Neither Nathan nor Hetty could have told. For years Nathan had sat at
his end of the young men's bench at the family or the public meeting,
with Hetty exactly opposite him at the end of the girls' row, and for
years they had looked across the dividing space at each other with
unstirred pulses. The rows of Sisters sat in serene dignity, one bench
behind another, and each Sister was like unto every other in Nathan's
vague, dreamy, boyishly indifferent eyes. Some of them were seventy and
some seventeen, but each modest figure sat in its place with quiet
folded hands. The stiff caps hid the hair, whether it was silver or
gold; the white surplices covered the shoulders and concealed beautiful
curves as well as angular outlines; the throats were scarcely visible,
whether they were yellow and wrinkled or young and white. The Sisters
were simply sisters to fair-haired Nathan, and the Brothers were but
brothers to little black-eyed Hetty.
Once--was it on a Sunday morning?--Nathan glanced across the separating
space that is the very essence and sign of Shakerism. The dance had just
ceased, and there was a long, solemn stillness when God indeed seemed to
be in one of His holy temples and the earth was keeping silence before
Him. Suddenly Hetty grew to be something more than one of the figures in
a long row: she chained Nathan's eye and held it.
"Through her garments the grace of her glowed." He saw that, in spite of
the way her hair had been cut and stretched back from the forehead, a
short dusky tendril, softened and coaxed by the summer heat, had made
its way mutinously beyond the confines of her cap. Her eyes were cast
down, but the lashes that swept her round young cheek were quite
different from any other lashes in the Sisters' row. Her breath came and
went softly after the exertion of the rhythmic movements, stirring the
white muslin folds that wrapped her from throat to waist. He looked and
looked, until his body seemed to be all eyes, absolutely unaware of any
change in himself; quite oblivious of the fact that he was regarding the
girl in any new and dangerous way.
The silence continued, long and profound, until suddenly Hetty raised
her beautiful lashes and met Nathan's gaze, the gaze of a boy just
turned to man: ardent, warm, compelling. There was a startled moment of
recognition, a tremulous approach, almost an embrace, of regard; each
sent an electric current across the protective separating space, the two
pairs of eyes met and said, "I love you," in such clear tones that
Nathan and Hetty marveled that the Elder did not hear them. Somebody
says that love, like a scarlet spider, can spin a thread between two
hearts almost in an instant, so fine as to be almost invisible, yet it
will hold with the tenacity of an iron chain. The thread had been spun;
it was so delicate that neither Nathan nor Hetty had seen the scarlet
spider spinning it, but the strength of both would not avail to snap the
bond that held them together.
The moments passed. Hetty's kerchief rose and fell, rose and fell
tumultuously, while her face was suffused with color. Nathan's knees
quivered under him, and when the Elder rose, and they began the sacred
march, the lad could hardly stand for trembling. He dreaded the moment
when the lines of Believers would meet, and he and Hetty would walk the
length of the long room almost beside each other. Could she hear his
heart beating, Nathan wondered; while Hetty was palpitating with fear
lest Nathan see her blushes and divine their meaning. Oh, the joy of it,
the terror of it, the strange exhilaration and the sudden sensation of
sin and remorse!
The meeting over, Nathan flung himself on the haymow in the great barn,
while Hetty sat with her "Synopsis of Shaker Theology" at an open
window of the girls' building, seeing nothing in the lines of print but
visions that should not have been there. It was Nathan who felt most and
suffered most and was most conscious of sin, for Hetty, at first,
scarcely knew whither she was drifting.
She went into the herb-garden with Susanna one morning during the week
that followed the fatal Sunday. Many of the plants to be used for
seasoning--sage, summer savory, sweet marjoram, and the like--were quite
ready for gathering. As the two women were busy at work, Susanna as full
of her thoughts as Hetty of hers, the sound of a step was heard brushing
the grass of the orchard. Hetty gave a nervous start; her cheeks grew so
crimson and her breath so short that Susanna noticed the change.
"It will be Brother Ansel coming along to the grindstone," Hetty
stammered, burying her head in the leaves.
"No," Susanna answered, "it is Nathan. He has a long pole with a saw on
the end. He must be going to take the dead branches off the apple trees;
I heard Ansel tell him yesterday to do it."
"Yee, that will be it," said Hetty, bending over the plants as if she
were afraid to look elsewhere.
