"You'd better eat sum'thin'," said Hiram over the breakfast-table on
Sunday morning. "Got a good long drive afore you, and mebbe a good
day's work besides. No? Well, then, Susan, you put the apple-brandy
into the basket, and some of them rusks, for I reckon we'll hev' work
with this young man afore night."
Susan, bless her good heart! wanted to go along, and as Hiram's
excitement was evidently at the highest pitch, he consented that she
should occupy the back seat of the wagon: "P'raps Miss Stewart'll feel
more comfortable about leavin' when she sees there's a woman along."
It was a rainy morning, and there were but few wagons on the road.
Arrived at the village, we encountered one little procession after
another of broad-brim straws and Shaker bonnets turning out of the
several houses as we drove past. They stepped along quickly, and
seemed to take no notice of us.
"Reckon we're the only visitors to-day," whispered Hiram as he stopped
at the horseblock in front of the meeting-house. "You know where you
hev' to set--on the left-hand side; and Susan, she goes to the right."
I followed Susan up the steps, and she hastened, as ordered, to the
right, while I took my seat on one of the back benches of the left,
against the wall. It was a barn-like structure, large, neat and
exquisitely chill. Two large stoves on either side possibly had fire
in them--an old man who looked like an ancient porter went to them
from time to time and put on coal--but the very walls reflected a
chill, blue glare. The roof was lofty and vaulted, and added to the
hollow coldness of the hall. The whole apartment was clean to
sanctity, and in its straitness and blank dreariness no unfit emblem
of the faith it embodied.
Around three sides of the hall, and facing the benches for visitors,
the Shaker fraternity were ranged. The hats and straight straw bonnets
hung decorously upon the wall over their heads: here and there a
sky-blue shawl or one of faded lilac hung beneath the headgear. Across
the wide apartment it was difficult to distinguish faces. I scanned
closely the sisterhood--old, withered faces most of them, with here
and there one young and blooming--but no Bessie as yet. Still, they
were coming in continually through the side door: she might yet
appear. I recognized my lady-abbess, who sat directly facing me, in a
seat of state apparently, and close to her, on the brethren's side of
the house, was Elder Nebson.
The services began. All rose, and sisters and brethren faced each
other and sang a hymn, with no accompaniment and no melody--a harsh
chant in wild, barbaric measure. Then, after a prayer, they entered
upon the peculiar method of their service. Round and round the room
they trooped in two large circles, sister following sister, brother
brother, keeping time with their hanging hands to the rhythm of the
hymn. Clustered in the centre was a little knot of men and women, the
high dignitaries, who seemed to lead the singing with their clapping
hands.
The circles passed each other and wove in and out, each preserving its
unbroken continuity. I looked for Elder Nebson: could it be that he
was joining in these gyrations? Yes, he was leading one of the lines.
But I noticed that his hands moved mechanically, not with the
spasmodic fervor of the rest, and that his eyes, instead of the dull,
heavy stare of his fellows, sought with faithful yet shy constancy the
women's ranks. And as the women filed past me, wringing their hands, I
scrutinized each face and figure--the sweet-faced portress, the
shrunken little creole ("A mulatto, she is," Hiram whispered--he had
taken his seat beside me--"and very powerful, they say, among 'em"),
and some fair young girls; two or three of these with blooming cheeks
bursting frankly through the stiff bordering of their caps. But I saw
not the face I sought.
"Them children! Ain't it awful?" muttered Hiram as a file of blue-coat
boys shambled past, with hair cut square across their foreheads and
bleached white with the sun. "Ain't got a grain of sense! Look at
'em!--all crowded clean out by the Shaker schools."
And surely they were a most unpromising little crowd. Waifs, snatched
probably from some New York whirlpool of iniquity, and wearing the
brute mark on their faces, which nothing in this school of their
transplanting tended to erase--a sodden little party, like stupid
young beasts of burden, uncouth and awkward.
As the girls came round again, and I had settled it in my mind that
there was certainly no Bessie in the room, I could watch them more
calmly. Eagerly as I sought her face, it was a relief, surely, that it
was not there. Pale to ghastliness, most of them, with high, sharpened
shoulders, and features set like those of a corpse, it was indeed
difficult to realize that these ascetic forms, these swaying devotees,
were women--women who might else have been wives and mothers. Some of
them wore in their hollow eyes an expression of ecstasy akin to
madness, and there was not a face there that was not saintly pure.
It was a strange union that assembled under one roof these nun-like
creatures, wasted and worn with their rigid lives, and the heavy,
brutish men, who shambled round the room like plough-horses. _Wicked_
eyes some of them had, mere slits through which a cunning and selfish
spirit looked out. Some faces there were of power, but in them the
disagreeable traits were even more strongly marked: the ignorant,
narrow foreheads were better, less responsible, it seemed.
The singing ended, there was a sermon from a high priest who stood out
imperious among his fellows. But this was not a sermon to the flock.
