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SUSANNA AND SUE
Kate Douglas Wiggin
Books by Kate Douglas Wiggin
_Susanna and Sue._ Illustrated by ALICE BARBER STEPHENS.
_The Old Peabody Pew._ Illustrated by ALICE BARBER STEPHENS.
_Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm._
_New Chronicles of Rebecca._ Illustrated by F. C. YOHN.
_Rose o' the River._ Illustrated by GEORGE WRIGHT.
_The Affair at the Inn._ Illustrated by MARTIN JUSTICE.
_The Birds' Christmas Carol._ Illustrated.
_The Story of Patsy._ Illustrated.
_The Diary of a Goose Girl._ Illustrated by C. A. SHEPPERSON.
_A Cathedral Courtship and Penelope's English Experiences._ Illustrated
by CLIFFORD CARLETON.
_A Cathedral Courtship. Holiday Edition._ Enlarged, and with
illustrations by CHARLES E. BROCK.
_Penelope's Progress._ Experiences in Scotland.
_Penelope's Irish Experiences._
_Penelope's Experiences. Holiday Edition._ In three volumes. Illustrated
by CHARLES E. BROCK. I. England; II. Scotland; III. Ireland.
_Marm Lisa._
_The Village Watch-Tower._ Short Stories.
_Polly Oliver's Problem._ A Story for Girls. Illustrated.
_Timothy's Quest._ A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, who cares to read
it.
_Timothy's Quest. Holiday Edition._ Illustrated by OLIVER HERFORD.
_A Summer in a Canyon._ A California Story. Illustrated by FRANK T.
MERRILL.
_Nine Love Songs and a Carol._ Poems set to music by MRS. WIGGIN.
Houghton Mifflin Company, Publishers
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
SUSANNA AND SUE
[Illustration]
SUSANNA AND SUE
By KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
ALICE BARBER STEPHENS
AND N. C. WYETH
[Illustration]
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
THE RIVERSIDE PRESS
CAMBRIDGE: MDCCCCIX
COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY KATE DOUGLAS RIGGS
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
_Published October 1909_
CONTENTS
I. Mother Ann's Children 1
II. A Son of Adam 23
III. Divers Doctrines 43
IV. Louisa's Mind 67
V. The Little Quail Bird 87
VI. Susanna speaks in Meeting 107
VII. "The Lower Plane" 121
VIII. Concerning Backsliders 141
IX. Love Manifold 163
X. Brother and Sister 177
XI. "The Open Door" 195
XII. The Hills of Home 211
ILLUSTRATIONS
Looking up into her mother's face expectantly
(page 102) _Frontispiece_
Do you remember the little Nelson girl and her
mother? 12
Susanna sat in her corner beside the aged Tabitha 112
Hetty looking at the lad with all her heart in her
eyes 130
I
MOTHER ANN'S CHILDREN
[Illustration]
It was the end of May, when "spring goeth all in white." The apple trees
were scattering their delicate petals on the ground, dropping them over
the stone walls to the roadsides, where in the moist places of the
shadows they fell on beds of snowy innocence. Here and there a single
tree was tinged with pink, but so faintly, it was as if the white were
blushing. Now and then a tiny white butterfly danced in the sun and
pearly clouds strayed across the sky in fleecy flocks.
Everywhere the grass was of ethereal greenness, a greenness drenched
with the pale yellow of spring sunshine. Looking from earth to sky and
from blossom to blossom, the little world of the apple orchards,
shedding its falling petals like fair-weather snow, seemed made of
alabaster and porcelain, ivory and mother-of-pearl, all shimmering on a
background of tender green.
After you pass Albion village, with its streets shaded by elms and
maples and its outskirts embowered in blossoming orchards, you wind
along a hilly country road that runs between grassy fields. Here the
whiteweed is already budding, and there are pleasant pastures dotted
with rocks and fringed with spruce and fir; stretches of woodland, too,
where the road is lined with giant pines and you lift your face
gratefully to catch the cool balsam breath of the forest. Coming from
out this splendid shade, this silence too deep to be disturbed by light
breezes or vagrant winds, you find yourself on the brow of a descending
hill. The first thing that strikes the eye is a lake that might be a
great blue sapphire dropped into the verdant hollow where it lies. When
the eye reluctantly leaves the lake on the left, it turns to rest upon
the little Shaker Settlement on the right--a dozen or so large
comfortable white barns, sheds, and houses, standing in the wide orderly
spaces of their own spreading acres of farm and timber land. There again
the spring goeth all in white, for there is no spot to fleck the
dazzling quality of Shaker paint, and their apple, plum, and pear trees
are so well cared for that the snowy blossoms are fairly hiding the
branches.
The place is very still, although there are signs of labor in all
directions. From a window of the girls' building a quaint little
gray-clad figure is beating a braided rug; a boy in homespun, with his
hair slightly long in the back and cut in a straight line across the
forehead, is carrying milk-cans from the dairy to one of the Sisters'
Houses. Men in broad-brimmed hats, with clean-shaven, ascetic faces, are
ploughing or harrowing here and there in the fields, while a group of
Sisters is busy setting out plants and vines in some beds near a cluster
of noble trees. That cluster of trees, did the eye of the stranger
realize it, was the very starting-point of this Shaker Community, for in
the year 1785, the valiant Father James Whittaker, one of Mother Ann
Lee's earliest English converts, stopped near the village of Albion on
his first visit to Maine. As he and his Elders alighted from their
horses, they stuck into the ground the willow withes they had used as
whips, and now, a hundred years later, the trees that had grown from
these slender branches were nearly three feet in diameter.