Nathan came nearer to the herb-garden. He was a tall, stalwart, handsome
enough fellow, even in his quaint working garb. As the Sisters spun and
wove the cloth as well as cut and made the men's garments, and as the
Brothers themselves made the shoes, there was naturally no great air of
fashion about the Shaker raiment; but Nathan carried it better than
most. His skin was fair and rosy, the down on his upper lip showed
dawning manhood, and when he took off his broad-brimmed straw hat and
stretched to his full height to reach the upper branches of the apple
trees, he made a picture of clean, wholesome, vigorous youth.
Suddenly Susanna raised her head and surprised Hetty looking at the lad
with all her heart in her eyes. At the same moment Nathan turned, and
before he could conceal the telltale ardor of his glance, it had sped to
Hetty. With the instinct of self-preservation he stooped instantly as if
to steady the saw on the pole, but it was too late to mend matters: his
tale was told so far as Susanna was concerned; but it was better she
should suspect than one of the Believers or Eldress Abby.
[Illustration: HETTY LOOKING AT THE LAD WITH ALL HER HEART IN HER EYES]
Susanna worked on in silent anxiety. The likelihood of such crises as
this had sometimes crossed her mind, and knowing how frail human nature
is, she often marveled that instances seemed so infrequent. Her instinct
told her that in every Community the risk must exist, even though all
were doubly warned and armed against the temptations that flesh is heir
to; yet no hint of danger had showed itself during the months in which
she had been a member of the Shaker family. She had heard the Elder's
plea to the young converts to take up "a full cross against the
flesh"; she had listened to Eldress Abby when she told them that the
natural life, its thoughts, passions, feelings, and associations, must
be turned against once and forever; but her heart melted in pity for the
two poor young things struggling helplessly against instincts of which
they hardly knew the meaning, so cloistered had been the life they
lived. The kind, conscientious hands that had fed them would now seem
hard and unrelenting; the place that had been home would turn to a
prison; the life that Elder Gray preached, "the life of a purer
godliness than can be attained by marriage," had seemed difficult,
perhaps, but possible; and now how cold and hopeless it would appear to
these two young, undisciplined, flaming hearts!
"Hetty dear, talk to me!" whispered Susanna, softly touching her
shoulder, and wondering if she could somehow find a way to counsel the
girl in her perplexity.
Hetty started rebelliously to her feet as Nathan moved away farther
into the orchard. "If you say a single thing to me, or a word about me
to Eldress Abby, I'll run away this very day. Nobody has any right to
speak to me, and I just want to be let alone! It's all very well for
you," she went on passionately. "What have you had to give up? Nothing
but a husband you didn't love and a home you didn't want to stay in.
Like as not you'll be a Shaker, and they'll take you for a saint; but
anyway you'll have had your life."
"You are right, Hetty," said Susanna, quietly; "but oh! my dear, the
world outside isn't such a Paradise for young girls like you, motherless
and fatherless and penniless. You have a good home here; can't you learn
to like it?"
"Out in the world people can do as they like and nobody thinks of
calling them wicked!" sobbed Hetty, flinging herself down, and putting
her head in Susanna's aproned lap. "Here you've got to live like an
angel, and if you don't, you've got to confess every wrong thought
you've had, when the time comes."
"Whatever you do, Hetty, be open and aboveboard; don't be hasty and
foolish, or you may be sorry forever afterwards."
Hetty's mood changed again suddenly to one of mutiny, and she rose to
her feet.
"You haven't got any right to interfere with me anyway, Susanna; and if
you think it's your duty to tell tales, you'll only make matters worse";
and so saying she took her basket and fled across the fields like a
hunted hare.
That evening, as Hetty left the infirmary, where she had been sent with
a bottle of liniment for the nursing Sisters, she came upon Nathan
standing gloomily under the spruce trees near the back of the building.
It was eight o'clock and quite dark. It had been raining during the late
afternoon and the trees were still dripping drearily. Hetty came upon
Nathan so suddenly, that, although he had been in her thoughts, she gave
a frightened little cry when he drew her peremptorily under the shadow
of the branches. The rules that govern the Shaker Community are very
strict, but in reality the true Believer never thinks of them as rules,
nor is trammeled by them. They are fixed habits of the blood, as common,
as natural, as sitting or standing, eating or drinking. No Brother is
allowed to hold any lengthy interview with a Sister, nor to work, walk,
or drive with her alone; but these protective customs, which all are
bound in honor to keep, are too much a matter of every-day life to be
strange or irksome.
"I must speak to you, Hetty," whispered Nathan. "I cannot bear it any
longer alone. What shall we do?"
