Louisa's calm demeanor began to show a little agitation, for she was not used to the sight of emotion.
"I can't tell you where Susanna is, for I made her a solemn promise I wouldn't unless you or Jack were in danger of some kind; but I don't mind telling you this much, that she's well and in the safest kind of a shelter, for she's been living from the first in a Shaker Settlement."
"Shaker Settlement!" cried John, starting up from his seat on the steps. "What's that? I know Shaker egg-beaters and garden-seeds and rocking-chairs and—oh, yes, I remember their religion's against marriage. That's the worst thing you could have told me; that ends all hope; if they once get hold of a woman likeSusanna, they'll never let go of her; if they don't believe in a woman's marrying a good man, they'd never let her go back to a bad one. Oh, if I had only known this before; if only you'd told me, Louisa, perhaps I could have done something. Maybe they take vows or sign contracts, and so I have lost her altogether."
"I don't know much about their beliefs, and Susanna never explained them," returned Louisa, nervously, "but now that you've got something to offer her, why don't you write and ask her to come back to you? I'll send your letter to her."
"I don't dare, Louisa, I don't dare," groaned John, leaning his head against one of the pillars of the porch. "I can't tell you the fear I have of Susanna after the way I've neglected her this last year. If she should come in at the gate this minute, I couldn't meet her eyes; if you'd read the letter she left me, you'd feel the same way. I deserved it, to the last word, butoh, it was like so many separate strokes of lightning, and every one of them burned. It was nothing but the truth, but it was cut in with a sharp sword. Unless she should come back to me of her own accord, and she never will, I haven't got the courage to ask her; just haven't got the courage, that's all there is to say about it." And here John buried his head in his hands.
A very queer thing happened to Louisa Banks at this moment. A half-second before she would have murmured:—
"This rock shall flyFrom its firm base as soon as I!"
"This rock shall flyFrom its firm base as soon as I!"
when all at once, and without warning, a strange something occurred in the organ she had always regarded—and her opinion had never been questioned—as a good, tough, love-tight heart. First there was a flutter and a tremor running all along her spine; then her eyes filled; then a lump rose in her throat and choked her; then words trembled on her tongueand refused to be uttered; then something like a bird—could it have been the highly respectable good-as-new heart?—throbbed under her black silk Sunday waist; then she grew like wax from the crown of her head to the soles of her feet; then in a twinkling, and so unconsciously as to be unashamed of it, she became a sister. You have seen a gray November morning melt into an Indian summer noon? Louisa Banks was like that, when, at the sight of a man in sore trouble, sympathy was born in her to soften the rockiness of her original make-up.
"There, there, John, don't be so down-hearted," she stammered, drawing her chair closer and putting her hand on his shoulder. "We'll bring it round right, you see if we don't. You've done the most yourself already, for I'm proud of the way you've acted, stiffening right up like an honest man and showing you've got some good sensible Hathaway stuff in you, after all, and ain't ashamed to turn your backon your evil ways. Susanna ain't one to refuse forgiveness."
"She forgave for a long time, but she refused at last. Why should she change now?" John asked.
"You remember she hasn't heard a single word from you, nor about you, in that out-of-the-way place where she's been living," said Louisa, consolingly. "She thinks you're the same as you were, or worse, maybe. Perhaps she's waiting for you to make some sign through me, for she don't know that you care anything about her, or are pining to have her back."
"Such a woman as Susanna must know better than that!" cried John. "She ought to know that when a man got used to living with anybody like her, he could never endure any other kind."
"How should she know all that? Jack's been writing to her and telling her the news for the last few weeks, though I haven't said aword about you because I didn't know how long your reformation was going to hold out; but I won't let the grass grow under my feet now, till I tell her just how things stand!"
"You're a good woman, Louisa; I don't see why I never noticed it before."