From whatever angle you look upon the Settlement, the first and
strongest impression is of quiet order, harmony, and a kind of austere
plenty. Nowhere is the purity of the spring so apparent. Nothing is out
of place; nowhere is any confusion, or appearance of loose ends, or
neglected tasks. As you come nearer, you feel the more surely that here
there has never been undue haste nor waste; no shirking, no putting off
till the morrow what should have been done to-day. Whenever a shingle or
a clapboard was needed it was put on, where paint was required it was
used,--that is evident; and a look at the great barns stored with hay
shows how the fields have been conscientiously educated into giving a
full crop.
To such a spot as this might any tired or sinful heart come for rest;
hoping somehow, in the midst of such frugality and thrift, such
self-denying labor, such temperate use of God's good gifts, such shining
cleanliness of outward things, to regain and wear "the white flower of a
blameless life." The very air of the place breathed peace, so thought
Susanna Hathaway; and little Sue, who skipped by her side, thought
nothing at all save that she was with mother in the country; that it had
been rather a sad journey, with mother so quiet and pale, and that she
would be very glad to see supper, should it rise like a fairy banquet
in the midst of these strange surroundings.
It was only a mile and a half from the railway station to the Shaker
Settlement, and Susanna knew the road well, for she had driven over it
more than once as child and girl. A boy would bring the little trunk
that contained their simple necessities later on in the evening, so she
and Sue would knock at the door of the house where visitors were
admitted, and be undisturbed by any gossiping company while they were
pleading their case.
"Are we most there, Mardie?" asked Sue for the twentieth time. "Look at
me! I'm being a butterfly, or perhaps a white pigeon. No, I'd rather be
a butterfly, and then I can skim along faster and move my wings!"
The airy little figure, all lightness and brightness, danced along the
road, the white cotton dress rising and falling, the white-stockinged
legs much in evidence, the arms outstretched as if in flight, straw hat
falling off yellow hair, and a little wisp of swansdown scarf floating
out behind like the drapery of a baby Mercury.
"We are almost there," her mother answered. "You can see the buildings
now, if you will stop being a butterfly. Don't you like them?"
"Yes, I 'specially like them all so white. Is it a town, Mardie?"
"It is a village, but not quite like other villages. I have told you
often about the Shaker Settlement, where your grandmother brought me
once when I was just your age. There was a thunder-storm; they kept us
all night, and were so kind that I never forgot them. Then your
grandmother and I stopped off once when we were going to Boston. I was
ten then, and I remember more about it. The same sweet Eldress was there
both times."
"What is an El-der-ess, Mardie?"
"A kind of everybody's mother, she seemed to be," Susanna responded,
with a catch in her breath.
"I'd 'specially like her; will she be there now, Mardie?"
"I'm hoping so, but it is eighteen years ago. I was ten and she was
about forty, I should think."
"Then o' course she'll be dead," said Sue, cheerfully, "or either she'll
have no teeth or hair."
"People don't always die before they are sixty, Sue."
"Do they die when they want to, or when they must?"
"Always when they must; never, never when they want to," answered Sue's
mother.
"But o' course they wouldn't ever _want_ to if they had any little girls
to be togedder with, like you and me, Mardie?" And Sue looked up with
eyes that were always like two interrogation points, eager by turns and
by turns wistful, but never satisfied.
"No," Susanna replied brokenly, "of course they wouldn't, unless
sometimes they were wicked for a minute or two and forgot."
"Do the Shakers shake all the time, Mardie, or just once in a while? And
shall I see them do it?"
"Sue, dear, I can't explain everything in the world to you while you are
so little; you really must wait until you're more grown up. The Shakers
don't shake and the Quakers don't quake, and when you're older, I'll try
to make you understand why they were called so and why they kept the
name."
"Maybe the El-der-ess can make me understand right off now; I'd
'specially like it." And Sue ran breathlessly along to the gate where
the North Family House stood in its stately, white-and-green austerity.
Susanna followed, and as she caught up with the impetuous Sue, the front
door of the house opened and a figure appeared on the threshold. Mother
and child quickened their pace and went up the steps, Susanna with a
hopeless burden of fear and embarrassment clogging her tongue and
dragging at her feet; Sue so expectant of new disclosures and fresh
experiences that her face beamed like a full moon.
Eldress Abby (for it was Eldress Abby) had indeed survived the heavy
weight of her fifty-five or sixty summers, and looked as if she might
reach a yet greater age. She wore the simple Shaker afternoon dress of
drab alpaca; an irreproachable muslin surplice encircled her straight,
spare shoulders, while her hair was almost entirely concealed by the
stiffly wired, transparent white-net cap that served as a frame to the
tranquil face. The face itself was a network of delicate, fine wrinkles;
but every wrinkle must have been as lovely in God's sight as it was in
poor unhappy Susanna Hathaway's. Some of them were graven by self-denial
and hard work; others perhaps meant the giving up of home, of parents
and brothers or sisters; perhaps some worldly love, the love that Father
Adam bequeathed to the human family, had been slain in Abby's youth,
and the scars still remained to show the body's suffering and the
spirit's triumph. At all events, whatever foes had menaced her purity or
her tranquillity had been conquered, and she exhaled serenity as the
rose sheds fragrance.
