Brother Nathan Bennett was twenty years old and Sister Hetty Arnold
was eighteen. They had been left with the Shakers by their respective
parents ten years before, and, growing up in the faith, they formally
joined the Community when they reached the age of discretion. Thus they
had known each other from early childhood, never in the familiar way
common to the children of the world, but with the cool, cheerful,
casual, wholly impersonal attitude of Shaker friendship, a relation
seemingly outside of and superior to sex, a relation more like that of
two astral bodies than the more intimate one of a budding Adam and Eve.
When and where had this relationship changed its color and meaning?
Neither Nathan nor Hetty could have told. For years Nathan had sat at
his end of the young men's bench at the family or the public meeting,
with Hetty exactly opposite him at the end of the girls' row, and for
years they had looked across the dividing space at each other with
unstirred pulses. The rows of Sisters sat in serene dignity, one bench
behind another, and each Sister was like unto every other in Nathan's
vague, dreamy, boyishly indifferent eyes. Some of them were seventy
and some seventeen, but each modest figure sat in its place with quiet
folded hands. The stiff caps hid the hair, whether it was silver or
gold; the white surplices covered the shoulders and concealed beautiful
curves as well as angular outlines; the throats were scarcely visible,
whether they were yellow and wrinkled or young and white. The Sisters
were simply sisters to fair-haired Nathan, and the Brothers were but
brothers to little black-eyed Hetty.
Once--was it on a Sunday morning?--Nathan glanced across the separating
space that is the very essence and sign of Shakerism. The dance had just
ceased, and there was a long, solemn stillness when God indeed seemed to
be in one of His holy temples and the earth was keeping silence before
Him. Suddenly Hetty grew to be something more than one of the figures in
a long row: she chained Nathan's eye and held it.
“Through her garments the grace of her glowed.” He saw that, in spite
of the way her hair had been cut and stretched back from the forehead,
a short dusky tendril, softened and coaxed by the summer heat, had made
its way mutinously beyond the confines of her cap. Her eyes were
cast down, but the lashes that swept her round young cheek were quite
different from any other lashes in the Sisters' row. Her breath came and
went softly after the exertion of the rhythmic movements, stirring the
white muslin folds that wrapped her from throat to waist. He looked and
looked, until his body seemed to be all eyes, absolutely unaware of any
change in himself; quite oblivious of the fact that he was regarding the
girl in any new and dangerous way.
The silence continued, long and profound, until suddenly Hetty raised
her beautiful lashes and met Nathan's gaze, the gaze of a boy just
turned to man: ardent, warm, compelling. There was a startled moment of
recognition, a tremulous approach, almost an embrace, of regard; each
sent an electric current across the protective separating space, the
two pairs of eyes met and said, “I love you,” in such clear tones that
Nathan and Hetty marveled that the Elder did not hear them. Somebody
says that love, like a scarlet spider, can spin a thread between two
hearts almost in an instant, so fine as to be almost invisible, yet it
will hold with the tenacity of an iron chain. The thread had been spun;
it was so delicate that neither Nathan nor Hetty had seen the scarlet
spider spinning it, but the strength of both would not avail to snap the
bond that held them together.
The moments passed. Hetty's kerchief rose and fell, rose and fell
tumultuously, while her face was suffused with color. Nathan's knees
quivered under him, and when the Elder rose, and they began the sacred
march, the lad could hardly stand for trembling. He dreaded the moment
when the lines of Believers would meet, and he and Hetty would walk the
length of the long room almost beside each other. Could she hear his
heart beating, Nathan wondered; while Hetty was palpitating with fear
lest Nathan see her blushes and divine their meaning. Oh, the joy of it,
the terror of it, the strange exhilaration and the sudden sensation of
sin and remorse!
The meeting over, Nathan flung himself on the haymow in the great barn,
while Hetty sat with her “Synopsis of Shaker Theology” at an open window
of the girls' building, seeing nothing in the lines of print but
visions that should not have been there. It was Nathan who felt most
and suffered most and was most conscious of sin, for Hetty, at first,
scarcely knew whither she was drifting.
She went into the herb-garden with Susanna one morning during the
week that followed the fatal Sunday. Many of the plants to be used for
seasoning--sage, summer savory, sweet marjoram, and the like--were quite
ready for gathering. As the two women were busy at work, Susanna as full
of her thoughts as Hetty of hers, the sound of a step was heard brushing
the grass of the orchard. Hetty gave a nervous start; her cheeks grew so
crimson and her breath so short that Susanna noticed the change.
“It will be Brother Ansel coming along to the grindstone,” Hetty
stammered, burying her head in the leaves.
