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DUFFELS
By
EDWARD EGGLESTON
AUTHOR OF
THE FAITH DOCTOR, THE HOOSIER SCHOOLMASTER, ROXY, ETC.
NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1893
COPYRIGHT, 1893,
BY EDWARD EGGLESTON.
_All rights reserved._
ELECTROTYPED AND PRINTED
AT THE APPLETON PRESS, U.S.A.
PREFACE.
The once famous Mrs. Anne Grant--known in literature as Mrs. Grant of
Laggan--spent part of her childhood in our New York Albany, then a town
almost wholly given to traffic with the aborigines. To her we owe a
description of the setting out of the young American-Dutch trader to
ascend the Mohawk in a canoe, by laborious paddling and toilsome
carrying round rifts and falls, in order to penetrate to the dangerous
region of the tribes beyond the Six Nations. The outfit of this young
"bushloper," as such a man was called in the still earlier Dutch
period, consisted mainly of a sort of cloth suited to Indian wants. But
there were added minor articles of use and fancy to please the youth or
captivate the imagination of the women in the tribes. Combs, pocket
mirrors, hatchets, knives, jew's-harps, pigments for painting the face
blue, yellow, and vermilion, and other such things, were stored away in
the canoe, to be spread out as temptations before the eyes of some
group of savages rich in a winter's catch of furs. The cloths sold by
the traders were called duffels, probably from the place of their
origin, the town of Duffel, in the Low Countries. By degrees the word
was, I suppose, transferred to the whole stock, and a trader's duffels
included all the miscellany he carried with him. The romantic young
bushloper, eager to accumulate money enough to marry the maiden he had
selected, disappeared long ago from the water courses of northern New
York. In his place an equally interesting figure--the Adirondack
guide--navigates single-handed the rivers and lakes of the "North
Woods." By one of those curious cases of transference that are often
found in etymology, the guide still carries duffels, like his
predecessor; but not for Indian trading. The word with him covers also
an indefinite collection of objects of manifold use--camp utensils,
guns, fishing tackle, and whatnots. The basket that sits in his light
boat to hold his smaller articles is called a duffel basket, as was the
basket of sundries in the trader's canoe, I fancy. If his camp grows
into a house frequented by sportsmen, there will be a duffel room to
contain all manner of unclassified things.
Like the trader of old New York, I here open my kit of duffels. I have
selected from the shorter tales written by me since I began to deal in
the fancy wares of a writer of fiction only such as seem to have
elements of permanent interest. I find their range to be wide. They
cover many phases of human nature; they describe life in both the
eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries; they are of the East and of
the West, of the North, the Middle, and the South. Group or classify
them I can not; they are too various. Some were written long ago, in my
younger manner, and in the tone prevailing among the story-writers of
those days. Opinions and sentiments are inextricably interwoven with
some of these earlier stories that do not seem to be mine to-day. But a
man in his fifties ought to know how to be tolerant of the enthusiasms
and beliefs of a younger man. I suspect that the sentiment I find
somewhat foreign to me in the season of cooler pulses, and the
situations and motives that seem rather naïve now, had something to do
with the acceptability of the stories. The popularity of these early
tales in their day encouraged me to go on, and a little later to set up
in more permanent and wholesale business as a novelist. To certain of
these stories of my apprenticeship I have appended dates to explain
allusions in the text. Other stories there are here, that are of recent
production, and by these I am willing to be judged. The variety in
subject, manner, date, location, makes proper to them the title I have
chosen--a good word with a savor of human history and an odor of the
New World about it; a word yet in living use in this region of lakes
and mountains. I am not without hope that some of my duffels will
please.
If formal dedications were not a little old-fashioned, I should give
myself the pleasure of writing on one of these pages the name of my
friend Mr. Richard Watson Gilder. I have read with delight and sincere
admiration the poems that have given him fame, but they need no praise
of mine. The occasion of my mentioning his name here is more
personal--it was by his solicitation that I was seduced, nearly a
quarter of a century ago, into writing my earliest love story. I may
say, perhaps without pushing the figure too far, that on his suggestion
I first embarked in the light canoe of a dealer in duffels.
E. E.
JOSHUA'S ROCK, LAKE GEORGE, 1893.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
SISTER TABEA 1
THE REDEMPTIONER 27
A BASEMENT STORY 64
THE GUNPOWDER PLOT 91
THE STORY OF A VALENTINE 114
HULDAH, THE HELP 128
THE NEW CASHIER 149
PRISCILLA 157
TALKING FOR LIFE 185
PERIWINKLE 192
THE CHRISTMAS CLUB 228
DUFFELS.
SISTER TABEA.
Two weather-beaten stone buildings at Ephrata, in Pennsylvania, remain
as monuments on this side of the water of the great pietistic movement
in Germany in the early part of the eighteenth century. One of these
was called Bethany, the other Sharon. A hundred and thirty or forty
years ago there were other buildings with these, and the softening hand
of time had not yet touched any of them. The doorways were then, as
now, on the ground level, the passages were just as narrow and dusky,
the cells had the same little square windows to let in the day. But the
stones in that day had a hue that reminded one of the quarry, the
mortar between them was fresh, the shingles in the roof had gathered no
moss and very little weather stain; the primeval forests were yet
within the horizon, and there was everywhere an air of newness, of
advancement, and of prosperity about the Dunkard Convent. One sees now
neither monks nor nuns in these narrow hallways; monks and nuns are
nowhere about Ephrata, except in the graveyard where all the brethren
of Bethany, and all the sisters who once peopled Sharon, sleep together
in the mold. But in the middle of the eighteenth century their bare
feet shuffled upon the stairs as, clad in white hooded cloaks
descending to the very ground, they glided in and out of the low doors,
or assembled in the little chapel called "Zion" to attend service under
the lead of their founder, Conrad Beissels. In the convent, where he
reigned supreme, Beissels was known as Brother Friedsam; later he was
reverently called Father Friedsam Gottrecht, a name that, like all
their convent names, had plenty of mystical significance attached to
it.