"It's because I've been concealing my goodness too much. Stay here with me to-night and don't go back to brood in that dismal, forsaken house. We'll see how Jack is in the morning, and if he's all right, take him along with you, so's to be all there together if Susanna comes back this week, as I kind of hope she will. Make Ellen have the house all nice and cheerful from top to bottom, with a good supper ready to put on the table the night she comes. You'd better pick your asters and take 'em in for the parlor, then I'll cut the chrysanthemums for you in the middle of the week. The day she comes I'll happen in, and stay to dinner if you find it's going to be mortifying for you; but if everything is as I expectit will be, and the way Susanna always did have things, I'll make for home and leave you to yourselves. Susanna ain't one to nag and hector and triumph over a man when he's repented."
John hugged Louisa, pepper-and-salt shawl, black rigolette, and all, when she finished this unprecedented speech; and when he went to sleep that night in the old north chamber, the one he and Louisa had been born in, the one his father and mother had died in, it was with a little smile of hope on his lips.
"Set her place at hearth and boardAs it used to be!"
"Set her place at hearth and boardAs it used to be!"
These were the last words that crossed his waking thoughts.
Before Louisa went to her own bed, she wrote one of her brief and characteristic epistles to Susanna, but it did not reach her, for the "hills of home" had called John's wife so insistently on that Sunday, that the next day found her on her way back to Farnham.
Dear Susanna[so the letter read],—There's a new man in your house at Farnham. His name is John Hathaway, but he's made all over and it was high time.Isay it's the hand of God! He won't own up that it is, but I'm letting him alone, for I've done quarreling, though I don't like to see a man get religion and deny it, for all the world like Peter in the New Testament. If you haven't used up the last one of your seventy-times-sevens, I think you'd better come back and forgive your husband. If you don't, you'd better send for your son. I'm willing to bear the burdens the Lord intends speciallyforme, but Jack belongs to you, and a good-sized heavy burden he is, too, for his age. I can't deny that, if heisa Hathaway. I think he's the kind of a boy that ought to be put in a barrel and fed through the bung-hole till he grows up; but of course I'm not used to children's ways.Be as easy with John at first as you can. I know you'll sayInever was withmyhusband,but he was different. He got to like a bracing treatment, Adlai did. Many's the time he said to me, "Louisa, when you make up our minds, I'm always contented." But John isn't made that way. He's a changed man; now, what we've got to do is tokeephim changed. He doesn't bear you any grudge for leaving him, so he won't reproach you.Hoping to see you before long, I am,Yours as usual,Louisa Banks.
Dear Susanna[so the letter read],—There's a new man in your house at Farnham. His name is John Hathaway, but he's made all over and it was high time.Isay it's the hand of God! He won't own up that it is, but I'm letting him alone, for I've done quarreling, though I don't like to see a man get religion and deny it, for all the world like Peter in the New Testament. If you haven't used up the last one of your seventy-times-sevens, I think you'd better come back and forgive your husband. If you don't, you'd better send for your son. I'm willing to bear the burdens the Lord intends speciallyforme, but Jack belongs to you, and a good-sized heavy burden he is, too, for his age. I can't deny that, if heisa Hathaway. I think he's the kind of a boy that ought to be put in a barrel and fed through the bung-hole till he grows up; but of course I'm not used to children's ways.
Be as easy with John at first as you can. I know you'll sayInever was withmyhusband,but he was different. He got to like a bracing treatment, Adlai did. Many's the time he said to me, "Louisa, when you make up our minds, I'm always contented." But John isn't made that way. He's a changed man; now, what we've got to do is tokeephim changed. He doesn't bear you any grudge for leaving him, so he won't reproach you.
Hoping to see you before long, I am,
Yours as usual,
Louisa Banks.
"THE OPEN DOOR"
Onthe Saturday evening before the yearly Day of Sacrifice the spiritual heads of each Shaker family call upon all the Believers to enter heartily next day into the humiliations and blessings of open confession.