"Do?" echoed Hetty, trembling.
"Yes, _do_." There was no pretense of asking her if she loved or
suffered, or lived in torture and suspense. They had not uttered a word
to each other, but their eyes had "shed meanings."
"You know we can't go on like this," he continued rapidly. "We can't eat
their food, stay alongside of them, pray their prayers and act a lie all
the time,--we _can't_!"
"Nay, we can't!" said Hetty. "Oh, Nathan, shall we confess all and see
if they will help us to resist temptation? I know that's what Susanna
would want me to do, but oh! I should dread it."
"Nay, it is too late," Nathan answered drearily. "They could not help
us, and we should be held under suspicion forever after."
"I feel so wicked and miserable and unfaithful, I don't know what to
do!" sobbed Hetty.
"Yee, so do I!" the lad answered. "And I feel bitter against my father,
too. He brought me here to get rid of me, because he didn't dare leave
me on somebody's doorstep. He ought to have come back when I was grown a
man and asked me if I felt inclined to be a Shaker, and if I was good
enough to be one!"
"And my stepfather wouldn't have me in the house, so my mother had to
give me away; but they're both dead, and I'm alone in the world, though
I've never felt it, because the Sisters are so kind. Now they will hate
me--though they don't hate anybody."
"You've got me, Hetty! We must go away and be married. We'd better go
to-night to the minister in Albion."
"What if he wouldn't do it?"
"Why shouldn't he? Shakers take no vows, though I feel bound, hand and
foot, out of gratitude. If any other two young folks went to him, he
would marry them; and if he refuses, there are two other ministers in
Albion, besides two more in Buryfield, five miles farther. If they won't
marry us to-night, I'll leave you in some safe home and we'll walk to
Portland to-morrow. I'm young and strong, and I know I can earn our
living somehow."
"But we haven't the price of a lodging or a breakfast between us," Hetty
said tearfully. "Would it be sinful to take some of my basket-work and
send back the money next week?"
"Yee, it would be so," Nathan answered sternly. "The least we can do is
to go away as empty-handed as we came. I can work for our breakfast."
"Oh, I can't bear to disappoint Eldress Abby," cried Hetty, breaking
anew into tears. "She'll say we've run away to live on the lower plane
after agreeing to crucify Nature and follow the angelic life!"
"I know; but there are five hundred people in Albion all living in
marriage, and we shan't be the only sinners!" Nathan argued. "Oh, Sister
Hetty, dear Hetty, keep up your spirits and trust to me!"
Nathan's hand stole out and met Hetty's in its warm clasp, the first
hand touch that the two ignorant young creatures had ever felt. Nathan's
knowledge of life had been a journey to the Canterbury Shakers in New
Hampshire with Brother Issachar; Hetty's was limited to a few drives
into Albion village, and half a dozen chats with the world's people who
came to the Settlement to buy basket-work.
"I am not able to bear the Shaker life!" sighed Nathan. "Elder Gray
allows there be such!"
"Nor I," murmured Hetty. "Eldress Harriet knows I am no saint!"
Hetty's head was now on Nathan's shoulder. The stiff Shaker cap had
resisted bravely, but the girl's head had yielded to the sweet
proximity. Youth called to youth triumphantly; the Spirit was unheard,
and all the theories of celibacy and the angelic life that had been
poured into their ears vanished into thin air. The thick shade of the
spruce tree hid the kiss that would have been so innocent, had they not
given themselves to the Virgin Church; the drip, drip, drip of the
branches on their young heads passed unheeded.
Then, one following the other silently along the highroad, hurrying
along in the shadows of the tall trees, stealing into the edge of the
woods, or hiding behind a thicket of alders at the fancied sound of a
footstep or the distant rumble of a wagon, Nathan and Hetty forsook the
faith of Mother Ann and went out into the world as Adam and Eve left the
garden, with the knowledge of good and evil implanted in their hearts.
The voice of Eldress Abby pursued Hetty in her flight like the voice in
a dream. She could hear its clear impassioned accents, saying, "The
children of this world marry; but the children of the resurrection do
not marry, for they are as the angels." The solemn tones grew fainter
and fainter as Hetty's steps led her farther and farther away from the
quiet Shaker village and its drab-clad Sisters, and at last they almost
died into silence, because Nathan's voice was nearer and Nathan's voice
was dearer.