But monks and nuns are men and women; and neither cloister life, nor
capuchin hoods and cloaks, nor bare feet, nor protracted midnight
services, can prevent heartburnings and rivalries, nor can all of these
together put down--what is most to be dreaded in a monastery--the
growth of affection between man and woman. What could be done to tame
human nature into submission, to bring it to rejoice only in unearthly
meditations, and a contented round of self-denial and psalm-singing,
Brother Friedsam had tried on his followers with the unsparing hand of
a religious enthusiast. He had forbidden all animal food. Not only was
meat of evil tendency, but milk, he said, made the spirit heavy and
narrow; butter and cheese produced similar disabilities; eggs excited
the passions; honey made the eyes bright and the heart cheerful, but
did not clear the voice for music. So he approved chiefly of those
plain things that sprang direct from the earth, particularly of
potatoes, turnips, and other roots, with a little bread soup and such
like ghostly diet. For drink he would have nothing but what he called
"innocent clear water," just as it flowed from the spring.
But even a dish of potatoes and turnips and beets and carrots, eaten
from wooden trenchers, without milk or butter or meat, was not
sufficient to make the affections and passions of men and women as
ethereal as Friedsam wished. He wedded his people in mystic marriage to
"the Chaste Lamb," to borrow his frequent phrase. They sang
ecstatically of a mystical city of brotherly and sisterly affection
which they, in common with other dreamers of the time, called
Philadelphia, and they rejoiced in a divine creature called in their
mystical jargon _Sophia_, which I suppose meant wisdom, wisdom divorced
from common sense. These anchorites did not eschew social enjoyment,
but held little love feasts. The sisters now invited the brethren, and
next the brethren entertained the sisters--with unbuttered parsnips and
draughts of innocent clear water, no doubt.
That which was most remarkable at Ephrata, and that out of which grows
my story, was the music. Brother Friedsam, besides his cares of
organization, finance, and administration, and his mystical theological
speculations, was also a poet. Most of the songs sung in the little
building called "Zion" were written by him--songs about "the lonesome
turtledove in the wilderness," that is, the Church; songs in praise of
the mystical marriage of virgins with the chaste Lamb; songs about the
Philadelphian brotherhood of saints, about the divine Sophia, and about
many other things which no man can understand, I am sure, until he has
first purified himself from the gross humors of the flesh by a heavenly
diet of turnips and spring water. To the brethren and sisters who
believed their little community in the Pennsylvania woods to be "the
Woman in the Wilderness" seen by St. John, these words represented the
only substantial and valuable things in the wide universe; and they
sang the songs of Conrad Beissels with as much fervor as they could
have sung the songs of heaven itself. Beissels--the Friedsam of the
brotherhood--was not only the poet but the composer of the choral
songs, and a composer of rare merit. The music he wrote is preserved as
it was copied out with great painstaking by the brethren and sisters.
In looking over the wonderful old manuscript notebook, the first
impression is one of delight with the quaint symbolic illuminations
wrought by the nuns of Ephrata upon the margins. But those who know
music declare that the melodies are lovely, and that the whole
structure of the harmonies is masterful, and worthy of the fame they
had in the days when monks and nuns performed them under the lead of
Brother Friedsam himself. In the gallery of Zion house, but concealed
from the view of the brethren, sat the sisterhood, like a company of
saints in spotless robes. Below, the brethren, likewise in white,
answered to the choir above in antiphonal singing of the loveliest and
most faultless sort. Strangers journeyed from afar over rough country
roads to hear this wonderful chorus, and were moved in the depths of
their souls with the indescribable sweetness and loftiness of the
music, and with the charm and expressiveness of its rendering by these
pale-faced other-worldly singers.
But their perfection of execution was attained at a cost almost too
great. Brother Friedsam was a fanatic, and he was also an artist. He
obliged the brethren and sisters to submit to the most rigorous
training. In this, as in religion, he subordinated them to his ideals.
He would fain tune their very souls to his own key; and he exacted a
precision that was difficult of attainment by men and women of average
fallibility and carelessness. The men singers were divided into five
choruses of five persons each; the sisters were classified, according
to the pitch of their voices, into three divisions, each of which sang
or kept silent, according to the duty assigned to it in the notebook.
At the love-feasts these choruses sat side by side at the table, so as
to be ready to sing together with perfect precision whenever a song
should be announced. At the singing school Brother Friedsam could not
abide the least defect; he rated roundly the brother or sister who made
any mistake; he scourged their lagging aspirations toward perfection.
If it is ever necessary to account for bad temper in musicians, one
might suggest that the water-gruel diet had impaired his temper and
theirs; certain it is that out of the production of so much heavenly
harmony there sprang discord. The brethren and sisters grew daily more
and more indignant at the severity of the director, whom they
reverenced as a religious guide, but against whom, as a musical
conductor, they rebelled in their hearts.
The sisters were the first to act in this crisis. At their knitting and
their sewing they talked about it, in the kitchen they discussed it,
until their hearts burned within them. Even in illuminating the
notebook with pretty billing turtledoves, and emblematic flowers such
as must have grown in paradise, since nothing of the sort was ever
known in any earthly garden--even in painting these, some of the nuns
came near to spoiling their colors and blurring their pages with tears.
Only Margaretha Thome, who was known in the convent as Sister Tabea,
shed no tears. She worked with pen and brush, and heard the others
talk; now and then, when some severe word of Brother Friedsam's was
repeated, she would look up with a significant flash of the eye.
"The Hofcavalier doesn't talk," said Sister Thecla. This Thecla had
given the nickname of "Hofcavalier" (_noble courtier_), to Tabea at her
first arrival in the convent on account of her magnificent figure and
high carriage.