"Do you remember the little Nelson girl and her mother that stayed here
all night, years ago?" asked Susanna, putting out her hand timidly.
[Illustration: DO YOU REMEMBER THE LITTLE NELSON GIRL AND HER MOTHER?]
"Why, seems to me I do," assented Eldress Abby, genially. "So many comes
and goes it's hard to remember all. Didn't you come once in a
thunder-storm?"
"Yes, one of your barns was struck by lightning and we sat up all
night."
"Yee, yee.[1] I remember well! Your mother was a beautiful spirit. I
couldn't forget her."
"And we came once again, mother and I, and spent the afternoon with you,
and went strawberrying in the pasture."
"Yee, yee, so we did; I hope your mother continues in health."
"She died the very next year," Susanna answered in a trembling voice,
for the time of explanation was near at hand and her heart failed her.
"Won't you come into the sitting-room and rest awhile? You must be tired
walking from the deepot."
"No, thank you, not just yet. I'll step into the front entry a
minute.--Sue, run and sit in that rocking-chair on the porch and watch
the cows going into the big barn.--Do you remember, Eldress Abby, the
second time I came, how you sat me down in the kitchen with a bowl of
wild strawberries to hull for supper? They were very small and ripe; I
did my best, for I never meant to be careless, but the bowl slipped and
fell,--my legs were too short to reach the floor, and I couldn't make a
lap,--so in trying to pick up the berries I spilled juice on my dress,
and on the white apron you had tied on for me. Then my fingers were
stained and wet and the hulls kept falling in with the soft berries, and
when you came in and saw me you held up your hands and said, 'Dear,
dear! you _have_ made a mess of your work!' Oh, Eldress Abby, they've
come back to me all day, those words. I've tried hard to be good, but
somehow I've made just such a mess of my life as I made of hulling the
berries. The bowl is broken, I haven't much fruit to show, and I am all
stained and draggled. I shouldn't have come to Albion on the
five-o'clock train--that was an accident; I meant to come at noon, when
you could turn me away if you wanted to."
"Nay, that is not the Shaker habit," remonstrated Abby. "You and the
child can sleep in one of the spare chambers at the Office Building and
be welcome."
"But I want much more than that," said Susanna, tearfully. "I want to
come and live here, where there is no marrying nor giving in marriage.
I am so tired with my disappointments and discouragements and failures
that it is no use to try any longer. I am Mrs. Hathaway, and Sue is my
child, but I have left my husband for good and all, and I only want to
spend the rest of my days here in peace and bring up Sue to a more
tranquil life than I have ever had. I have a little money, so that I
shall not be a burden to you, and I will work from morning to night at
any task you set me."
"I will talk to the Family," said Eldress Abby, gravely; "but there are
a good many things to settle before we can say yee to all you ask."
"Let me confess everything freely and fully," pleaded Susanna, "and if
you think I'm to blame, I will go away at once."
"Nay, this is no time for that. It is our duty to receive all and try
all; then if you should be gathered in, you would unburden your heart to
God through the Sister appointed to receive your confession."
"Will Sue have to sleep in the children's building away from me?"
"Nay, not now; you are company, not a Shaker, and anyway you could keep
the child with you till she is a little older; that's not forbidden at
first, though there comes a time when the ties of the flesh must be
broken! All you've got to do now's to be 'pure and peaceable, gentle,
easy to be entreated, and without hypocrisy.' That's about all there is
to the Shaker creed, and that's enough to keep us all busy."
Sue ran in from the porch excitedly and caught her mother's hand.
"The cows have all gone into the barn," she chattered; "and the Shaker
gentlemen are milking them, and not one of them is shaking the least
bit, for I 'specially noticed; and I looked in through the porch window,
and there is nice supper on a table--bread and butter and milk and
dried-apple sauce and gingerbread and cottage cheese. Is it for us,
Mardie?"
Susanna's lip was trembling and her face was pale. She lifted her
swimming eyes to the Sister's and asked, "Is it for us, Eldress Abby?"
"Yee, it's for you," she answered; "there's always a Shaker supper on
the table for all who want to leave the husks and share the feast. Come
right in and help yourselves. I will sit down with you."
* * * * *
Supper was over, and Susanna and Sue were lying in a little upper
chamber under the stars. It was the very one that Susanna had slept in
as a child, or that she had been put to bed in, for there was little
sleep that night for any one. She had leaned on the window-sill with her
mother and watched the pillar of flame and smoke ascend from the burning
barn; and once in the early morning she had stolen out of bed, and,
kneeling by the open window, had watched the two silent Shaker brothers
who were guarding the smoldering ruins, fearful lest the wind should
rise and bear any spark to the roofs of the precious buildings they had
labored so hard to save.
The chamber was spotless and devoid of ornament. The paint was robin's
egg blue and of a satin gloss. The shining floor was of the same color,
and neat braided rugs covered exposed places near the bureau, washstand,
and bed. Various useful articles of Shaker manufacture interested Sue
greatly: the exquisite straw-work that covered the whisk-broom; the
mending-basket, pincushion, needle-book, spool and watch cases,
hair-receivers, pin-trays, might all have been put together by fairy
fingers.