It was aimed at the scanty audience of strangers with words of
unblushing directness. How men and women may continue pure in the
constant hearing and repetition of such revolting arguments and
articles of faith is matter of serious question. The divine instincts
of maternity, the sweet attractions of human love, were thrown down
and stamped under foot in the mud of this man's mind; and at each
peroration, exhorting his hearers to shake off Satan, a strong
convulsive shiver ran through the assembly.
"Bessie is certainly not here: possibly she's still at Watervliet," I
whispered to; Hiram as the concluding hymn began. "But I'll have a
chance at Elder Nebson and that woman before they leave the house."
The rain had ceased for some time, and as again the wild chant went up
from those harsh strained voices, a stray sunbeam, like a gleam of
good promise, shot across the floor. But what was this little figure
stealing in through a side-door and joining the circling throng?--a
figure in lilac gown, with the stiff muslin cap and folded
neckerchief. She entered at the farthest corner of the room, and I
watched her approach with beating heart. Something in the easy step
was familiar, and yet it could not be. She passed around with the rest
in the inner circle, and, leaning forward, I held my breath lest
indeed it might be she.
The circle opened, and again the long line of march around the room.
The lilac figure came nearer and nearer, and now I see her face. It is
Bessie!
With a cry I sprang up, but with a blow, a crash, a horrible darkness
swept over me like a wave, and I knew nothing.
When I came to myself I was lying on a bed in a room that was new to
me. A strong light, as of the setting sun, shone upon the whitewashed
wall. There was a little table, over which hung a looking-glass,
surmounted by two fans of turkey feathers. I stared feebly at the fans
for a while, and then closed my eyes again.
Where was I? I had a faint remembrance of jolting in a wagon, and of
pitying faces bent over me, but where was I now? Again I opened my
eyes, and noted the gay patchwork covering of the bed, and the green
paper curtain of the window in the golden wall--green, with a tall
yellow flower-pot on it, with sprawling roses of blue and red. Turning
with an effort toward the side whence all the brightness came, in a
moment two warm arms were round my neck, and a face that I could not
see was pressed close to mine.
"Oh, Charlie, Charlie! forgive, forgive me for being so bad!"
"Bessie," I answered dreamingly, and seemed to be drifting away again.
But a strong odor of pungent salts made my head tingle again, and when
I could open my eyes for the tears they rested on my darling's
face--my own darling in a soft white dress, kneeling by my bedside,
with both her arms round me. A vigorous patting of the pillow behind
me revealed Mrs. Splinter, tearful too: "He's come to now. Don't
bother him with talk, Miss Bessie. I'll fetch the tea."
And with motherly insistance she brought me a steaming bowl of
beef-tea, while I still lay, holding Bessie's hand, with a feeble
dawning that the vision was real.
"No," she said as Bessie put out her arm for the bowl, "you prop up
his head. I've got a steddyer hand: you'd just spill it all over his
go-to-meetin' suit."
I looked down at myself. I was still dressed in the clothes that I had
worn--when was it? last week?--when I had started for the Shaker
meeting.
"How long?" I said feebly.
"Only this morning, you darling boy, it all happened; and here we are,
snug at Mrs. Splinter's, and Mary Jane is getting the cottage ready
for us as fast as ever she can."
How good that beef-tea was! Bessie knew well what would give it the
_sauce piquante_. "Ready for us!"
"Here's the doctor at last," said Hiram, putting his head in at the
door. "Why, hillo! are we awake?"
"The doctor! Dr. Wilder?" I said beamingly. How good of Bessie! how
thoughtful!
"Not Dr. Wilder, you dear old boy!" said Bessie, laughing and
blushing, "though I sha'n't scold you, Charlie, for that!" in a
whisper in my ear. "It's Dr. Bolster of Lee. Hiram has been riding all
over the country for him this afternoon."
"I'll go down to him," I said, preparing to rise.
"No you won't;" and Mrs. Splinter's strong arm, as well as Bessie's
soft hand, patted me down again.
Dr. Bolster pronounced, as well he might, that all danger was over.
The blow on my head--I must have struck it with force against the
projecting window-shelf as I sprang up--was enough to have stunned me;
but the doctor, I found, was inclined to theorize: "A sudden vertigo,
a dizziness: the Shaker hymns and dances have that effect sometimes
upon persons viewing them for the first time. Or perhaps the heat of
the room." He calmly fingered my pulse for a few seconds, with his fat
ticking watch in his other hand, and then retired to the bureau to
write a prescription, which I was indignantly prepared to repudiate.
But Bessie, in a delightful little pantomime, made signs to me to be
patient: we could throw it all out of the window afterward if need be.
"A soothing draught, and let him keep quiet for a day or so, will be
all that is required. I will call to-morrow if you would prefer it."
"We will send you a note, doctor, to-morrow morning: he seems so much
stronger already that perhaps it will not be necessary to make you
take such a long drive."