"You shouldn't give nicknames, Sister Thecla."
The last speaker was a sister with an austere face and gray eyes which
had no end of cold-blooded religious enthusiasm in them.
"I need not give you a nickname," retorted Thecla to the last speaker;
"Brother Friedsam did that when he called you Jael. You are just the
kind of person to drive a tent-nail through a man's head."
"If he were the enemy of the Church of God," said Jael, in a voice as
hard as it was sincere.
Then the talk drifted back to the singing school and Brother Friedsam's
severity.
"But why doesn't the Hofcavalier speak?" again persisted Thecla.
"When the Hofcavalier speaks, it will be to Brother Friedsam himself,"
answered Tabea.
The temerity of this proposition took Thecla's breath, but it set the
storm a-going more vigorously than before among the sisterhood, who,
having found somebody ready to bell the cat, grew eager to have the cat
belled. Only Sister Jael, who for lack of voice was not included in
either of the three choruses of the sisterhood, stoutly defended
Brother Friedsam, thinking, perhaps, that it was not a bad thing to
have the conceit of the singers reduced; indeed, she was especially
pleased that Tabea, the unsurpassed singer of the sisters' gallery,
should have suffered rebuke.
At length it was agreed that Tabea should tell Brother Friedsam that
the sisters did not intend to go to singing school again.
Then Tabea lifted up her dark head and regarded the circle of women in
white garments about her.
"You are all brave now, but when Brother Friedsam shakes his finger at
you, you will every one of you submit as though you were a set of
redemptioners bought with his money. When I tell Brother Friedsam that
I shall not come to singing school, I shall stick to it. He may get his
music performed by some one else. He will not call me a 'ninny' again."
"There spoke the Hofcavalier," giggled Thecla.
"Sister Tabea," said Jael, "if you go on as you are going, you will end
by leaving the convent and breaking your vows. Mark my words."
"I am going to finish this turtledove first, though," said Tabea gayly.
It was finally agreed that if Tabea would speak to the director on
behalf of the sisterhood, the sisters would resolutely stand by their
threat, and that they would absent themselves from Brother Friedsam's
music drills long enough to have him understand that they were not to
be treated like children. To the surprise of all, Tabea left her work
at once, covered up her head with the hood attached to her gown, and
sought the lodge of Brother Friedsam, which stood between Bethany and
Sharon.
When Tabea was admitted to the cell, and stood before the revered
Friedsam, she felt an unexpected palpitation. Nor was Beissels any more
composed. He could never speak to this girl without some mental
disturbance.
"Brother Friedsam," she said, "I am sent by the sisters to say that
they are very indignant at your treatment of them in the rehearsals,
and that they are not going to attend them hereafter."
Beissels's sensitive lips quivered a moment; this sudden rebellion
surprised him, and he did not at first see how to meet it.
"You suggested this course to them, I suppose?" he said after a pause.
"No, Brother Friedsam, I had nothing to do with it until now. But I
think they are right, and I hope they will keep to their word. You have
been altogether too hard on us."
The director made no reply, but wearily leaned his pale, refined face
upon his hand and looked up at Tabea. This look of inquiry had
something of unhappiness in it that touched the nun's heart, and she
was half sorry that she had spoken so sharply. She fumbled for the
wooden latch of the door presently, and went out with a sense of inward
defeat and annoyance.
"The Hofcavalier does not come back with head in the air," murmured
Thecla. "A bad sign."
"I gave the message," said Sister Tabea, "and Brother Friedsam did not
say whether the four parts sung by the men would be sufficient or not.
But I know very well what he will do; he will coax you all back within
a week."
"And you will leave the convent and break your vows; mark my words,"
said Sister Jael with sharpness.
"It will be after I get this page finished, I tell you," said Tabea.
But she did not seem in haste to finish the page, for, not choosing to
show how much she had been discomposed by Brother Friedsam's wistful
and inquiring look, she gathered up her brush, her colors, and the
notebook page on which she had been at work, and went up the stairs
alongside the great chimney, shutting herself in her cell.
Once there, the picture of Friedsam's face came vividly before her. She
recalled her first meeting with him at her mother's house on the
Wissahickon, and how her heart had gone out to the only man she had
ever met whose character was out of the common. I do not say that she
had consciously loved him as she listened to him, sitting there on the
homemade stool in her mother's cabin and talking of things beyond
comprehension. But she could have loved him, and she did worship him.
It was the personal fascination of Brother Friedsam and her own
vigorous hatred of the commonplace that had led her three years before
to join the sisterhood in the Sharon house. She did not know to what
degree a desire for Beissels's companionship had drawn her to accept
his speculations concerning the mystical Sophia and the Philadelphian
fellowship. But the convent had proved a disappointment. She had seen
little of the great Brother Friedsam, and he had given her, instead of
friendly notice and approval, only a schoolmaster's scolding now and
then for slight faults committed in singing a new piece.
As she sat there in gloomy meditation Jael's evil prediction entered
her mind, and she amused herself with dreams of what might take place
if she should leave the convent and go out into the world again.
In putting away her papers a little note fell out.
"The goose is at it again," she said.
She had that day received some blank paper from the paper mill of the
community, and Daniel Scheible had put this little love letter into the
package of which he was the bearer. He had sent such letters before,
and Tabea, though she had not answered them, had kept them, partly
because she did not wish to inform those in authority of this breach of
rule, partly because so much defiance of the law of the place gave a
little zest to a monotonous life, and partly because she was a young
woman, and therefore not displeased with affection, even from a youth
in whom she had no more than a friendly interest.