Sue's prayers had been fervent, but a trifle disjointed, covering all
subjects from Jack and Fardie, to Grandma in heaven and Aunt Louisa at
the farm, with special references to El-der-ess Abby and the Shaker
cows, and petitions that the next day be fair so that she could see them
milked. Excitement at her strange, unaccustomed surroundings had put the
child's mind in a very whirl, and she had astonished her mother with a
very new and disturbing version of the Lord's prayer, ending: "God give
us our debts and help us to forget our debtors and theirs shall be the
glory, Amen." Now she lay quietly on the wall side of the clean, narrow
bed, while her mother listened to hear the regular breathing that would
mean that she was off for the land of dreams. The child's sleep would
leave the mother free to slip out of bed and look at the stars; free to
pray and long and wonder and suffer and repent,--not wholly, but in
part, for she was really at peace in all but the innermost citadel of
her conscience. She had left her husband, and for the moment, at all
events, she was fiercely glad; but she had left her boy, and Jack was
only ten. Jack was not the helpless, clinging sort; he was a little
piece of his father, and his favorite. Aunt Louisa would surely take
him, and Jack would scarcely feel the difference, for he had never shown
any special affection for anybody. Still he was her child, nobody could
possibly get around that fact, and it was a stumbling-block in the way
of forgetfulness or ease of mind. Oh, but for that, what unspeakable
content she could feel in this quiet haven, this self-respecting
solitude! To have her thoughts, her emotions, her words, her _self_, to
herself once more, as she had had them before she was married at
seventeen. To go to sleep in peace, without listening for a step she had
once heard with gladness, but that now sometimes stumbled unsteadily on
the stair; or to dream as happy women dreamed, without being roused by
the voice of the present John, a voice so different from that of the
past John that it made the heart ache to listen to it.
Sue's voice broke the stillness: "How long are we going to stay here,
Mardie?"
"I don't know, Sue; I think perhaps as long as they'll let us."
"Will Fardie come and see us?"
"I don't expect him."
"Who'll take care of Jack, Mardie?"
"Your Aunt Louisa."
"She'll scold him awfully, but he never cries; he just says, 'Pooh! what
do I care?' Oh, I forgot to pray for that very nicest Shaker gentleman
that said he'd let me help him feed the calves! Hadn't I better get out
of bed and do it? I'd 'specially like to."
"Very well, Sue; and then go to sleep."
Safely in bed again, there was a long pause, and then the eager little
voice began, "Who'll take care of Fardie now?"
"He's a big man; he doesn't need anybody."
"What if he's sick?"
"We must go back to him, I suppose."
"To-morrow's Sunday; what if he needs us to-morrow, Mardie?"
"I don't know, I don't know! Oh, Sue, Sue, don't ask your wretched
mother any more questions, for she cannot bear them to-night. Cuddle up
close to her; love her and forgive her and help her to know what's
right."
[1] "Yea" is always thus pronounced by the Shakers.
II
A SON OF ADAM
[Illustration]
When Susanna Nelson at seventeen married John Hathaway, she had the
usual cogent reasons for so doing, with some rather more unusual ones
added thereto. She was alone in the world, and her life with an uncle,
her mother's only relative, was an unhappy one. No assistance in the
household tasks that she had ever been able to render made her a welcome
member of the family or kept her from feeling a burden, and she belonged
no more to the little circle at seventeen, than she did when she became
a part of it at twelve. The hope of being independent and earning her
own living had sustained her through the last year; but it was a very
timid, self-distrustful, love-starved little heart that John Hathaway
stormed and carried by assault. Her girl's life in a country school and
her uncle's very rigid and orthodox home had been devoid of emotion or
experience; still, her mother had early sown seeds in her mind and
spirit that even in the most arid soil were certain to flower into
beauty when the time for flowering came; and intellectually Susanna was
the clever daughter of clever parents. She was very immature, because,
after early childhood, her environment had not been favorable to her
development. At seventeen she began to dream of a future as bright as
the past had been dreary and uneventful. Visions of happiness, of
goodness, and of service haunted her, and sometimes, gleaming through
the mists of dawning womanhood, the figure, all luminous, of The Man!
When John Hathaway appeared on the horizon, she promptly clothed him in
all the beautiful garments of her dreams; they were a grotesque misfit,
but when we intimate that women have confused the dream and the reality
before, and may even do so again, we make the only possible excuse for
poor little Susanna Nelson.
John Hathaway was the very image of the outer world that lay beyond
Susanna's village. He was a fairly prosperous, genial, handsome young
merchant, who looked upon life as a place furnished by Providence in
which to have "a good time." His parents had frequently told him that it
was expedient for him to "settle down," and he supposed that he might
finally do so, if he should ever find a girl who would tempt him to
relinquish his liberty. (The line that divides liberty and license was a
little vague to John Hathaway!) It is curious that he should not have
chosen for his life-partner some thoughtless, rosy, romping young
person, whose highest conception of connubial happiness would have been
to drive twenty miles to the seashore on a Sunday, and having partaken
of all the season's delicacies, solid and liquid, to come home hilarious
by moonlight. That, however, is not the way the little love-imps do
their work in the world; or is it possible that they are not imps at all
who provoke and stimulate and arrange these strange marriages--not imps,
but honest, chastening little character-builders? In any event, the
moment that John Hathaway first beheld Susanna Nelson was the moment of
his surrender; yet the wooing was as incomprehensible as that of a
fragile, dainty little hummingbird by a pompous, greedy, big-breasted
robin.