“No,” Susanna answered, “it is Nathan. He has a long pole with a saw on
the end. He must be going to take the dead branches off the apple trees;
I heard Ansel tell him yesterday to do it.”
“Yee, that will be it,” said Hetty, bending over the plants as if she
were afraid to look elsewhere.
Nathan came nearer to the herb-garden. He was a tall, stalwart, handsome
enough fellow, even in his quaint working garb. As the Sisters spun and
wove the cloth as well as cut and made the men's garments, and as the
Brothers themselves made the shoes, there was naturally no great air
of fashion about the Shaker raiment; but Nathan carried it better than
most. His skin was fair and rosy, the down on his upper lip showed
dawning manhood, and when he took off his broad-brimmed straw hat and
stretched to his full height to reach the upper branches of the apple
trees, he made a picture of clean, wholesome, vigorous youth.
Suddenly Susanna raised her head and surprised Hetty looking at the lad
with all her heart in her eyes. At the same moment Nathan turned, and
before he could conceal the telltale ardor of his glance, it had sped to
Hetty. With the instinct of self-preservation he stooped instantly as if
to steady the saw on the pole, but it was too late to mend matters: his
tale was told so far as Susanna was concerned; but it was better she
should suspect than one of the Believers or Eldress Abby.
Susanna worked on in silent anxiety. The likelihood of such crises as
this had sometimes crossed her mind, and knowing how frail human nature
is, she often marveled that instances seemed so infrequent. Her instinct
told her that in every Community the risk must exist, even though all
were doubly warned and armed against the temptations that flesh is heir
to; yet no hint of danger had showed itself during the months in which
she had been a member of the Shaker family. She had heard the Elder's
plea to the young converts to take up “a full cross against the flesh”;
she had listened to Eldress Abby when she told them that the natural
life, its thoughts, passions, feelings, and associations, must be turned
against once and forever; but her heart melted in pity for the two
poor young things struggling helplessly against instincts of which they
hardly knew the meaning, so cloistered had been the life they lived.
The kind, conscientious hands that had fed them would now seem hard and
unrelenting; the place that had been home would turn to a prison; the
life that Elder Gray preached, “the life of a purer godliness than can
be attained by marriage,” had seemed difficult, perhaps, but possible;
and now how cold and hopeless it would appear to these two young,
undisciplined, flaming hearts!
“Hetty dear, talk to me!” whispered Susanna, softly touching her
shoulder, and wondering if she could somehow find a way to counsel the
girl in her perplexity.
Hetty started rebelliously to her feet as Nathan moved away farther into
the orchard. “If you say a single thing to me, or a word about me to
Eldress Abby, I'll run away this very day. Nobody has any right to speak
to me, and I just want to be let alone! It's all very well for you,”
she went on passionately. “What have you had to give up? Nothing but a
husband you did n't love and a home you did n't want to stay in. Like
as not you'll be a Shaker, and they'll take you for a saint; but anyway
you'll have had your life.”
“You are right, Hetty,” said Susanna, quietly; “but oh! my dear, the
world outside isn't such a Paradise for young girls like you, motherless
and fatherless and penniless. You have a good home here; can't you learn
to like it?”
“Out in the world people can do as they like and nobody thinks of
calling them wicked!” sobbed Hetty, flinging herself down, and putting
her head in Susanna's aproned lap. “Here you've got to live like an
angel, and if you don't, you've got to confess every wrong thought
you've had, when the time comes.”
“Whatever you do, Hetty, be open and aboveboard; don't be hasty and
foolish, or you may be sorry forever afterwards.”
Hetty's mood changed again suddenly to one of mutiny, and she rose to
her feet.
“You have n't got any right to interfere with me anyway, Susanna; and if
you think it's your duty to tell tales, you'll only make matters worse”;
and so saying she took her basket and fled across the fields like a
hunted hare.
That evening, as Hetty left the infirmary, where she had been sent
with a bottle of liniment for the nursing Sisters, she came upon Nathan
standing gloomily under the spruce trees near the back of the building.
It was eight o'clock and quite dark. It had been raining during the late
afternoon and the trees were still dripping drearily. Hetty came upon
Nathan so suddenly, that, although he had been in her thoughts, she gave
a frightened little cry when he drew her peremptorily under the shadow
of the branches. The rules that govern the Shaker Community are very
strict, but in reality the true Believer never thinks of them as rules,
nor is trammeled by them. They are fixed habits of the blood, as common,
as natural, as sitting or standing, eating or drinking. No Brother is
allowed to hold any lengthy interview with a Sister, nor to work, walk,
or drive with her alone; but these protective customs, which all are
bound in honor to keep, are too much a matter of everyday life to be
strange or irksome.
