The Way to Peace Part 3

"I WILL go; I have a right to save my soul!"

And he said, very simply, "Well, Athalia, then I'll go, too."

"You? But you don't believe--" And almost in the Bible words he answered her, "No; but where you go, I will go; where you live, I will live." And then, a moment later, "I promised to cleave to you, little Tay."

II

THE uprooting of their life took a surprisingly short time. In all those dark months of argument Lewis Hall had been quietly making plans for this final step, and such preparation betrayed his knowledge from the first of the hopelessness of his struggle--indeed, the struggle had only been loyalty to a lost cause. His calm a.s.sent to his wife's ultimatum left her a little blank; but in the immediate excitement of removal, in the thrill of martyrdom that came with publicity, the blankness did not last. What the publicity was to her husband she could not understand.

He received the protests of his family in stolid silence; when the venturesome great-aunt told him what she thought of him, he smiled; when his brother informed him that he was a fool, he said he shouldn't wonder. When the minister, egged on by distracted Hall relatives, remonstrated, he replied, respectfully, that he was doing what he believed to be his duty, "and if it seems to be a duty, I can't help myself; you see that, don't you?" he said, anxiously. But that was practically all he found to say; for the most part he was silent.

Athalia, in her absorption, probably had not the slightest idea of the agonies of mortification which he suffered; her imagination told her, truly enough, what angry relatives and pleasantly horrified neighbors said about her, and the abuse exhilarated her very much; but her imagination stopped there. It did not give her the family's opinion of her husband; it did not whisper the gossip of the grocery-store and the post-office; it did not repeat the chuckles or echo the innuendoes:

"So Squire Hall's wife's got tired of him? Rather live with the Shakers than him!" "I like Hall, but I haven't any sympathy with him," the doctor said; "what in thunder did he let her go gallivanting off to visit the Shakers for? Might have known a female like Mrs. Hall'd get a bee in her bonnet. He ought to have kept her at home. _I_ would have. I wouldn't have had any such nonsense in my family! Well, for an obstinate man (and he IS obstinate, you know), the squire, when it comes to his wife, has no more backbone than a wet string."

"Wonder if there's anything under it all?" came the sly insinuation of gossip; "wonder if she hasn't got something besides the Shakers up her sleeve? You wait!"

If Athalia's imagination spared her these comments, Lewis's unimaginative common sense supplied them. He knew what other men and husbands were saying about him; what servants and gossip and friends insinuated to one another, and set his jaw in silence. He made no excuse and no explanation. Why should he? The facts spoke. His wife did prefer the Shakers to her husband and her home. To have interfered with her purpose by any plea of his personal unhappiness, or by any threat of an appeal to law, or even by refusing to give the "consent" essential to her admission, would not have altered these facts. As for his reasons for going with her, they would not have enhanced his dignity in the eyes of the men who wouldn't have had any such nonsense in their families: he must be near her to see that she did not suffer too much hardship, and to bring her home when she was ready to come.

In those days of tearing his life up by the roots the silent man was just a little more silent, that was all. But the fact was burning into his consciousness: he couldn't keep his wife! That was what they said, and that was the truth. It seemed to him as if his soul blushed at his helplessness. But his face was perfectly stolid. He told Athalia, pa.s.sively, that he had rented the house and mill to Henry Davis; that he had settled half his capital upon her, so that she would have some money to put into the common treasury of the community; then he added that he had taken a house for himself near the settlement, and that he would hire out to the Shakers when they were haying, or do any farm-work that he could get.

"I can take care of myself, I guess," he said; "I used to camp out when I was a boy, and I can cook pretty well, mother always said." He looked at her wistfully; but the uncomfortable-ness of such an arrangement did not strike her. In her desire for a new emotion, her eagerness to FEEL--that eagerness which is really a sensuality of the mind--she was too absorbed in her own self-chosen hardships to think of his; which were not entirely self-chosen.

"I think I can find enough to do," he said; "the Shakers need an able-bodied man; they only have those three old men."

"How do you know that?" she asked, quickly.

"I've been to see them twice this winter," he said.

"Why!" she said, amazed, "you never told me!"

"I don't tell you everything nowadays, 'Thalia," he said, briefly.

In those two visits to the Shakers, Lewis Hall had been treated with great delicacy; there had been no effort to proselytize, and equally there had been no triumphing over the accession of his wife; in fact, Athalia was hardly referred to, except when they told him that they would take good care of her, and when Brother Nathan volunteered a brief summary of Shaker doctrines--"so as you can feel easy about her," he explained: "We believe that Christ was the male principle in Deity, and Mother Ann was the female principle. And we believe in confession of our sins, and communion with the dead--spiritualism, they call it nowadays--and in the virgin life. Shakers don't marry, nor give in marriage. And we have all things in common. That's all, friend. You see, we don't teach anything that Christ didn't teach, so she won't learn any evil from us. Simple, ain't it?"