Susanna was like a New England anemone. Her face was oval in shape and
as smooth and pale as a pearl. Her hair was dark, not very heavy, and as
soft as a child's. Her lips were delicate and sensitive, her eyes a cool
gray,--clear, steady, and shaded by darker lashes. When John Hathaway
met her shy, maidenly glance and heard her pretty, dovelike voice, it is
strange he did not see that there was a bit too much saint in her to
make her a willing comrade of his gay, roistering life. But as a matter
of fact, John Hathaway saw nothing at all; nothing but that Susanna
Nelson was a lovely girl and he wanted her for his own. The type was one
he had never met before, one that allured him by its mysteries and
piqued him by its shy aloofness.
John had a "way with him,"--a way that speedily won Susanna; and after
all there was a best to him as well as a worst. He had a twinkling eye,
an infectious laugh, a sweet disposition, and while he was
over-susceptible to the charm of a pretty face, he had a chivalrous
admiration for all women, coupled, it must be confessed, with a decided
lack of discrimination in values. His boyish light-heartedness had a
charm for everybody, including Susanna; a charm that lasted until she
discovered that his heart was light not only when it ought to be light,
but when it ought to be heavy.
He was very much in love with her, but there was nothing particularly
exclusive, unique, individual, or interesting about his passion at that
time. It was of the every-day sort which carries a well-meaning man to
the altar, and sometimes, in cases of exceptional fervor and duration,
even a little farther. Stock sizes of this article are common and
inexpensive, and John Hathaway's love when he married Susanna was,
judged by the highest standards, about as trivial an affair as Cupid
ever put upon the market or a man ever offered to a woman. Susanna on
the same day offered John, or the wooden idol she was worshiping as
John, her whole self--mind, body, heart, and spirit. So the couple were
united, and smilingly signed the marriage-register, a rite by which
their love for each other was supposed to be made eternal.
"Will you love me?" said he.
"Will you love me?" said she.
Then they answered together:--
"Through foul and fair weather,
From sunrise to moonrise,
From moonrise to sunrise,
By heath and by harbour,
In orchard or arbour,
In the time of the rose,
In the time of the snows,
Through smoke and through smother
We'll love one another!"
Cinderella, when the lover-prince discovers her and fits the crystal
slipper to her foot, makes short work of flinging away her rags; and in
some such pretty, airy, unthinking way did Susanna fling aside the
dullness, inhospitality, and ugliness of her uncle's home and depart in
a cloud of glory on her wedding journey. She had been lonely, now she
would have companionship. She had been of no consequence, now she would
be queen of her own small domain. She had been last with everybody, now
she would be first with one, at least. She had worked hard and received
neither compensation nor gratitude; henceforward her service would be
gladly rendered at an altar where votive offerings would not be taken as
a matter of course. She was only a slip of a girl now; marriage and
housewifely cares would make her a woman. Some time perhaps the last
great experience of life would come to her, and then what a crown of
joys would be hers,--love, husband, home, children! What a vision it
was, and how soon the chief glory of it faded!
Never were two beings more hopelessly unlike than John Hathaway single
and John Hathaway married, but the bliss lasted a few years,
nevertheless: partly because Susanna's charm was deep and penetrating,
the sort to hold a false man for a time and a true man forever; partly
because she tried, as a girl or woman has seldom tried before, to do her
duty and to keep her own ideal unshattered.
John had always been convivial, but Susanna at seventeen had been at
once too innocent and too ignorant to judge a man's tendencies truly, or
to rate his character at its real worth. As time went on, his earlier
leanings grew more definite; he spent on pleasure far more than he could
afford, and his conduct became a byword in the neighborhood. His boy he
loved. He felt on a level with Jack, could understand him, play with
him, punish him, and make friends with him; but little Sue was
different. She always seemed to him the concentrated essence of her
mother's soul, and when unhappy days came, he never looked in her
radiant, searching eyes without a consciousness of inferiority. The
little creature had loved her jolly, handsome, careless father at first,
even though she feared him; but of late she had grown shy, silent, and
timid, for his indifference chilled her and she flung herself upon her
mother's love with an almost unchildlike intensity. This unhappy
relation between the child and the father gave Susanna's heart new
pangs. She still loved her husband,--not dearly, but a good deal; and
over and above that remnant of the old love which still endured she
gave him unstinted care and hopeful maternal tenderness.
The crash came in course of time. John transcended the bounds of his
wife's patience more and more. She made her last protests; then she took
one passionate day to make up her mind,--a day when John and the boy
were away together; a day of complete revolt against everything she was
facing in the present, and, so far as she could see, everything that she
had to face in the future. Prayer for light left her in darkness, and
she had no human creature to advise her. Conscience was overthrown; she
could see no duty save to her own outraged personality. Often and often
during the year just past she had thought of the peace, the grateful
solitude and shelter of that Shaker Settlement hidden among New England
orchards; that quiet haven where there was neither marrying nor giving
in marriage. Now her bruised heart longed for such a life of nun-like
simplicity and consecration, where men and women met only as brothers
and sisters, where they worked side by side with no thought of personal
passion or personal gain, but only for the common good of the community.