“I must speak to you, Hetty,” whispered Nathan. “I cannot bear it any
longer alone. What shall we do?”
“Do?” echoed Hetty, trembling.
“Yes, _do_.” There was no pretense of asking her if she loved or
suffered, or lived in torture and suspense. They had not uttered a word
to each other, but their eyes had “shed meanings.”
“You know we can't go on like this,” he continued rapidly. “We can't eat
their food, stay alongside of them, pray their prayers and act a lie all
the time, we can't!”
“Nay, we can't!” said Hetty. “Oh, Nathan, shall we confess all and see
if they will help us to resist temptation? I know that's what Susanna
would want me to do, but oh! I should dread it.”
“Nay, it is too late,” Nathan answered drearily. “They could not help
us, and we should be held under suspicion forever after.”
“I feel so wicked and miserable and unfaithful, I don't know what to
do!” sobbed Hetty.
“Yee, so do I!” the lad answered. “And I feel bitter against my father,
too. He brought me here to get rid of me, because he did n't dare leave
me on somebody's doorstep. He ought to have come back when I was grown
a man and asked me if I felt inclined to be a Shaker, and if I was good
enough to be one!”
“And my stepfather would n't have me in the house, so my mother had to
give me away; but they're both dead, and I'm alone in the world, though
I've never felt it, because the Sisters are so kind. Now they will hate
me--though they don't hate anybody.”
“You've got me, Hetty! We must go away and be married. We'd better go
tonight to the minister in Albion.”
“What if he would n't do it?”
“Why should n't he? Shakers take no vows, though I feel bound, hand and
foot, out of gratitude. If any other two young folks went to him, he
would marry them; and if he refuses, there are two other ministers in
Albion, besides two more in Buryfield, five miles farther. If they won't
marry us tonight, I'll leave you in some safe home and we 'll walk
to Portland tomorrow. I'm young and strong, and I know I can earn our
living somehow.”
“But we have n't the price of a lodging or a breakfast between us,”
Hetty said tearfully. “Would it be sinful to take some of my basketwork
and send back the money next week?”
“Yee, it would be so,” Nathan answered sternly. “The least we can do is
to go away as empty-handed as we came. I can work for our breakfast.”
“Oh, I can't bear to disappoint Eldress Abby,” cried Hetty, breaking
anew into tears. “She'll say we've run away to live on the lower plane
after agreeing to crucify Nature and follow the angelic life!”
“I know; but there are five hundred people in Albion all living in
marriage, and we shan't be the only sinners!” Nathan argued. “Oh, Sister
Hetty, dear Hetty, keep up your spirits and trust to me!”
Nathan's hand stole out and met Hetty's in its warm clasp, the first
hand touch that the two ignorant young creatures had ever felt. Nathan's
knowledge of life had been a journey to the Canterbury Shakers in New
Hampshire with Brother Issachar; Hetty's was limited to a few drives
into Albion village, and half a dozen chats with the world's people who
came to the Settlement to buy basketwork.
“I am not able to bear the Shaker life!” sighed Nathan. “Elder Gray
allows there be such!”
“Nor I,” murmured Hetty. “Eldress Harriet knows I am no saint!”
Hetty's head was now on Nathan's shoulder. The stiff Shaker cap
had resisted bravely, but the girl's head had yielded to the sweet
proximity. Youth called to youth triumphantly; the Spirit was unheard,
and all the theories of celibacy and the angelic life that had been
poured into their ears vanished into thin air. The thick shade of the
spruce tree hid the kiss that would have been so innocent, had they
not given themselves to the Virgin Church; the drip, drip, drip of the
branches on their young heads passed unheeded.
Then, one following the other silently along the highroad, hurrying
along in the shadows of the tall trees, stealing into the edge of the
woods, or hiding behind a thicket of alders at the fancied sound of a
footstep or the distant rumble of a wagon, Nathan and Hetty forsook the
faith of Mother Ann and went out into the world as Adam and Eve left the
garden, with the knowledge of good and evil implanted in their hearts.
The voice of Eldress Abby pursued Hetty in her flight like the voice
in a dream. She could hear its clear impassioned accents, saying, “The
children of this world marry; but the children of the resurrection do
not marry, for they are as the angels.” The solemn tones grew fainter
and fainter as Hetty's steps led her farther and farther away from the
quiet Shaker village and its drab-clad Sisters, and at last they almost
died into silence, because Nathan's voice was nearer and Nathan's voice
was dearer.