Scheible's parents had been Dunkards, persecuted in Europe, who had
sought refuge from their troubles by the bad expedient of taking ship
for Philadelphia, with an understanding that they were, according to
custom, to be sold for a term of years to pay the fare. Among a
multitude who died on the passage from the overcrowding and bad food
were Daniel's father and mother, and the little lad was sold for the
rest of his minority to pay his own fare as well as that of the dead
members of his family. As a promising boy, he had been bought by the
Ephrata brotherhood and bred into the fraternity. With the audacity of
youth he had conceived a great passion for Tabea, and now that his
apprenticeship was about to expire he amused her with surreptitious
notes. To-day, for the first time, Tabea began to think of the
possibility of marrying Scheible, chiefly, perhaps, from a vague desire
to escape from the convent, which could not but be irksome to one of
her spirit. Scheible was ambitious, and it was his plan, as she knew,
to go to Philadelphia to make his fortune; and she and he together,
what might they not do? Then she laughed at herself for such a day
dream, and went out to do her share of household duties, singing
mellifluously, as she trod barefoot through the passages, a mystic song
of hope and renunciation:
"Welt, packe dich;
Ich sehne mich
Nur nach dem Himmel.
Denn droben ist Lachen und Lieben und Leben;
Hier unten ist Alles dem Eiteln ergeben."
Which rendered may read:
"World, get you gone;
I strive alone
To attain heaven.
There above is laughter, life, and love;
Here below one must all vanity forego."
But though to-day she sang of the laughter that is above, she was less
unworldly on the morrow. Brother Friedsam, as she had foreseen, began
to break down the rebellion about the singing school. He was too good a
strategist to attack the strong point of the insurrection first. He
began with good-natured Thecla, who could laugh away yesterday's
vexations, and so one by one he conquered the opposition in detail. He
shrank from assailing the Hofcavalier until he should have won the
others, knowing well the obstinacy of her resolution. And when all the
rest had yielded he still said nothing to Tabea, either because he
deemed it of no use, or because he thought neglect might do her
rebellious spirit good. But if this last were his plan, he had
miscalculated the vigor of her determination.
"Do you know," said the good-hearted, gossipy little Sister Persida,
coming into Tabea's cell two or three days later, "that the sisters
have all yielded to Brother Friedsam? He coaxed and managed them so,
you know. Has he talked to you?"
"No."
"You'll have to give up when he does. Nobody can resist Brother
Friedsam."
"I can."
"You always scare me so, Sister Tabea; I wouldn't dare hold up my head
as you do."
But when Persida had gone out the high head of the Hofcavalier went
down a little. She felt that the man whom she in some sort worshiped
had put upon her a public slight. He did not account it worth his while
to invite her to return. She had missed her chance to refuse. Just what
connection Brother Friedsam's slight had with Daniel Scheible's love
letters I leave the reader to determine. But in her anger she fished
these notes out of a basket used to hold her changes of white raiment,
and read them all over slowly, line by line, and for the first time
with a lively interest in their contents. They were very ingenious; and
they very cleverly pictured to her the joys of a home of her own with a
devoted husband. She found evidences of very amiable traits in the
writer. But why should I trace in detail the curious but familiar
process by which a girl endows a man with all the qualities she wishes
him to possess?
The very next day Scheible, who had been melancholy ever since he began
to send to Tabea letters that brought no answer, was observed to be in
a mood so gleeful that his companions in the paper mill doubted his
sanity. The fountain of this joy was a note from Tabea stowed away in
the pocket of his gown. She had not signed it with her convent title,
but with the initials M. T., for her proper name, Margaretha Thome.
There were many fluctuations in Tabea's mind and many persuasive notes
from Scheible before the nun at length promised to forsake the convent,
now grown bitter to her, for the joys of a home. Even then Daniel could
not help feeling insecure in regard to a piece of good fortune so
dazzling, and he sent note after note to urge her to have the day for
the wedding fixed.
Meantime the young man created but little sensation by leaving the
mill, as his term of apprenticeship had expired, and he had never
professed much attachment to the brotherhood.
Sister Tabea had persistently omitted the rehearsals, and so the grand
chorals were now given on the Sabbaths without her voice, and Jael felt
no little exultation at this state of things. At length, after much
wavering, Tabea made a final resolution to leave the convent, and to
accept the love of the adventurous youth who had shown so persistent an
affection for her.
As soon as the day of the wedding was arranged by means of the
surreptitious notes which she continued to exchange with Scheible, she
prepared to leave Sharon and Ephrata. But nothing could be farther from
her plans than the project proposed by her lover that she should elope
with him at night. Tabea meant to march out with all her colors flying.
First of all she went to see the sinister prophetess, Sister Jael.
"I've finished that turtledove, Sister Jael, and now I am going to
leave the sisterhood and marry Daniel Scheible."
Nothing is so surprising to a prophet as the fulfillment of his most
confident prediction. Jael looked all aghast, and her face splintered
into the most contradictory lines in the effort to give expression to
the most conflicting emotions.
"I'm astonished at you," she said reprovingly, when she got breath.
"Why, I thought you expected it," replied Tabea.
"Will you break your vow?"
"Yes. Why shouldn't a woman break a vow made by a girl? And so,
good-by, Sister Jael. Can't you wish me much joy?"
But Jael turned sharply away in a horror that could find no utterance.
Thecla laughed, as was her wont, and wished Tabea happiness, but
intimated that Daniel was a bold man to undertake to subdue the
Hofcavalier. Sister Persida's woman's heart was set all a-flutter, and
she quite forgot that she was trying to be a nun, and that she belonged
to the solitary and forsaken turtledove in the wilderness. She
whispered in Tabea's ear: "You'll look so nice when you're married,
dear, and Daniel will be so pleased, and the young men will steal your
slipper off your foot at the dinner table, and how I wish I could be
there to see you married! But oh, Tabea! I don't see how you dare to
face them all! I'd just run away with all my might if I were in your
place."