"Well, yes, after a fashion," Lewis Hall said; "but it isn't human."

And Brother Nathan smiled mystically. "Maybe that isn't against it, in the long run," he said.

They came to the community in the spring twilight. The brothers and sisters had a.s.sembled to meet the convert, and to give a neighborly hand to the silent man who was to live by himself in a little, gray, shingled house down on Lonely Lake Road. It was a supreme moment to Athalia. She had expected an intense parting from her husband when they left their own house; and she was ready to press into her soul the poignant thorn of grief, not only because it would make her FEEL, but because it would emphasize in her own mind the divine self-sacrifice which she wanted to believe she was making. But when the moment came to close the door of the old home behind them, her husband was cruelly commonplace about it--for poor Lewis had no more drama in him than a kindly Newfoundland dog! He was full of practical cares for his tenant, and he stopped even while he was turning the key in the lock, to "fuss," as Athalia said, over some last details of the transfer of the sawmill. Athalia could not tear herself from arms that placidly consented to her withdrawal; so there had been no rending ecstasies. In consequence, on the journey up to the community she was a little morose, a little irritable even, just as the drunkard is apt to be irritable when sobriety is unescapable....

But at the door of the Family House she had her opportunity: she said, dramatically, "Good-night--_Brother Lewis_." It was an entirely sincere moment. Dramatic natures are not often insincere, they are only unreal.

As for her husband, he said, calmly, "Good-night, dear," and trudged off in the cool May dusk down Lonely Lake Road. He found the door of the house on the latch, and a little fire glowing in the stove; Brother Nathan had seen to that, and had left some food on the table for him.

But in spite of the old man's friendly foresight the house had all the desolation of confusion; in the kitchen there were two or three cases of books, broken open but not unpacked, a trunk and a carpet-bag, and some bundles of groceries; they had been left by the expressman on tables and chairs and on the floor, so that the solitary man had to do some lifting and unpacking before he could sit down in his loneliness to eat the supper Brother Nathan had provided. He looked about to see where he would put up shelves for his books, and as he did so the remembrance of his quiet, shabby old study came to him, almost like a blow.

"Well," he said to himself, "this won't be for so very long. We'll be back again in a year, I guess. Poor little Tay! I shouldn't wonder if it was six months. I wonder, can I buy Henry Davis off, if she wants to go back in six months?"

And yet, in spite of his calm understanding of the situation, the wound burned. As he went about putting things into some semblance of order, he paused once and looked hard into the fire.... When she did want to go back--let it be in six months or six weeks or six days--would things be the same? Something had been done to the very structure and fabric of their life. "Can it ever be the same?" he said to himself; and then he pa.s.sed his hand over his eyes, in a bewildered way--"Will I be the same?" he said.

III

SUMMER at the Shaker settlement, lying in the green cup of the hills, was very beautiful. The yellow houses along the gra.s.sy street drowsed in the sunshine, and when the wind stirred the maple leaves one could see the distant sparkle of the lake. Athalia had a fancy, in the warm twilights, for walking down Lonely Lake Road, that jolted over logs and across gullies and stopped abruptly at the water's edge. She had to pa.s.s Lewis's house on the way, and if he saw her he would call out to her, cheerfully,

"Hullo, 'Thalia! how are you, dear?"

And she, with prim intensity, would reply, "Good-evening, BROTHER Lewis."

If one of the sisters was with her, they would stop and speak to him; otherwise she pa.s.sed him by in such an eager consciousness of her part that he smiled--and then sighed. When she had a companion, Lewis and the other Shakeress would gossip about the weather or the haying, and Lewis would have the chance to say: "You're not overworking, 'Thalia? You're not tired?" While Athalia, in her net cap and her gray shoulder cape b.u.t.toned close up to her chin, would dismiss the anxious affection with a peremptory "Of course not! I have bread to eat you know not of, Brother Lewis." Then she would add, didactically, some word of dogma or admonition.

But she had not much time to give to Brother Lewis's salvation--she was so busy in adjusting herself to her new life. Its picturesque details fascinated her--the cap, the brevity of speech, the small mannerisms, the occasional and very reserved mysticism, absorbed her so that she thought very little of her husband. She saw him occasionally on those walks down to the lake, or when, after a day in the fields with the three old Shaker men, Brother Nathan brought him home to supper.