Albion village was less than three hours distant by train. She hastily
gathered her plainest clothes and Sue's, packed them in a small trunk,
took her mother's watch, her own little store of money and the
twenty-dollar gold piece John's senior partner had given Sue on her last
birthday, wrote a letter of good-by to John, and went out of her cottage
gate in a storm of feeling so tumultuous that there was no room for
reflection. Besides, she had reflected, and reflected, for months and
months, so she would have said, and the time had come for action.
Susanna was not unlettered, but she certainly had never read Meredith or
she would have learned that "love is an affair of two, and only for two
that can be as quick, as constant in intercommunication as are sun and
earth, through the cloud, or face to face. They take their breath of
life from each other in signs of affection, proofs of faithfulness,
incentives to admiration. But a solitary soul dragging a log must make
the log a God to rejoice in the burden." The demigod that poor, blind
Susanna married had vanished, and she could drag the log no longer, but
she made one mistake in judging her husband, in that she regarded him,
at thirty-two, as a finished product, a man who was finally this and
that, and behaved thus and so, and would never be any different.
The "age of discretion" is a movable feast of extraordinary uncertainty,
and John Hathaway was a little behindhand in overtaking it. As a matter
of fact, he had never for an instant looked life squarely in the face.
He took a casual glance at it now and then, after he was married, but it
presented no very distinguishable features, nothing to make him stop and
think, nothing to arouse in him any special sense of responsibility.
Boys have a way of "growing up," however, sooner or later, at least most
of them have, and that possibility was not sufficiently in the
foreground of Susanna's mind when she finished what she considered an
exhaustive study of her husband's character.
"I am leaving you, John [she wrote], to see if I can keep the little
love I have left for you as the father of my children. I seem to have
lost all the rest of it living with you. I am not perfectly sure that I
am right in going, for everybody seems to think that women, mothers
especially, should bear anything rather than desert the home. I could
not take Jack away, for you love him and he will be a comfort to you. A
comfort to you, yes, but what will you be to him now that he is growing
older? That is the thought that troubles me, yet I dare not take him
with me when he is half yours. You will not miss me, nor will the loss
of Sue make any difference. Oh, John! how can you help loving that
blessed little creature, so much better and so much more gifted than
either of us that we can only wonder how we came to be her father and
mother? Your sin against her is greater than that against me, for at
least you are not responsible for bringing _me_ into the world. I know
Louisa will take care of Jack, and she lives so near that you can see
him as often as you wish. I shall let her know my address, which I have
asked her to keep to herself. She will write to me if you or Jack should
be seriously ill, but not for any other reason.
"As for you, there is nothing more that I can say except to confess
freely that I was not the right wife for you and that mine was not the
only mistake. I have tried my very best to meet you in everything that
was not absolutely wrong, and I have used all the arguments I could
think of, but it only made matters worse. I thought I knew you, John, in
the old days. How comes it that we have traveled so far apart, we who
began together? It seems to me that some time you must come to your
senses and take up your life seriously, for this is not life, the sorry
thing you have lived lately, but I cannot wait any longer! I am tired,
tired, tired of waiting and hoping, too tired to do anything but drag
myself away from the sight of your folly. You have wasted our children's
substance, indulged your appetites until you have lost the respect of
your best friends, and you have made me--who was your choice, your wife,
the head of your house, the woman who brought your children into the
world--you have made me an object of pity; a poor, neglected thing who
could not meet her neighbors' eyes without blushing."
When Jack and his father returned from their outing at eight o'clock in
the evening, having had supper at a wayside hotel, the boy went to bed
philosophically, lighting his lamp for himself, the conclusion being
that the two other members of the household were a little late, but
would be in presently.
The next morning was bright and fair. Jack waked at cockcrow, and after
calling to his mother and Sue, jumped out of bed, ran into their rooms
to find them empty, then bounced down the stairs two at a time, going
through the sitting-room on his way to find Ellen in the kitchen. His
father was sitting at the table with the still-lighted student lamp on
it; the table where lessons had been learned, books read, stories told,
mending done, checkers and dominoes played; the big, round walnut table
that was the focus of the family life--but mother's table, not father's.
John Hathaway had never left his chair nor taken off his hat. His cane
leaned against his knee, his gloves were in his left hand, while the
right held Susanna's letter.
He was asleep, although his lips twitched and he stirred uneasily. His
face was haggard, and behind his closed lids, somewhere in the centre of
thought and memory, a train of fiery words burned in an ever-widening
circle, round and round and round, ploughing, searing their way through
some obscure part of him that had heretofore been without feeling, but
was now all quick and alive with sensation.
"_You have made me--who was your choice, your wife, the head of your
house, the woman who brought your children into the world--you have made
me an object of pity; a poor, neglected thing who could not meet her
neighbors' eyes without blushing._"
Any one who wished to pierce John Hathaway's armor at that period of his
life would have had to use a very sharp and pointed arrow, for he was
well wadded with the belief that a man has a right to do what he likes.