And so each one took the startling intelligence according to her
character, and soon all work was suspended, and every inmate of Sharon
was gathered in unwonted excitement in the halls and the common room.
When Tabea passed out of the low-barred door of Sharon she met the
radiant face of Scheible, who had tied his two saddle horses a little
way off.
"Come quickly, Tabea," he said with impatience.
"No, Daniel; it won't do to be rude. I must tell Brother Friedsam
good-by."
"No, don't," said Daniel, turning pale with terror. "If you go in to
see the director you will never come with me."
"Why won't I?" laughed the defiant girl.
"He's a wizard, and has charms that he gets out of his great books.
Don't go in there; you'll never get away."
Daniel held to the Pennsylvania Dutch superstitions, but Tabea only
laughed, and said, "I am not afraid of wizards." She looked the
Hofcavalier more than ever as she left the trembling fellow and went up
to the door of Brother Friedsam's lodge.
"She isn't afraid of the _devil_," muttered Scheible.
Tabea knocked at the door.
"Come in and welcome, whoever thou art," said the director within.
But when she had lifted the latch and pushed back the door, squeaking
on its wooden hinges, Tabea found that Friedsam was engaged in some
business with the prior of the convent, the learned Dr. Peter Miller,
known at Ephrata as Brother Jabez. Friedsam did not at first look up.
The delay embarrassed her; she had time to see, with painful clearness,
all the little articles in the slenderly furnished room. She noticed
that the billet of wood which lay for a pillow, according to the
Ephrata custom, on a bare bench used for a bed, was worn upon one side
with long use; she saw how the bell rope by means of which Friedsam
called the brethren and sisters to prayers at any hour in the night,
hung dangling near the bench, so that the bell might be pulled on a
sudden inspiration even while the director was rising from his wooden
couch; she noted the big books; and then a great reverence for his
piety and learning fell upon her, and a homesick regret; and Scheible
and the wedding frolic did not seem so attractive after all.
Nevertheless she held up her head like a defiant Hofcavalier.
After a time Brother Jabez, with a kind greeting, passed her, and the
director, looking up, said very gently:
"I wish you a very good day, Sister Tabea."
"I am no longer Sister Tabea, but Margaretha Thome. I have said adieu
to all in Sharon, and now I come to say good-by to Brother Friedsam. I
am going to lay aside these garments and marry Daniel Scheible."
She held out her hand, but Friedsam was too much stunned to see it.
"You have broken your vow! You have denied the Lord!"
There was no severity in his despondent rebuke; it had the vibration of
an involuntary cry of surprise and pain.
Tabea was not prepared for this. Severity she could have defied; but
this cry of a prophet awakened her own conscience, and she trembled as
if she had been in the light of a clear-seeing divine judgment.
"You can speak so, Brother Friedsam, for you have no human weaknesses.
I am not suited to a convent; I never can be happy here. I am not
submissive. I want to be necessary to somebody. Nobody cares for me
here. You do not mind whether I sing in the chorals or not, and you
will be better pleased to have me away, _and I am going_." Then,
finding that the director remained silent, she said, with emotion:
"Brother Friedsam, I have a great reverence for you, but I wish you
knew something of the infirmities of a heart that wants to love and to
be loved by somebody, and then maybe you would not think so very hardly
of Tabea after she has gone."
There was a tone of beseeching in these last words which Tabea had not
been wont to use.
The director looked more numb now than ever. Tabea's words had given
him a rude blow, and he could not at once recover. His lips moved
without speaking, and his face assumed a look betokening inward
suffering.
"Great God of wisdom, must I then tell her?" said Friedsam when he got
breath. He stood up and gazed out of the square window in indecision.
"Tabea," he said presently, turning full upon her and looking into her
now pale face upturned to the light, "I thought my secret would die in
my breast, but you wring it from me. You say that I have no
infirmities--no desire for companionship like other men or women. It is
the voice of Sophia, the wisdom of the Almighty, that bids me humble
myself before you this day."
Here he paused in visible but suppressed emotion. "These things," he
said, pointing to his wooden couch, "these hardships of the body, these
self-denials of my vocation, give me no trouble. I have one great
soul-affliction, and that is what you reproach me for lacking, namely,
the longing to love and to be loved. And that trial you laid upon me
the first time I saw your face and heard your words in your mother's
house on the Wissahickon. O Tabea, you are not like the rest! you are
not like the rest! Even when you go wrong, it is not like the rest. It
is the vision of the life I might have led with such a woman as you
that troubles my dreams in the night-time, when, across the impassable
gulf of my irrevocable vow, I have stretched out my hands in entreaty
to you."
This declaration changed instantly the color of Tabea's thoughts of
life. Daniel Scheible and his little love scrawls seemed to her lofty
spirit as nothing now that she saw herself in the light thrown upon her
by the love of the great master whose spirit had evoked Ephrata, and
whose genius uttered itself in angelic harmonies. She loathed the
little life that now opened before her. There seemed nothing in heaven
or earth so desirable as to possess the esteem of Friedsam. But she
stood silent and condemned.
"I have had one comfort," proceeded Brother Friedsam after a while.
"When I have perceived your strength of character, when I have heard
your exquisite voice uttering the melodies with which I am inspired, I
have thought my work was sweeter because Tabea shared it, and I have
hoped that you would yet more and more share it as years and discipline
should ripen your spirit."
The director felt faint; he sat down and looked dejectedly into the
corner of the room farthest away from where Tabea stood. He roused
himself in a few moments, and turned about again, to find Tabea
kneeling on the flagstones before him.
"I have denied the Lord!" she moaned, for her judgment had now come
completely round to Friedsam's standpoint. His condemnation seemed
bitterer than death. "Brother Friedsam, I have denied the Lord!"