The Sabbath dawns upon an awed and solemn household. Footfalls are hushed, the children's chatter is stilled, and all go to the morning meal in silence. There is a strange quiet, but it is not sadness; it is a hush, as when in Israel's camp the silver trumpets sounded and the people stayed in their tents. "Then," Elder Gray explained to Susanna, "a summons comes to each Believer, for all have beensearching the heart and scanning the life of the months past. Softly the one called goes to the door of the one appointed by the Divine Spirit, the human representative who is to receive the gift of the burdened soul. Woman confesses to woman, man to man; it is the open door that leads to God."
Susanna lifted Eldress Abby's latch and stood in her strong, patient presence; then all at once she knelt impulsively and looked up into her serene eyes.
"Do you come as a Believer, Susanna?" tremblingly asked the Eldress.
"No, Eldress Abby. I come as a child of the world who wants to go back to her duty, and hopes to do it better than she ever did before. She ought to be able to, because you have chastened her pride, taught her the lesson of patience, strengthened her will, purified her spirit, and cleansed her soul from bitterness and wrath. I waited till afternoon when all the confessions were over. May I speak now?"
Eldress Abby bowed, but she looked weak and stricken and old.
"I had something you would have called a vision last night, but I think of it as a dream, and I know just what led to it. You told me Polly Reed's story, and the little quail bird had such a charm for Sue that I've repeated it to her more than once. In my sleep I seemed to see a mother quail with a little one beside her. The two were always together, happily flying or hopping about under the trees; but every now and then I heard a sad little note, as of a deserted bird somewhere in the wood. I walked a short distance, and parting the branches, saw on the open ground another parent bird and a young one by its side darting hither and thither, as if lost; they seemed to be restlessly searching for something, and always they uttered the soft, sad note, as if the nest had disappeared and they had been parted from the little flock. Of course my brain had changed the very meaning of the Shaker story and translated it into different terms, but when I woke this morning, I could think of nothing but my husband and my boy. The two of them seemed to me to be needing me, searching for me in the dangerous open country, while I was hidden away in the safe shelter of the wood—I and the other little quail bird I had taken out of the nest."
"Do you think you could persuade your husband to unite with us?" asked Abby, wiping her eyes.
The tension of the situation was too tightly drawn for mirth, or Susanna could have smiled, but she answered soberly, "No; if John could develop the best in himself, he could be a good husband and father, a good neighbor and citizen, and an upright business man, but never a Shaker."
"Didn't he insult your wifely honor and disgrace your home?"
"Yes, in the last few weeks before I left him. All his earlier offenses were more against himself than me, in a sense. I forgave him many a time, but I am not certain it was the seventy times seven that the Bible bids us. I am not free from blame myself. I was hard the last year, for I had lost hope and my pride was trailing in the dust. I left him a bitter letter, one without any love or hope or faith in it, just because at the moment I believed I ought, once in my life, to let him know how I felt toward him."
"How can you go back and live under his roof with that feeling? It's degradation."
"It has changed. I was morbid then, and so wounded and weak that I could not fight any longer. I am rested now, and calm. My pluck has come back, and my strength. I've learned a good deal here about casting out my own devils; now I am going home and help him to cast out his. Perhaps he won't be there; perhaps he doesn't want me, though when he was his very best self he loved me dearly; but that was long, long ago!" sighed Susanna, drearily.
"Oh, this thing the world's people call love!" groaned Abby.
"There is love and love, even in the world outside; for if it is Adam's world it is God's, too, Abby! The love I gave my husband was good, I think, but it failed somewhere, and I am going back to try again. I am not any too happy in leaving you and taking up, perhaps, heavier burdens than those from which I escaped."
"Night after night I've prayed to be the means of leading you to the celestial life," said the Eldress, "but my plaint was not worthy to be heard. Oh, that God would increase our numbers and so revive our drooping faith! We work, we struggle, we sacrifice, we pray, we defy the world and deny the flesh, yet we fail to gather in Believers."