VIII
CONCERNING BACKSLIDERS
[Illustration]
There was no work in the herb-garden now, but there was never a moment
from dawn till long after dusk when the busy fingers of the Shaker
Sisters were still. When all else failed there was the knitting: socks
for the Brothers and stockings for the Sisters and socks and stockings
of every size for the children. One of the quaint sights of the
Settlement to Susanna was the clump of young Sisters on the porch of the
girls' building, knitting, knitting, in the afternoon sun. Even little
Shaker Jane and Mary, Maria and Lucinda, had their socks in hand, and
plied their short knitting-needles soberly and not unskillfully. The
sight of their industry incited the impetuous Sue to effort, and under
the patient tutelage of Sister Martha she mastered the gentle art.
Susanna never forgot the hour when, coming from her work in the
seed-room, she crossed the grass with a message to Martha, and saw the
group of children and girls on the western porch, a place that caught
every ray of afternoon sun, the last glint of twilight, and the first
hint of sunset glow. Sister Martha had been reading the Sabbath-school
lesson for the next day, and as Susanna neared the building, Martha's
voice broke into a hymn. Falteringly the girls' voices followed the
lead, uncertain at first of words or tune, but gaining courage and
strength as they went on:--
"As the waves of the mighty ocean
Gospel love we will circulate,
And as we give, in due proportion,
We of the heavenly life partake.
Heavenly Life, Glorious Life,
Resurrecting, Soul-Inspiring,
Re-gen-er-a-ting Gospel Life,
It leadeth away from all sin and strife!"
The clear, innocent treble sounded sweetly in the virgin stillness and
solitude of the Settlement, and as Susanna drew closer she stopped under
a tree to catch the picture--Sister Martha, grave, tall, discreet,
singing with all her soul and marking time with her hands, so accustomed
to the upward and downward movement of the daily service. The straight,
plain dresses were as fresh and smooth as perfect washing could make
them, and the round childlike faces looked quaint and sweet with the
cropped hair tucked under the stiff little caps. Sue was seated with
Mary and Jane on the steps, and Susanna saw with astonishment that her
needles were moving to and fro and she was knitting as serenely and
correctly as a mother in Israel; singing, too, in a delicate little
treble that was like a skylark's morning note. Susanna could hear her
distinctly as she delightedly flung out the long words so dear to her
soul and so difficult to dull little Jane and Mary:--
"Res-ur-rect-ing, Soul-In-spir-ing,
Re-gen-er-a-ting Gospel Life,
It lead-eth a-way from all sin and strife."
Jane's cap was slightly unsettled, causing its wearer to stop knitting
now and then and pull it forward or push it back; and in one of these
little feminine difficulties Susanna saw Sue reach forward and deftly
transfer the cap to her own head. Jane was horrified, but rather slow to
wrath and equally slow in ingenuity. Sue looked a delicious Shaker with
her delicate face, her lovely eyes, and her yellow hair grown into soft
rings; and quite intoxicated with her cap, her knitting, and the general
air of holiness so unexpectedly emanating from her, she moved her little
hands up and down, as the tune rose and fell, in a way that would have
filled Eldress Abby with joy. Susanna's heart beat fast, and she
wondered for a moment, as she went back to her room, whether she could
ever give Sue a worldly childhood more free from danger than the life
she was now living. She found letters from Aunt Louisa and Jack on
reaching her room, and they lay in her lap under a pile of towels, to be
read and reread while her busy needle flew over the coarse crash. Sue
stole in quietly, kissed her mother's cheek, and sat down on her stool
by the window, marveling, with every "under" of the needle and "over" of
the yarn, that it was she, Sue Hathaway, who was making a real stocking.
Jack's pen was not that of an especially ready writer, but he had a
practical way of conveying considerable news. His present contributions,
when freed from their phonetic errors and spelled in Christian fashion,
read somewhat as follows:--
Father says I must write to you every week, even if I make him do
without, so I will. I am well, and so is Aunt Louisa, and any boy
that lives with her has to toe the mark, I tell you; but she is
good and has fine things to eat every meal. What did Sue get for
her birthday? I got a book from father and one from Aunt Louisa and
the one from you that you told her to buy. It is queer that people
will give a boy books when he has only one knife, and that a broken
one. There's a book prize to be given at the school, and I am
pretty afraid I will get that, too; it would be just my luck.