Friedsam regarded the kneeling figure for a moment, and then he reached
out his hands, solemnly placing them on her head with a motherly
tenderness, while a tremor went through his frame.
"Thou, dear child, shalt do thy first work over again," he said. "Thou
shalt take a new vow, and when thou art converted then shalt thou, like
Peter, strengthen the others." And, withdrawing his hands, he said: "I
will pray for you, Tabea, every night of my life when I hear the cock
crow."
Tabea rose up slowly and went out at the door, walking no longer like a
Hofcavalier, but like one in a trance. Dimly she saw the sisters
standing without the door of Sharon; there was Thecla, with half-amused
face, and there was Persida, curious as ever; there were Sister
Petronella and Sister Blandina and others, and behind all the straight,
tall form of austere Jael. Without turning to the right or to the left,
Tabea directed her steps to the group at the door of Sharon.
"No! no! come, dear Tabea!" It was the voice of Daniel Scheible, whose
existence she had almost forgotten.
"Poor Daniel!" she said, pausing and looking at him with pity.
"Don't say '_Poor_ Daniel,' but _come_."
"Poor boy!" said Tabea.
"_You are bewitched!_" he cried, seizing her and drawing her away. "I
knew Friedsam would put a charm on you."
She absently allowed him to lead her a few steps; then, with another
look full of tender pity and regret at his agitated face, she
extricated herself from his embrace and walked rapidly to the door.
Quickening her steps to escape his pursuing grasp, she pushed through
the group of sisters and fled along the hallway and up the stairs,
closing the door of her cell and fastening down the latch.
Scheible, sure that she was under some evil spell, rushed after her,
shook himself loose from the grip of Sister Jael, who sought to stop
him, and reached the door of Tabea's cell. But all his knocking brought
not one word of answer, and after a while Brother Jabez came in and led
the poor fellow out, to the great grief of Sister Persida, who in her
heart thought it a pity to spoil a wedding.
The sisters who came to call Tabea to supper that evening also failed
to elicit any response. Late in the night, when she had become calm,
Tabea heard the crowing of a cock, and her heart was deeply touched at
the thought that Friedsam, the revered Friedsam, now more than ever the
beloved of her soul, was at that moment going to prayer for the
disciple who had broken her vow. She rose from her bench and fell on
her knees; and if she mistook the mingled feelings of penitence and
human passion for pure devotion, she made the commonest mistake of
enthusiastic spirits.
But she was not left long to doubt that Friedsam had remembered her; by
the time that the cock had crowed the second time the sound of the
monastery bell, the rope of which hung just by Friedsam's bedside,
broke abruptly into the deathlike stillness, calling the monks and nuns
of Ephrata to a solemn night service. Tabea felt sure that Friedsam had
called the meeting at this moment by way of assuring her of his
remembrance.
Daniel Scheible, who had wandered back to the neighborhood in the
aimlessness of disappointment, heard the monastery bell waking all the
reverberations of the forest, and saw light after light twinkle from
the little square windows of Bethany and Sharon; then he saw the monks
and nuns come out of Bethany and Sharon, each carrying a small paper
lantern as they hastened to Zion. The bell ceased, and Zion, which
before had been wrapped in night, shone with light from every window,
and there rose upon the silence the voices of the choruses chanting an
antiphonal song; and disconsolate Scheible cursed Friedsam and Ephrata,
and went off into outer darkness.
When the first strophe had been sung below, and the sweet-voiced
sisters caught up the antistrophe, Brother Friedsam, sitting in the
midst, listened with painful attention, vainly trying to detect the
sound of Tabea's voice. But when the second strophe had been sung, and
the sisters began their second response, a thrill of excitement went
through all as the long-silent voice of Sister Tabea rose above the
rest with even more than its old fervor and expression.
And the next Saturday--for the seventh day was the Ephrata
Sabbath--Tabea took a new, solemn, and irrevocable vow; and from that
time until the day of her death she was called Sister Anastasia--the
name signifying that she had been re-established. What source of
consolation Anastasia had the rest never divined. How should they guess
that alongside her religious fervor a human love grew ethereally like
an air plant?
NOTE.--Much of this little story is fact. I have supplied details,
dialogue, and passion. For the facts which constitute the
groundwork I am chiefly indebted to Dr. Oswald W. Seidensticker's
very valuable monograph entitled "Ephrata, eine amerikanische
Klostergeschichte." The reader will find a briefer account of the
monastery from the same learned and able writer in _The Century_
magazine for December, 1881.
THE REDEMPTIONER.
A STORY IN THREE SCENES.
PROLOGUE.
The stories we write are most of them love stories; but in the lives of
men there are also many stories that are not love stories: some, truly,
that are hate stories. The main incident of the one I am about to tell
I found floating down from the eighteenth century on the stream of
Maryland tradition. It serves to present some of our forefathers, not
as they seem in patriotic orations and reverent family traditions, but
as they appear to a student of the writings and prints of their own
age.
SCENE I.
The time was a warm autumn day in the year 1751. The place was a
plantation on the Maryland shore of the Potomac. A planter of about
thirty years of age, clad in buckskin shortclothes, sat smoking his
pipe, after his noonday meal, in the wide entry that ran through his
double log house from the south side to the north, the house being of
the sort called alliteratively "two pens and a passage." The planter's
wife sat over against him, on the other side of the passage, carding
home-grown cotton wool with hand cards. He had placed his shuck-bottom
chair so as to see down the long reach to the eastward, where the
widening Potomac spread itself between low-lying banks, with never a
brown hill to break the low horizon line. Every now and again he took
his cob pipe from his mouth, and scanned the distant water wistfully.
"I know what you're looking for, Mr. Browne," said his wife, as she
reversed her hand cards and rubbed the carded cotton between the smooth
backs of the two implements to make it into a roll for spinning.
"You're looking to see the Nancy Jane come sailing into the river one
of these days."