"Don't say you've failed, dear, dear Abby!" cried Susanna, pressing the Eldress's work-stained hands to her lips. "God speaks to you in one voice, to me in another. Does it matterso much as long as we both hear Him? Surely it's the hearing and the obeying that counts most! Wish me well, dear friend, and help me to say good-by to the Elder."
The two women found Elder Gray in the office, and Abby, still unresigned, laid Susanna's case before him.
"The Great Architect has need of many kinds of workmen in His building," said the Elder. "There are those who are willing to put aside the ties of flesh for the kingdom of heaven's sake; 'he that is able to receive it, let him receive it!'"
"There may also be those who are willing to take up the ties of the flesh for the kingdom of heaven's sake," answered Susanna, gently, but with a certain courage.
Her face glowed with emotion, her eyes shone, her lips were parted. It was a new thought. Abby and Daniel gazed at her for a moment without speaking, then Daniel said: "It's a terrible cross to some of the Brethrenand Sisters to live here outside of the world, but maybe it's more of a cross for such as you to live in it, under such conditions as have surrounded you of late years. To pursue good and resist evil, to bear your cross cheerfully and to grow in grace and knowledge of truth while you're bearing it—that's the lesson of life, I suppose. If you find you can't learn it outside, come back to us, Susanna."
"I will," she promised, "and no words can speak my gratitude for what you have all done for me. Many a time it will come back to me and keep me from faltering."
She looked back at him from the open doorway, timidly.
"Don't forget us, Sue and me, altogether," she said, her eyes filling with tears. "Come to Farnham, if you will, and see if I am a credit to Shaker teaching! I shall never be here again, perhaps, and somehow it seems to me as if you, Elder Gray, with your education and your gifts, ought to be leading a larger life than this."
"I've hunted in the wild Maine forests, in my young days; I've speared salmon in her rivers and shot rapids in a birch-bark canoe," said the Elder, looking up from the pine table that served as a desk. "I've been before the mast and seen strange countries; I've fought Indians; I've faced perils on land and sea; but this Shaker life is the greatest adventure of all!"
"Adventure?" echoed Susanna, uncomprehendingly.
"Adventure!" repeated the Elder, smiling at his own thoughts. "Whether I fail, or whether I succeed, it's a splendid adventure in ethics."
Abby and Daniel looked at each other when Susanna passed out of the office door.
"'They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us,'" he quoted quietly.
Abby wiped her eyes with her apron. "It's a hard road to travel sometimes, Daniel!" she said.
"Yee; but think where it leads, Abby, think where it leads! You're not going to complain of dust when you're treading the King's Highway!"
Susanna left the office with a drooping head, knowing the sadness she had left behind. Brother Ansel sat under the trees near by, and his shrewd eye perceived the drift of coming events.
"Well, Susanna," he drawled, "you're goin' to leave us, like most o' the other 'jiners.' I can see that with one eye shut."
"Yes," she replied, with a half smile; "but you see, Ansel, I 'jined' John Hathaway before I knew anything about Shaker doctrines."
"Yee; but what's to prevent your on-jinin' him? They used to tie up married folks in the old times so't they couldn't move an inch. When they read the constitution and by-laws over 'em they used to put in 'till death do us part.' That's the way my father was hitchedtohisthree wives, but deathdid'em part—fortunately for him!"
"'Till death us do part' is still in the marriage service," Susanna said, "and I think of it very often."
"I want to know if that's there yit!" exclaimed Ansel, with apparent surprise; "I thought they must be leavin' it out, there's so much on-jinin' nowadays! Well, accordin' to my notions, if thereisanything wuss 'n marriage, it's hevin' it hold till death, for then men-folks don't git any chance of a speritual life till afterwards. They certainly don't when they're being dragged down by women-folks an' young ones."
"I think the lasting part of the bargain makes it all the more solemn," Susanna argued.
"Oh, yes, it's solemn enough, but so's a prayer meetin', an' consid'able more elevatin'"; and here Ansel regarded the surrounding scenery with frowning disapproval, as if it left much to be desired.