"We Shakers are given to hospitality," he said; "we're always looking for the angel we are going to entertain unawares. Come along home with us, Lewis." And Lewis would plod up the hill and take his turn at the tin washbasin, and then file down the men's side of the stairs to the dining-room, where he and the three old brothers sat at one table, and Athalia and the eight sisters sat at the other table. After supper he had the chance to see Athalia and to make sure that she was not looking tired. "You didn't take cold yesterday, 'Thalia? I saw you were out in the rain," he would say. And she, always a little embarra.s.sed at such personal interest, would reply, primly, "I am not at all tired, Brother Lewis." Nathan used to walk home with his guest, and sometimes they talked of work that must be done, and sometimes touched on more unpractical things--those spiritual manifestations which at rare intervals centred in Brother William and were the hope of the whole community. For who could tell when the old man's incoherent muttering would break into the clear speech of one of those Heavenly Visitants who, in the early days, had descended upon the Shakers, and then, for some divine and deeply mysterious reason, withdrawn from such pure channels of communication, and manifested themselves in the world,--but through base and sordid natures. Poor, vague Brother William, who saw visions and dreamed dreams, was, in this community, the torch that held a smouldering spark of the divine fire, and when, in a cataleptic state, his faint intelligence fluttered back into some dim depths of personality, and he moaned and muttered, using awful names with babbling freedom, Brother Nathan and the rest listened with pathetic eagerness for a _"thus saith the Lord,"_ which should enflame the gray embers of Shakerism and give light to the whole world! When Nathan talked of these things he would add, with a sigh, that he hoped some day William would be inspired to tell them something more of Sister Lydia: "Once William said, 'Coming, coming.' _I_ think it meant Lydia; but Eldress thought it was Athalia; it was just before she came." Brother Nathan sighed. "I wish it had meant Lydy," he said, simply.

If Lewis wished it had meant Lydy, he did not say so. And, indeed, he said very little upon any subject; Brother Nathan did most of the talking.

"I fled from the City of Destruction when I was thirty," he told Lewis; "that was just a year before Sister Lydy left us. Poor Lydy! poor Lydy!"

he said. "Oh, yee, _I_ know the world. I know it, my boy! Do you?"

"Why, after a fashion," Lewis said; and then he asked, suddenly, "Why did you turn Shaker, Nathan?"

"Well, I got hold of a Shaker book that set me thinking. Sister Lydia gave it to me. I met Sister Lydia when she had come down to the place I lived to sell baskets. And she was interested in my salvation, and gave me the book. Then I got to figuring out the Prophecies, and I saw Shakerism fulfilled them; and then I began to see that when you don't own anything yourself you can't worry about your property; well, that clinched me, I guess. Poor Sister Lydia, she didn't abide in grace herself," he ended, sadly.

"I should have thought you would have been sorry then, that you--" Lewis began, but checked himself. "How about"--he said, and stopped to clear his voice, which broke huskily;--"how about love between man and woman?

Husband and wife?"

"Marriage is honorable," Brother Nathan conceded; "Shakers don't despise marriage. But they like to see folks grow out of it into something better, like--like your wife, maybe."

"Well, your doctrine would put an end to the world," Lewis said, smiling.

"I guess," said Brother Nathan, dryly, "there ain't any immediate danger of the world coming to an end."

"I'd like to see that book," Lewis said, when they parted at the pasture-bars where a foot-path led down the hill to his own house.

And that night Brother Nathan had an eager word for the family. "He's asked for a book!" he said. The Eldress smiled doubtfully, but Athalia, with a rapturous upward look, said,

"May the Lord guide him!" then added, practically, "It won't amount to anything. He thinks Shakerism isn't human."

"That's not against it, that's not against it!" Nathan declared, smiling; "I've told him so a dozen times!"

But Athalia was so happy that first year, and so important, that she did not often concern herself with the welfare of the man who had been her husband. Instead--it was early in April--he concerned himself with hers; he tried, tentatively, to see if it wasn't almost time for Athalia "to get through with it." Of course, afterward, Sister Athalia realized, with chagrin, that this attempt was only a forerunner of the fever that was developing, which in a few days was to make him a very sick man.

But for the moment his question seemed to her a temptation of the devil, and, of course, resisted temptation made her faith stronger than ever.

It was a deliciously cold spring night; Lewis had drawn the table, with his books on it, close to the fire to try to keep warm, but he shivered, even while his shoulders scorched, and somehow he could not keep his mind on the black, rectangular characters of the Hebrew page before him. He had been interested in Brother Nathan's explanation of Hosea's forecasting of Shakerism, and he had admitted to himself that, if Nathan was correct, there would be something to be said for Shakerism. The idea made him vaguely uneasy, because, that "something" might be so conclusive, that--But he could not face such a possibility.