Susanna's shaft was tipped with truth and dipped in the blood of her
outraged heart. The stored-up force of silent years went into the
speeding of it. She had never shot an arrow before, and her skill was
instinctive rather than scientific, but the powers were on her side and
she aimed better than she knew--those who took note of John Hathaway's
behavior that summer would have testified willingly to that. It was the
summer in which his boyish irresponsibility slipped away from him once
and for all; a summer in which the face of life ceased to be an
indistinguishable mass of meaningless events and disclosed an order, a
reason, a purpose hitherto unseen and undefined. The boy "grew up,"
rather tardily it must be confessed. His soul had not added a cubit to
its stature in sunshine, gayety, and prosperity; it took the shock of
grief, hurt pride, solitude, and remorse to make a man of John
Hathaway.
III
DIVERS DOCTRINES
[Illustration]
It was a radiant July morning in Albion village, and when Sue first
beheld it from the bedroom window at the Shaker Settlement, she had
wished ardently that it might never, never grow dark, and that Jack and
Fardie might be having the very same sunshine in Farnham. It was not
noon yet, but experience had in some way tempered the completeness of
her joy, for the marks of tears were on her pretty little face. She had
neither been scolded nor punished, but she had been dragged away from a
delicious play without any adequate reason. She had disappeared after
breakfast, while Susanna was helping Sister Tabitha with the beds and
the dishes, but as she was the most docile of children, her mother never
thought of anxiety. At nine o'clock Eldress Abby took Susanna to the
laundry house, and there under a spreading maple were Sue and the two
youngest little Shakeresses, children of seven and eight respectively.
Sue was directing the plays: chattering, planning, ordering, and
suggesting expedients to her slower-minded and less-experienced
companions. They had dragged a large box from one of the sheds and set
it up under the tree. The interior had been quickly converted into a
commodious residence, one not in the least of a Shaker type. Small
bluing-boxes served for bedstead and dining-table, bits of broken china
for the dishes, while tiny flat stones were the seats, and four
clothes-pins, tastefully clad in handkerchiefs, surrounded the table.
"Do they kneel in prayer before they eat, as all Believers do?" asked
Shaker Mary.
"I don't believe Adam and Eve was Believers, 'cause who would have
taught them to be?" replied Sue; "still we might let them pray, anyway,
though clothes-pins don't kneel nicely."
"I've got another one all dressed," said little Shaker Jane.
"We can't have any more; Adam and Eve didn't have only two children in
my Sunday-school lesson,--Cain and Abel," objected Sue.
"Can't this one be a company?" pleaded Mary, anxious not to waste the
clothes-pin.
"But where could comp'ny come from?" queried Sue. "There wasn't any more
people anywheres but just Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel. Put the
clothes-pin in your apron-pocket, Jane, and bimeby we'll let Eve have a
little new baby, and I'll get Mardie to name it right out of the Bible.
Now let's begin. Adam is awfully tired this morning; he says, 'Eve, I've
been workin' all night and I can't eat my breakfuss.' Now, Mary, you be
Cain, he's a little boy, and you must say, 'Fardie, play a little with
me, please!' and Fardie will say, 'Child'en shouldn't talk at the--'"
What subjects of conversation would have been aired at the Adamic family
board before breakfast was finished will never be known, for Eldress
Abby, with a firm but not unkind grasp, took Shaker Jane and Mary by
their little hands and said, "Morning's not the time for play; run over
to Sister Martha and help her shell the peas; then there'll be your
seams to oversew."
Sue watched the disappearing children and saw the fabric of her dream
fade into thin air; but she was a person of considerable individuality
for her years. Her lip quivered, tears rushed to her eyes and flowed
silently down her cheeks, but without a glance at Eldress Abby or a word
of comment she walked slowly away from the laundry, her chin high.
"Sue meant all right, she was only playing the plays of the world," said
Eldress Abby, "but you can well understand, Susanna, that we can't let
our Shaker children play that way and get wrong ideas into their heads
at the beginning. We don't condemn an honest, orderly marriage as a
worldly institution, but we claim it has no place in Christ's kingdom;
therefore we leave it to the world, where it belongs. The world's people
live on the lower plane of Adam; the Shakers try to live on the Christ
plane, in virgin purity, long-suffering, meekness, and patience."
"I see, I know," Susanna answered slowly, with a little glance at
injured Sue walking toward the house, "but we needn't leave the children
unhappy this morning, for I can think of a play that will comfort them
and please you.--Come back, Sue! Wait a minute, Mary and Jane, before
you go to Sister Martha! We will play the story that Sister Tabitha told
us last week. Do you remember about Mother Ann Lee in the English
prison? The soap-box will be her cell, for it was so small she could
not lie down in it. Take some of the shingles, Jane, and close up the
open side of the box. Do you see the large brown spot in one of them,
Mary? Push that very hard with a clothes-pin and there'll be a hole
through the shingle;--that's right! Now, Sister Tabitha said that Mother
Ann was kept for days without food, for people thought she was a wicked,
dangerous woman, and they would have been willing to let her die of
starvation. But there was a great key-hole in the door, and James
Whittaker, a boy of nineteen, who loved Mother Ann and believed in her,
put the stem of a clay pipe in the hole and poured a mixture of wine and
milk through it. He managed to do this day after day, so that when the
jailer opened the cell door, expecting to find Mother Ann dying for lack
of food, she walked out looking almost as strong and well as when she
entered. You can play it all out, and afterwards you can make the ship
that brought Mother Ann and the other Shakers from Liverpool to New
York. The clothes-pins can be--who will they be, Jane?"