"That's just what I'm looking after," he answered.
"Why should you care?" she said. "You don't expect her to fetch you a
new bonnet and a hoop skirt seven feet wide." She laughed merrily at
her own speech, which, after all, was but a trifling exaggeration of
the width of a hoop skirt in that time.
Sanford Browne did not laugh, but took his pipe from his mouth, and
stood up a moment, straining his sight once more against the distant
horizon, where the green-blue water of the wide estuary melted into the
blue-green of the sky with hardly a line of demarcation. Then he sat
down and took a dry tobacco leaf lying on a stool beside him and
crushed it to powder by first chafing it between his open hands and
then grinding it in the palm of his left hand, rubbing it with the
thumb of his right in a mortar-and-pestle fashion.
"I've a good deal more reason to look for the Nancy Jane than you have,
Judy. I wrote my factor, you know, to find some trace of my father and
mother, or of my sister Susan, if it took the half of my tobacco crop.
I hope he'll find them this time." Saying this, he filled his cob pipe
with the powdered tobacco, and then rose and walked into the large
western room of the house, which served for kitchen and dining-room. It
was also the weaving-room, and the great heavy-beamed loom stood in the
corner. At the farther end was the vast, smoke-blackened stone
fireplace, with two large rude andirons and a swinging crane. A skillet
and a gridiron stood against the jamb on one side, a hoe for baking hoe
cakes and a little wrought-iron trivet were in order on the other. The
breakfast fire had burned out; only the great backlog, hoary with gray
ashes, lay slumbering at the back of the fireplace. The planter poked
the drift of ashes between the andirons with a green oak stick until he
saw a live coal shining red in the gray about it. This he rolled out
upon the hearth, and then took it between thumb and finger and
deposited it within the bowl of his pipe by a deft motion, which gave
it no time to burn him.
Having got his pipe a-going, he strolled back into the wide passage and
scanned the horizon once more. Judith Browne did not like to see her
husband in this mood. She knew well how vain every exercise of her
wifely arts of diversion would prove when he once fell into this train
of black thoughts; but she could not refrain from essaying the hopeless
task by holding up her apron of homespun cloth full of cotton rolls,
pretty in their whiteness and roundness and softness, meantime
coquettishly turning her still girlish head on one side, and saying:
"Now, Mr. Browne, why don't you praise my cotton? Did you ever see
better carding than that?"
The young planter took a roll of the cotton in his hands, holding it
gingerly, and essaying absentmindedly to yield to his wife's mood. Just
at that moment Sanford Browne the younger, a boy about eight years of
age, came round the corner of the house and stood in front of his
father, with his feet wide apart, feeling among the miscellanies in the
bottom of his pocket for a periwinkle shell.
"How would you like to have him spirited away by a crimp, Judy?"
demanded the husband, replacing the cotton and pointing to the lad.
"I should just die, dear," said Judy Browne in a low voice.
"That's what happened to my mother, I suppose," said Browne. "I hope
she died; it would be too bad to think that she had to live all these
twenty-two years imagining all sorts of things about her lost little
boy. I remember her, Judy, the day I saw her last. I went out of a side
street into Fleet Street, and then I grew curious and went on out
through Temple Bar into the road they call the Strand. I did not know
how far I had gone from the city until I heard the great bell of St.
Martin's in the Fields chiming at five o'clock. I turned toward the
city again, but stopped along the way to look at the noblemen's houses.
Somehow, at last I got into Lincoln's Inn Fields and could not tell
which way to go. Just then a sea captain came up to me, and, pretending
to know me, told me he would fetch me to my father. I went with him,
and he got me into a boat and so down to his ship below the bridge. The
ship was already taking aboard a lot of kids and freewillers out of the
cook houses, where some of them had been shut up for weeks. I cried and
begged for my father, but the captain only kicked and cuffed me. It was
a long and wretched voyage, as I have told you often. I was brought
here and sold to work with negroes and convicts. I don't so much mind
the beatings I got, or the hard living, but to think of all my mother
has suffered, and that I shall never see her or my father again! If I
ever lay eyes on that Captain Lewis, he will go to the devil before he
has time to say any prayers."
"I'd like to shoot him," said the boy, in sympathy with his father's
mood. "I'll kill him when I get big enough, pappy." And he went off to
seek the bow and arrow given him by an Indian who lingered in the
region once occupied by his tribe.
"Never mind," said the wife, stroking her husband's arm, "you are
getting rich now, and your hard times are over."
"Yes, but everybody will always remember that I was a bought
redemptioner, and your folks will hardly ever forgive you for marrying
me."
"Oh, yes, they will some day. If you keep on as lucky as you are, I
shall live in a bigger house than any of them, and drive to church
behind six horses. That'll make a great difference. If the Nancy Jane
fetches me a London bonnet and a wide, wide petticoat such as the
Princess Augusta wears, so that I can brush against the pews on both
sides with my silk frock when I go down the aisle, my folks will
already begin to think that Sanford Browne is somebody," and she made
little motions of vanity as she fancied her entrance into Duck Creek
parish church on the Sunday after the arrival of the tobacco ship,
arrayed in imitation of the Princess of Wales, the news of whose recent
widowhood had not yet reached Judy Browne.
"There comes the Nancy Jane now," called the boy from the dooryard,
pointing to a sloop on the other side of the wide estuary, bowling in
with topsail and jib furled, and her rusty mainsail bellying under
pressure of a wind dead aft.
"That's not the Nancy Jane," said the father; "only a sloop. But I
don't know whose. Oh, yes; it must be that Yankee peddler back again.
There's his codfish ensign at his masthead. He's making for the other
side now, but he'll come over here to sell his rum and kickshaws before
he goes out."
"Hello, Mr. Browne!" It was a voice coming from the river in front of
the house. The owner of the voice was concealed by some bushes at the
margin of the water.