"Don't you think that there areanyagreeable and pleasant women, Ansel?" ventured Susanna.
"Land, yes; heaps of 'em; but they all wear Shaker bunnits!"
"I suppose you know more about the women in the outside world than most of the Brothers, on account of traveling so much?"
"I guess anybody't drives a seed-cart or peddles stuff along the road knows enough o' women to keep clear of 'em. They'll come out the kitchen door, choose their papers o' seasonin' an' bottles o' flavorin', worry you 'bout the price an' take the aidge off every dime, make up an' then onmake their minds 'bout what they want, ask if it's pure, an' when by good luck you git your cart out o' the yard, they come runnin' along the road after ye to git ye to swop a bottle o' vanilla for some spruce gum an' give 'em back the change."
Susanna could not help smiling at Ansel'sarraignment of her sex. "Do you think they follow you for the pleasure of shopping, or the pleasure of your conversation, Ansel?" she asked slyly.
"A little o' both, mebbe; though the pleasure's all on their side," returned the unchivalrous Ansel. "But take them same women, cut their hair close to their heads (there's a heap o' foolishness in hair, somehow), purge 'em o' their vanity, so they won't be lookin' in the glass all the time, make 'em depend on one another for sassiety, so they won't crave no conversation with men-folks, an' you git an article that's 'bout as good and 'bout as stiddy as a man!"
"You never seem to remember that men are just as dangerous to women's happiness and goodness as women are to men's," said Susanna, courageously.
"It don't seem so to me! Never see a man, hardly, that could stick to the straight an' narrer if a woman wanted him to go the otherway. Weak an' unstable as water, men-folks are, an' women are pow'ful strong."
"Have your own way, Ansel! I'm going back to the world, but no man shall ever say I hindered him from being good. You'll see women clearer in another world."
"There'll be precious few of 'em to see!" retorted Ansel. "You're about the best o' the lot, but even you have a kind of a managin' way with ye, besides fillin' us all full o' false hopes that we'd gathered in a useful Believer, one cal'lated to spread the doctrines o' Mother Ann!"
"I know, I know, Ansel, and oh, how sorry I am! You would never believe how I long to stay and help you, never believe how much you have helped me! Good-by, Ansel; you've made me smile when my heart was breaking. I shan't forget you!"
THE HILLS OF HOME
Susannahad found Sue in the upper chamber at the Office Building, and began to make the simple preparations for her homeward journey.
It was the very hour when John Hathaway was saying:—
"Set her place at hearth and boardAs it used to be."
"Set her place at hearth and boardAs it used to be."
Sue interfered with the packing somewhat by darting to and fro, bringing her mother sacred souvenirs given her by the Shaker sisters and the children—needle-books, pin-balls, thimble-cases, packets of flower-seeds, polished pebbles, bottles of flavoring extract.
"This is for Fardie," she would say, "and this for Jack and this for Ellen and this for Aunt Louisa—the needle-book, 'cause she's so useful. Oh, I'm glad we're going home, Mardie, though I do love it here, and I was most ready to be a truly Shaker. It's kind of pityish to have your hair shingled and your stocking half-knitted and know how to say 'Yee' and then have it all wasted."
Susanna dropped a tear on the dress she was folding. The child was going home, as she had come away from it, gay, irresponsible, and merry; it was only the mothers who hoped and feared and dreaded.
The very universe was working toward Susanna's desire at that moment, but she was all unaware of the happiness that lay so near. She could not see the freshness of the house in Farnham, the new bits of furniture here and there; the autumn leaves in her own bedroom; her work-table full of the records of John's sorrowful summer; Jack handsomerand taller, and softer, also, in his welcoming mood; Ellen rosy and excited. She did not know that Joel Atterbury had said to John that day, "I take it all back, old man, and I hope you'll stay on in the firm!" nor that Aunt Louisa, who was putting stiff, short-stemmed chrysanthemums in cups and tumblers here and there through the house, was much more flexible and human than was natural to her; nor that John, alternating between hope and despair, was forever humming:—
"Set her place at hearth and boardAs it used to be;Higher are the hills of home,Bluer is the sea!"