Teachers think about nothing but books and what good they do, but I
heard of a boy that had a grand knife with five sharp blades and a
corkscrew, and in a shipwreck he cut all the ropes, so the sail
came down that was carrying them on to the rocks, and then by
boring a hole with his corkscrew all the water leaked out of the
ship that had been threatening to sink the sailors. I could use a
little pocket money, as Aunt Louisa keeps me short.... I have been
spending Sunday with father, and had a pretty good time, not so
very. Father will take me about more when he stops going to the
store, which will be next week for good. The kitchen floor is new
painted, and Ellen says it sticks, and Aunt Louisa is going to make
Ellen clean house in case you come home. Do you like where you are?
Our teacher told the girls' teacher it seemed a long stay for any
one who had a family, and the boys at school call me a half orphan
and say my mother has left me and so my father has to board me in
the country. My money is run out again. I sat down in a puddle this
afternoon, but it dried up pretty quick and didn't hurt my clothes,
so no more from your son
JACK.
This was the sort of message that had been coming to Susanna of late,
bringing up little pictures of home duties and responsibilities, homely
tasks and trials. "John giving up the store for good"; what did that
mean? Had he gone from bad to worse in the solitude that she had hoped
might show him the gravity of his offenses, the error of his ways? In
case she should die, what then would become of the children? Would
Louisa accept the burden of Jack, for whom she had never cared? Would
the Shakers take Sue? She would be safe; perhaps she would always be
happy; but brother and sister would be divided and brought up as
strangers. Would little Sue, grown to big Sue, say some time or other,
"My mother renounced the world for herself, but what right had she to
renounce it for me? Why did she rob me of the dreams of girlhood and the
natural hopes of women, when I was too young to give consent?" These and
other unanswerable questions continually drifted through Susanna's mind,
disturbing its balance and leaving her like a shuttlecock bandied to and
fro between conflicting blows.
"Mardie," came a soft little voice from across the room; "Mardie, what
is a backslider?"
"Where did you hear that long word, Sue?" asked Susanna, rousing herself
from her dream.
"'Tisn't so long as 'regenerating' and more easier."
"Regenerating means 'making over,' you know."
"There'd ought to be children's words and grown-up words,--that's what
_I_ think," said Sue, decisively; "but what does 'backslider' mean?"
"A backslider is one who has been climbing up a hill and suddenly begins
to slip back."
"Doesn't his feet take hold right, or why does he slip?"
"Perhaps he can't manage his feet; perhaps they just won't climb."
"Yes, or p'raps he just doesn't want to climb any more; but it must be
frightensome, sliding backwards."
"I suppose it is."
"Is it wicked?"
"Why, yes, it is, generally; perhaps always."
"Brother Nathan and Sister Hetty were backsliders; Sister Tabitha said
so. She told Jane never to speak their names again any more than if they
was dead."
"Then you had better not speak of them, either."
"There's so many things better not to speak of in the world, sometimes I
think 'twould be nicer to be an angel."
"Nicer, perhaps, but one has to be very good to be an angel."
"Backsliders couldn't be angels, I s'pose?"
"Not while they were backsliders; but perhaps they'd begin to climb
again, and then in time they might grow to be angels."
"I shouldn't think likely," remarked Sue, decisively, clicking her
needles as one who could settle most spiritual problems in a jiffy. "I
think the sliding kind is diff'rent from the climbing kind, and they
don't make easy angels."
A long pause followed this expression of opinion, this simple division
of the human race, at the start, into sheep and goats. Then presently
the untiring voice broke the stillness again.
"Nathan and Hetty slid back when they went away from here. Did we
backslide when we left Fardie and Jack?"
"I'm not sure but that we did," said poor Susanna.
"There's children-Shakers, and brother-and-sister Shakers, but no
father-and-mother Shakers?"
"No; they think they can do just as much good in the world without being
mothers and fathers."
"Do you think so?"
"Ye-es, I believe I do."
"Well, are you a truly Shaker, or can't you be till you wear a cap?"
"I'm not a Shaker yet, Sue."
"You're just only a mother?"
"Yes, that's about all."
"Maybe we'd better go back to where there's not so many Sisters and
more mothers, so you'll have somebody to climb togedder with?"
"I could climb here, Sue, and so could you."
"Yes, but who'll Fardie and Jack climb with? I wish they'd come and see
us. Brother Ansel would make Fardie laugh, and Jack would love
farm-work, and we'd all be so happy. I miss Fardie awfully! He didn't
speak to me much, but I liked to look at his curly hair and think how
lovely it would be if he did take notice of me and play with me."
A sob from Susanna brought Sue, startled, to her side.
"You break my heart, Sue! You break it every day with the things you
say. Don't you love me, Sue?"