"Hello!" answered Browne to the invisible caller. "Is that you, Mr.
Wickford?"
"I've got some letters for you, Mr. Browne," came back from the water.
"The Nancy Jane ran in on the east wind this morning before daylight,
and anchored in the little oyster bay below Manley's. She brings news
that the Prince of Wales died last Spring. I happened to come past
there this morning, and I brought some things Captain Jackson had for
you. I reckon there's something pretty here for Mrs. Browne, too. Send
one of your boys down."
"I'll come myself," said Browne, going down the bank, followed eagerly
by the little Sanford, who had also his interest in the arrival of the
parcels from London. There came after them presently a lithe young
negro boy of fifteen, not yet two years out of Africa. He was clad in
nothing but his native blackness, which was deemed sufficient for a
half-grown negro in that day. Mrs. Browne had sent black Jocko after
the others with orders to bring up her things "without waiting for the
gentlemen to get done talking."
But the gentlemen did not talk very long. The neighbor was desirous of
getting on to have the first telling of the news about the death of
Prince Frederick, and Mr. Browne was impatient to open the packet from
his factor.
"Good-by, Mr. Wickford. Come down and see us some time, and bring all
your family," he called as the neighbor's canoe shot away in answer to
the lusty paddle strokes of his men.
"I reckon we'll come, sir," answered the receding neighbor. "My wife'll
want to see what Mrs. Browne got from London. Tell Mrs. Browne we're
afraid she'll be too fine to know her neighbors when she puts on her
new bonnet."
The last words of this neighborly chaff were shouted over a wide sheet
of water, and Sanford Browne, halfway up the bank, made no reply, but
went back to his chair in the passage and opened his packet. Kid that
he had been, Browne had contrived to learn to read and write from a
convict bought for a schoolmaster by the planter to whom Browne had
been sold. This lettered rogue took pity on the kidnaped child, and
gave him lessons on nights and Sunday, because he was well born and not
willing to sink to the condition of the servants about him.
Browne found his factor's letter occupied at the outset with an account
of the tobacco market and congratulations on the high price obtained
for the last year's crop. Then the factor proceeded to give a bill of
sales, and then a list of things purchased for Browne and his family,
with the price set down for the hoop skirt and the new bonnet and the
silk frock, as well as for a cocked hat and dress periwig necessary to
Sanford Browne's increasing dignity, and some things for the little
Sanford. Browne studied each successive page of the letter in hope of
finding a word on the subject in which he was most deeply interested,
stopping reluctantly now and then to look up when his wife would break
in with:
"Mr. Browne! Mr. Browne! won't you just look this way a minute? Isn't
this fine?"
"Yes, Judy; it surely is," he would say absently, keeping his thumb on
the place in the factor's letter, and resuming his reading as soon as
possible, without having any definite idea of what Mrs. Judith had been
showing him.
On the very last page he found these words:
"I have made most diligent searche for your family as you required
butt I have not discovered muche that will be to your satisfaction.
I send you, Sir, a coppie of certain things sette down in the
Parish Register of St. Clement Danes, wch I thoughte most like to
be of interest to you. Bye these you will discover that Walter
Sanford Browne was born the 27 daye of the moneth of Febuarie
1721--wch will no doubt give you exacte knowledge of your owne age.
The father and mother of Walter Sanford Browne bore the names
Walter and Susan respectively wch is a fact that will not be
indifferent to you I suppose. I finde that Walter Browne aforesd,
who is sette down a scrivener, was married at this same church of
St. Clements on the 22 daye of Marche in the year 1720 to Anne
Sanford of the same parish. Theire daughter Susan was borne in
Aprill 1725, as you will see by this transcripte made by the clarke
of the parish. The clarke cannot discover any further mencion of
this familie nor of the name of Sanford in this register downe to
this present time, from wch he deems it is to be inferred that sd.
Walter Browne long since removed out of that parish, in particular
as the present wardens and sidesmen of the parish afresd do not
know any man of that name now residente there. It is a probabilitie
that yr. father has removed to one of the plantations. I have made
public advertisement in the Gazettes for your father or any neare
kinsman but w'out any successe whatsoever."
There followed a memorandum of pounds, shillings, and pence paid to the
"clarke" of the parish of St. Clement Danes, of money paid for
advertisements in the gazettes, and of expenses incurred in further
searches made by a solicitor. That was all--the end of hope to Sanford
Browne. He went into the sitting-room and put the factor's letter into
a little clothespress that stood beside the chimney, and then strode
out into the air, giving no heed to Judith, who had gone up the stairs
at the side of the passage, and come down again wearing a hideous
pannier petticoat under her new frock. She guessed her husband's
disappointment, and, though she longed for a word of admiration, or at
least of wondering attention, for her square-rigged petticoat, she
thought best to be content with the excited prattle of her maid, a
young bond-servant bought off the Nancy Jane the year before.
"Here, Jocko," said Browne, standing in front of his house and calling
to the Adamite negro lad, "you go and call Bob, and get the sloop
ready. I'm going down to the ship."
"Get sloop, massa?" said the negro, speaking English with difficulty.
"Massa say sloop?"
Sanford Browne looked at the black figure inquiringly. It was not often
that poor, cringing Jocko ventured to question him. "Yes, sloop," he
said with an emphasis born of his irritating disappointment.
"Much great big wind blow--blow right up river. Tack, tack, all day,"
muttered the black boy timidly.
"You're right," said the planter, who had not observed that the strong
wind would be dead ahead all the way to the anchorage. "Tell Bob to put
the canoe in the water." And then to himself: "The negro is no fool."
"Bob, Bob, massa him want can-noo go see great big ship mighty quick."
"Come, Sanford; you may go too," said the planter to his son. "We'll
carry the fowling piece: there'll be ducks on the water."