"William Lee, Nancy Lee, James Whittaker, and I forget the others,"
recited Jane, like an obedient parrot.
"And it will be splendid to have James Whittaker, for he really came to
Albion," said Mary.
"Perhaps he stood on this very spot more than once," mused Abby. "It was
Mother Ann's vision that brought them to this land,--a vision of a large
tree with outstretching branches, every leaf of which shone with the
brightness of a burning torch! Oh! if the vision would only come true!
If Believers would only come to us as many as the leaves on the tree,"
she sighed, as she and Susanna moved away from the group of chattering
children, all as eager to play the history of Shakerism as they had been
to dramatize the family life of Adam and Eve.
"There must be so many men and women without ties, living useless
lives, with no aim or object in them," Susanna said, "I wonder that more
of them do not find their way here. The peace and goodness and
helpfulness of the life sink straight into my heart. The Brothers and
Sisters are so friendly and cheery with one another; there is neither
gossip nor hard words; there is pleasant work, and your thoughts seem to
be all so concentrated upon right living that it is like heaven below,
only I feel that the cross is there, bravely as you all bear it."
"There are roses on my cross most beautiful to see,
As I turn from all the dross from which it sets me free,"
quoted Eldress Abby, devoutly.
"It is easy enough for me," continued Susanna, "for it was no cross for
me to give up my husband at the time; but oh, if a woman had a
considerate, loving man to live with, one who would strengthen her and
help her to be good, one who would protect and cherish her, one who
would be an example to his children and bring them up in the fear of
the Lord--that would be heaven below, too; and how could she bear to
give it all up when it seems so good, so true, so right? Mightn't two
people walk together to God if both chose the same path?"
"It's my belief that one can find the road better alone than when
somebody else is going alongside to distract them. Not that the Lord is
going to turn anybody away, not even when they bring Him a lot of
burned-out trash for a gift," said Eldress Abby, bluntly. "But don't you
believe He sees the difference between a person that comes to Him when
there is nowhere else to turn--a person that's tried all and found it
wanting--and one that gives up freely pleasure, and gain, and husband,
and home, to follow the Christ life?"
"Yes, He must, He must," Susanna answered faintly. "But the children,
Eldress Abby! If you hadn't any, you could perhaps keep yourself from
wanting them; but if you had, how could you give them up? Jesus was the
great Saviour of mankind, but next to Him it seems as if the children
had been the little saviours, from the time the first one was born until
this very day!"
"Yee, I've no doubt they keep the worst of the world's people, those
that are living in carnal marriage without a thought of godliness,--I've
no doubt children keep that sort from going to the lowest perdition,"
allowed Eldress Abby; "and those we bring up in the Community make the
best converts; but to a Shaker, the greater the sacrifice, the greater
the glory. I wish you was gathered in, Susanna, for your hands and feet
are quick to serve, your face is turned toward the truth, and your heart
is all ready to receive the revelation."
"I wish I needn't turn my back on one set of duties to take up another,"
murmured Susanna, timidly.
"Yee; no doubt you do. Your business is to find out which are the higher
duties, and then do _those_. Just make up your mind whether you'd
rather replenish earth, as you've been doing, or replenish heaven, as
we're trying to do.--But I must go to my work; ten o'clock in the
morning's a poor time to be discussing doctrine! You're for weeding,
Susanna, I suppose?"
Brother Ansel was seated at a grindstone under the apple trees, teaching
(intermittently) a couple of boys to grind a scythe, when Susanna came
to her work in the herb-garden, Sue walking discreetly at her heels.
Ansel was a slow-moving, humorously-inclined, easy-going Brother, who
was drifting into the kingdom of heaven without any special effort on
his part.
"I'd 'bout as lives be a Shaker as anything else," had been his rather
dubious statement of faith when he requested admittance into the band of
Believers. "No more crosses, accordin' to my notion, an' consid'able
more chance o' crowns!"
His experience of life "on the Adamic plane," the holy estate of
matrimony, being the chief sin of this way of thought, had disposed him
to regard woman as an apparently necessary, but not especially
desirable, being. The theory of holding property in common had no
terrors for him. He was generous, unambitious, frugal-minded, somewhat
lacking in energy, and just as actively interested in his brother's
welfare as in his own, which is perhaps not saying much. Shakerism was
to him not a craving of the spirit, not a longing of the soul, but a
simple, prudent theory of existence, lessening the various risks that
man is exposed to in his journey through this vale of tears.
"Women-folks makes splendid Shakers," he was wont to say. "They're all
right as Sisters, 'cause their belief makes 'em safe. It kind o' shears
'em o' their strength; tames their sperits; takes the sting out of 'em
an' keeps 'em from bein' sassy an' domineerin'. Jest as long as they
think marriage is _right_, they'll marry ye spite of anything ye can do
or say--four of 'em married my father one after another, though he fit
'em off as hard as he knew how. But if ye can once get the faith o'
Mother Ann into 'em, they're as good afterwards as they was wicked
afore. There's no stoppin' women-folks once ye get 'em started; they
don't keer whether it's heaven or the other place, so long as they get
where they want to go!"