On the Saturday evening before the yearly Day of Sacrifice the spiritual
heads of each Shaker family called 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 been searching 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.”
“Did n'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 does n'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 matter so 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 goodbye 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 he 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
Brethren and 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 ill a birchbark 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 that
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 onjinin' him? They used to tie up
married folks in the old times so't they could n't move an inch. When
they read the constitution and bylaws over 'em they used to put in 'till
death do us part.' That's the way my father was hitched to his three
wives, but death _did_ '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
onjinin' nowadays! Well, accordin' to my notions, if there is anything
wuss 'n marriage, it's hevin' it hold till death, for then menfolks
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 are any agreeable 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 swap a bottle o' vanilla for some spruce
gum an' give 'em back the change.”
Susanna could not help smiling at Ansel's arraignment 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 menfolks, 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 other way. Weak
an' unstable as water, menfolks 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! Goodbye, Ansel; you've made me smile when my heart was breaking. I
shan't forget you!”