"Yes, yes, I'm very busy. You send me word whether to come or not."
And bustlingly the good doctor departed, with Mrs. Splinter
majestically descending to hold whispered conference with him at the
gate.
"Charlie, I _will_ send for Dr. Wilder if you are ready, for I'm never
going to leave you another minute as long as we live."
"I think," said I, laughing, "that I should like to stand up first on
my feet; that is, if I have any feet."
What a wonderful prop and support was Bessie! How skillfully she
helped me to step once, twice, across the floor! and when I sank down,
very tired, in the comfortable easy-chair by the window, she knelt on
the floor beside me and bathed my forehead with fragrant cologne, that
certainly did not come from Mrs. Splinter's tall bottle of lavender
compound on the bureau.
"Oh, my dear boy, I have _so_ much to say! Where shall I begin?"
"At the end," I said quietly. "Send for Dr. Wilder."
"But don't you want to hear what a naughty girl--"
"No, I want to hear nothing but 'I, Elizabeth, take thee--'"
"But I've been so very jealous, so suspicious and angry. _Don't_ you
want to hear how bad I am?"
"No," I said, closing the discussion after an old fashion of the
Sloman cottage, "not until we two walk together to the Ledge
to-morrow, my little wife and I."
"Where's a card--your card, Charlie? It would be more proper-like, as
Mrs. Splinter would say, for you to write it."
"I will try," I said, taking out a card-case from my breast-pocket. As
I drew it forth my hand touched a package, Fanny Meyrick's packet.
Shall I give it to her now? I hesitated. No, we'll be married first in
the calm faith that each has in the other to-day, needing no outward
assurance or written word.
I penciled feebly, with a very shaky hand, my request that the doctor
would call at Hiram Splinter's, at his earliest convenience that
evening, to perform the ceremony of marriage between his young friend,
Bessie Stewart, and the subscriber. Hiram's eldest son, a youth of
eight, was swinging on the gate under our window. To him Bessie
entrusted the card, with many injunctions to give it into no other
hands than the doctor's own.
In less time than we had anticipated, as we looked out of the window
at the last pink glow of the sunset, the urchin reappeared, walking
with great strides beside a spare little-figure, whom we recognized as
the worthy doctor himself.
"Good gracious! he _is_ in a hurry!" said Bessie, retiring hastily
from the window; "and we have not said a word to Mrs. Splinter yet!"
We had expected the little doctor would wait below until the
bridal-party should descend; but no, he came directly up stairs, and
walked into the room without prelude. He took Bessie in his arms with
fatherly tenderness: "Ah, you runaway! so you've come back at last?"
"Yes, doctor, and don't you let go of her until you have married her
fast to me."
"Ahem!" said the doctor, clearing his throat, "that is just what I
came to advise you about. Hiram told me this afternoon of the chase
you two had had, and of your illness this morning. Now, as it is half
over the village by this time that Bessie Stewart has been rescued
from the Shaker village by a chivalrous young gentleman, and as
everybody is wild with impatience to know the _dénoûment_, I want you
to come down quietly to the church this evening and be married after
evening service."
"To please everybody?" I said, in no very pleasant humor.
"I think it will be wisest, best; and I am sure this discreetest of
women," still holding Bessie's hand, "will agree with me. You need not
sit through the service. Hiram can bring you down after it has begun;
and you may sit in the vestry till the clerk calls you. I'll preach a
short sermon to-night," with a benignant chuckle.
He had his will. Some feeling that it would please Mrs. Sloman best,
the only person besides ourselves whom it concerned us to please,
settled it in Bessie's mind, although she anxiously inquired several
times before the doctor left if I felt equal to going to church.
Suppose I should faint on the way?
I was equal to it, for I took a long nap on the sofa in Mrs.
Splinter's parlor through the soft spring twilight, while Bessie held
what seemed to me interminable conferences with Mary Jane.
It was not a brilliant ceremony so far as the groom was concerned. As
we stood at the chancel-rail I am afraid that the congregation,
largely augmented, by this time, by late-comers--for the doctor had
spread the news through the village far and wide--thought me but a
very pale and quiet bridegroom.
But the bride's beauty made amends for all. Just the same soft white
dress of the afternoon--or was it one like it?--with no ornaments, no
bridal veil. I have always pitied men who have to plight their troth
to a moving mass of lace and tulle, weighed down with orange-blossoms
massive as lead. This was my own little wife as she would walk by my
side through life, dressed as she might be the next day and always.
But the next day it was the tartan cloak that she wore, by special
request, as we climbed the hill to the Ledge. It was spring
indeed--bluebirds in the air, and all the sky shone clear and warm.
"Let _me_ begin," said my wife as she took her old seat under the
sheltering pine. "You can't have anything to say, Charlie, in
comparison with me."
There was a short preliminary pause, and then she began.