"Set her place at hearth and boardAs it used to be;Higher are the hills of home,Bluer is the sea!"
It is often so. They who go weeping to look for the dead body of a sorrow, find a vision of angels where the body has lain.
"I hope Fardie'll be glad to see us and Ellen will have gingerbread," Sue chattered; then, pausing at the window, she added, "I'msorry to leave the hills, 'cause I 'specially like them, don't you, Mardie?"
"We are leaving the Shaker hills, but we are going to the hills of home," her mother answered cheerily. "Don't you remember the Farnham hills, dear?"
"Yes, I remember," and Sue looked thoughtful; "they were farther off and covered with woods; these are smooth and gentle. And we shall miss the lake, Mardie."
"Yes; but we can look at the blue sea from your bedroom window, Sue!"
"And we'll tell Fardie about Polly Reed and the little quail bird, won't we?"
"Yes; but he and Jack will have a great deal to say to us, and we mustn't talk all the time about the dear, kind Shakers, you know!"
"You're all 'buts,' Mardie!" at which Susanna smiled through her tears.
Twilight deepened into dusk, and dusk into dark, and then the moon rose over the poplar trees outside the window where Susanna andSue were sleeping. The Shaker Brethren and Sisters were resting serenely after their day of confession. It was the aged Tabitha's last Sabbath on earth, but had she known, it would have made no difference; if ever a soul was ready for heaven, it was Tabitha's.
There was an Irish family at the foot of the long hill that lay between the Settlement and the village of Albion; father, mother, and children had prayed to the Virgin before they went to bed; and the gray-haired minister in the low-roofed parsonage was writing his communion sermon on a text sacred to the orthodox Christian world. The same moon shone over all, and over millions of others worshiping strange idols and holding strange beliefs in strange far lands, yet none of them owned the whole of heaven; for as Elder Gray said, "It is a big place and belongs to God."
Susanna Hathaway went back to John thinking it her plain duty, and to me it seems beautiful that she found waiting for her at thejourney's end a new love that was better than the old; found a husband to whom she could say in that first sacred hour when they were alone together, "Never mind, John! Let's forget, and begin all over again."
. . . . . . . .
When Susanna and Sue alighted at the little railway station at Farnham, and started to walk through the narrow streets that led to the suburbs, the mother's heart beat more and more tumultuously as she realized that the issues of four lives would be settled before nightfall.
Little did Sue reck of life issues, skipping like a young roe from one side of the road to the other. "There are the hills, not a bit changed, Mardie!" she cried; "and the sea is just where it was!... Here's the house with the parrot, do you remember? Now the place where the dog barks and snarls is coming next.... P'raps he'll be dead ... or p'raps he'll be nicer.... Keep close to me till we getpast the gate.... He didn't come out, so p'raps he is dead or gone a-visiting.... There's that 'specially lazy cow that's always lying down in the Buxtons' field.... I don't b'lieve she's moved since we came away.... Do you s'pose she stands up to be milked, Mardie? There's the old bridge over the brook, just the same, only the woodbine's red.... There's ... There's ... Oh, Mardie, look, look!... I do b'lieve it's our Jacky!"
Sue flew over the ground like a swallow, calling "Jack-y! Jack-y! it's me and Mardie come home!"
Jack extricated himself from his sister's strangling hug and settled his collar. "I'm awful glad to see you, Sukey," he said, "but I'm getting too big to be kissed. Besides, my pockets are full of angleworms and fishhooks."
"Are you too big to be kissed even by mother?" called Susanna, hurrying to herboy, who submitted to her embrace with better grace. "O Jack, Jack! say you're glad to see mother! Say it, say it; I can't wait, Jack!"
"Course I'm glad! why wouldn't I be? I tell you I'm tired of Aunt Louisa, though she's easier than she was. Time and again I've packed my lunch basket and started to run away, but I always made it a picnic and went back again, thinking they'd make such a row over me."
"Aunt Louisa is always kind when you're obedient," Susanna urged.
"She ain't so stiff as she was. Ellen is real worried about her and thinks she's losing her strength, she's so easy to get along with."
"How's ... father...?"
"Better'n he was."
"Hasn't he been well?"
"Not so very; always quiet and won't eat, nor play, nor anything. I'm home with him since Sunday."
"What is the matter with your clothes?" asked Susanna, casting a maternal eye over him while she pulled him down here and up there, with anxious disapproving glances. "You look so patched, and wrinkled, and grubby."
"Aunt Louisa and father make me keep my best to put on for you, if you should come. I clean up and dress every afternoon at train time, only I forgot to-day and came fishing."
"It's too cold to fish, sonny."
"It ain't too cold to fish, but it's too cold for 'em to bite," corrected Jack.
"Why were you expecting us just now?" asked Susanna. "I didn't write because, because, I thought ... perhaps ... it would be better to surprise you."
"Father's expecting you every day, not just this one," said Jack.
Susanna sank down on a stone at the end of the bridge, and leaning her head against the railing, burst into tears. In that moment theworst of her fears rolled away from her heart like the stone from the mouth of a sepulchre. If her husband had looked for her return, he must have missed her, regretted her, needed her, just a little. His disposition was sweet, even if it were thoughtless, and he might not meet her with reproaches after all. There might not be the cold greeting she had often feared—"Well, you've concluded to come back, have you? It was about time!" If only John were a little penitent, a little anxious to meet her on some common ground, she felt her task would be an easier one.
"Have you got a pain, Mardie?" cried Sue, anxiously bending over her mother.
"No, dear," she answered, smiling through her tears and stretching a hand to both children to help her to her feet. "No, dear, I've lost one!"
"I cry when anything aches, not when it stops," remarked Jack, as the three started again on their walk.—"Say, Sukey, you lookbigger and fatter than you did when you went away, and you've got short curls 'stead of long ones.—Do you see how I've grown?—Two inches!"
"I'm inches and inches bigger and taller," Sue boasted, standing on tiptoe and stretching herself proudly. "And I can knit, and pull maple candy, and say Yee, and sing 'O Virgin Church, how great thy light.'"
"Pooh," said Jack, "I can sing 'A sailor's life's the life for me, Yo ho, yo ho!' Step along faster, mummy dear; it's 'most supper time. Aunt Louisa won't scold if you're with me. There's the house, see? Father'll be working in the garden covering up the asters, so they won't freeze before you come."
"There is no garden, Jack. What do you mean?"
"Wait till you see if there's no garden! Hurrah! there's father at the window, side of Aunt Louisa. Won't he be pleased I met you halfway and brought you home!"
Oh! it was beautiful, the autumn twilight, the smoke of her own hearthside rising through the brick chimneys! She thought she had left the way of peace behind her, but no, the way of peace was here, where her duty was, and her husband and children.
The sea was deep blue; the home hills rolled softly along the horizon; the little gate that Susanna had closed behind her in anger and misery stood wide open; shrubs, borders, young hedge-rows, beds of late autumn flowers greeted her eyes and touched her heart. A foot sounded on the threshold; the home door opened and smiled a greeting; and then a voice choked with feeling, glad with welcome, called her name.
Light-footed Sue ran with a cry of joy into her father's outstretched arms, and then leaping down darted to Ellen, chattering like a magpie. Husband and wife looked at each other for one quivering moment, and then clasped each other close.
"Forgive! O Susanna, forgive!"
John's eyes and lips and arms made mute appeals, and it was then Susanna said, "Never mind, John! Let's forget, and begin all over again!"
Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS
U . S . A
THE OLD PEABODY PEW By KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN