half-second before she would have murmured:--
"This rock shall fly
From its firm base as soon as I!"
when all at once, and without warning, a strange something occurred in
the organ she had always regarded--and her opinion had never been
questioned--as a good, tough, love-tight heart. First there was a
flutter and a tremor running all along her spine; then her eyes filled;
then a lump rose in her throat and choked her; then words trembled on
her tongue and refused to be uttered; then something like a bird--could
it have been the highly respectable good-as-new heart?--throbbed under
her black silk Sunday waist; then she grew like wax from the crown of
her head to the soles of her feet; then in a twinkling, and so
unconsciously as to be unashamed of it, she became a sister. You have
seen a gray November morning melt into an Indian summer noon? Louisa
Banks was like that, when, at the sight of a man in sore trouble,
sympathy was born in her to soften the rockiness of her original
make-up.
"There, there, John, don't be so down-hearted," she stammered, drawing
her chair closer and putting her hand on his shoulder. "We'll bring it
round right, you see if we don't. You've done the most yourself already,
for I'm proud of the way you've acted, stiffening right up like an
honest man and showing you've got some good sensible Hathaway stuff in
you, after all, and ain't ashamed to turn your back on your evil ways.
Susanna ain't one to refuse forgiveness."
"She forgave for a long time, but she refused at last. Why should she
change now?" John asked.
"You remember she hasn't heard a single word from you, nor about you, in
that out-of-the-way place where she's been living," said Louisa,
consolingly. "She thinks you're the same as you were, or worse, maybe.
Perhaps she's waiting for you to make some sign through me, for she
don't know that you care anything about her, or are pining to have her
back."
"Such a woman as Susanna must know better than that!" cried John. "She
ought to know that when a man got used to living with anybody like her,
he could never endure any other kind."
"How should she know all that? Jack's been writing to her and telling
her the news for the last few weeks, though I haven't said a word about
you because I didn't know how long your reformation was going to hold
out; but I won't let the grass grow under my feet now, till I tell her
just how things stand!"
"You're a good woman, Louisa; I don't see why I never noticed it
before."
"It's because I've been concealing my goodness too much. Stay here with
me to-night and don't go back to brood in that dismal, forsaken house.
We'll see how Jack is in the morning, and if he's all right, take him
along with you, so's to be all there together if Susanna comes back this
week, as I kind of hope she will. Make Ellen have the house all nice and
cheerful from top to bottom, with a good supper ready to put on the
table the night she comes. You'd better pick your asters and take 'em in
for the parlor, then I'll cut the chrysanthemums for you in the middle
of the week. The day she comes I'll happen in, and stay to dinner if you
find it's going to be mortifying for you; but if everything is as I
expect it will be, and the way Susanna always did have things, I'll
make for home and leave you to yourselves. Susanna ain't one to nag and
hector and triumph over a man when he's repented."
John hugged Louisa, pepper-and-salt shawl, black rigolette, and all,
when she finished this unprecedented speech; and when he went to sleep
that night in the old north chamber, the one he and Louisa had been born
in, the one his father and mother had died in, it was with a little
smile of hope on his lips.
"Set her place at hearth and board
As it used to be!"
These were the last words that crossed his waking thoughts.
Before Louisa went to her own bed, she wrote one of her brief and
characteristic epistles to Susanna, but it did not reach her, for the
"hills of home" had called John's wife so insistently on that Sunday,
that the next day found her on her way back to Farnham.
DEAR SUSANNA [so the letter read],--There's a new man in your house
at Farnham. His name is John Hathaway, but he's made all over and
it was high time. _I_ say it's the hand of God! He won't own up
that it is, but I'm letting him alone, for I've done quarreling,
though I don't like to see a man get religion and deny it, for all
the world like Peter in the New Testament. If you haven't used up
the last one of your seventy-times-sevens, I think you'd better
come back and forgive your husband. If you don't, you'd better send
for your son. I'm willing to bear the burdens the Lord intends
specially _for_ me, but Jack belongs to you, and a good-sized heavy
burden he is, too, for his age. I can't deny that, if he _is_ a
Hathaway. I think he's the kind of a boy that ought to be put in a
barrel and fed through the bung-hole till he grows up; but of
course I'm not used to children's ways.
Be as easy with John at first as you can. I know you'll say _I_
never was with _my_ husband, but he was different. He got to like
a bracing treatment, Adlai did. Many's the time he said to me,
"Louisa, when you make up our minds, I'm always contented." But
John isn't made that way. He's a changed man; now, what we've got
to do is to _keep_ him changed. He doesn't bear you any grudge for
leaving him, so he won't reproach you.
Hoping to see you before long, I am,
Yours as usual,
LOUISA BANKS.
XI
"THE OPEN DOOR"
[Illustration]
On the Saturday evening before the yearly Day of Sacrifice the spiritual
heads of each Shaker family call upon all the Believers to enter
heartily next day into the humiliations and blessings of open
confession.
The Sabbath dawns upon an awed and solemn household. Footfalls are
hushed, the children's chatter is stilled, and all go to the morning
meal in silence. There is a strange quiet, but it is not sadness; it is
a hush, as when in Israel's camp the silver trumpets sounded and the
people stayed in their tents. "Then," Elder Gray explained to Susanna,
"a summons comes to each Believer, for all have been searching the
heart and scanning the life of the months past. Softly the one called
goes to the door of the one appointed by the Divine Spirit, the human
representative who is to receive the gift of the burdened soul. Woman
confesses to woman, man to man; it is the open door that leads to God."
Susanna lifted Eldress Abby's latch and stood in her strong, patient
presence; then all at once she knelt impulsively and looked up into her
serene eyes.
"Do you come as a Believer, Susanna?" tremblingly asked the Eldress.
"No, Eldress Abby. I come as a child of the world who wants to go back
to her duty, and hopes to do it better than she ever did before. She
ought to be able to, because you have chastened her pride, taught her
the lesson of patience, strengthened her will, purified her spirit, and
cleansed her soul from bitterness and wrath. I waited till afternoon
when all the confessions were over. May I speak now?"
Eldress Abby bowed, but she looked weak and stricken and old.
"I had something you would have called a vision last night, but I think
of it as a dream, and I know just what led to it. You told me Polly
Reed's story, and the little quail bird had such a charm for Sue that
I've repeated it to her more than once. In my sleep I seemed to see a
mother quail with a little one beside her. The two were always together,
happily flying or hopping about under the trees; but every now and then
I heard a sad little note, as of a deserted bird somewhere in the wood.
I walked a short distance, and parting the branches, saw on the open
ground another parent bird and a young one by its side darting hither
and thither, as if lost; they seemed to be restlessly searching for
something, and always they uttered the soft, sad note, as if the nest
had disappeared and they had been parted from the little flock. Of
course my brain had changed the very meaning of the Shaker story and
translated it into different terms, but when I woke this morning, I
could think of nothing but my husband and my boy. The two of them seemed
to me to be needing me, searching for me in the dangerous open country,
while I was hidden away in the safe shelter of the wood--I and the other
little quail bird I had taken out of the nest."
"Do you think you could persuade your husband to unite with us?" asked
Abby, wiping her eyes.
The tension of the situation was too tightly drawn for mirth, or Susanna
could have smiled, but she answered soberly, "No; if John could develop
the best in himself, he could be a good husband and father, a good
neighbor and citizen, and an upright business man, but never a Shaker."
"Didn't he insult your wifely honor and disgrace your home?"
"Yes, in the last few weeks before I left him. All his earlier offenses
were more against himself than me, in a sense. I forgave him many a
time, but I am not certain it was the seventy times seven that the Bible
bids us. I am not free from blame myself. I was hard the last year, for
I had lost hope and my pride was trailing in the dust. I left him a
bitter letter, one without any love or hope or faith in it, just because
at the moment I believed I ought, once in my life, to let him know how I
felt toward him."
"How can you go back and live under his roof with that feeling? It's
degradation."
"It has changed. I was morbid then, and so wounded and weak that I could
not fight any longer. I am rested now, and calm. My pluck has come back,
and my strength. I've learned a good deal here about casting out my own
devils; now I am going home and help him to cast out his. Perhaps he
won't be there; perhaps he doesn't want me, though when he was his very
best self he loved me dearly; but that was long, long ago!" sighed
Susanna, drearily.
"Oh, this thing the world's people call love!" groaned Abby.
"There is love and love, even in the world outside; for if it is Adam's
world it is God's, too, Abby! The love I gave my husband was good, I
think, but it failed somewhere, and I am going back to try again. I am
not any too happy in leaving you and taking up, perhaps, heavier burdens
than those from which I escaped."
"Night after night I've prayed to be the means of leading you to the
celestial life," said the Eldress, "but my plaint was not worthy to be
heard. Oh, that God would increase our numbers and so revive our
drooping faith! We work, we struggle, we sacrifice, we pray, we defy the
world and deny the flesh, yet we fail to gather in Believers."
"Don't say you've failed, dear, dear Abby!" cried Susanna, pressing the
Eldress's work-stained hands to her lips. "God speaks to you in one
voice, to me in another. Does it matter so much as long as we both hear
Him? Surely it's the hearing and the obeying that counts most! Wish me
well, dear friend, and help me to say good-by to the Elder."
The two women found Elder Gray in the office, and Abby, still
unresigned, laid Susanna's case before him.
"The Great Architect has need of many kinds of workmen in His building,"
said the Elder. "There are those who are willing to put aside the ties
of flesh for the kingdom of heaven's sake; 'he that is able to receive
it, let him receive it!'"
"There may also be those who are willing to take up the ties of the
flesh for the kingdom of heaven's sake," answered Susanna, gently, but
with a certain courage.
Her face glowed with emotion, her eyes shone, her lips were parted. It
was a new thought. Abby and Daniel gazed at her for a moment without
speaking, then Daniel said: "It's a terrible cross to some of the
Brethren and Sisters to live here outside of the world, but maybe it's
more of a cross for such as you to live in it, under such conditions as
have surrounded you of late years. To pursue good and resist evil, to
bear your cross cheerfully and to grow in grace and knowledge of truth
while you're bearing it--that's the lesson of life, I suppose. If you
find you can't learn it outside, come back to us, Susanna."
"I will," she promised, "and no words can speak my gratitude for what
you have all done for me. Many a time it will come back to me and keep
me from faltering."
She looked back at him from the open doorway, timidly.
"Don't forget us, Sue and me, altogether," she said, her eyes filling
with tears. "Come to Farnham, if you will, and see if I am a credit to
Shaker teaching! I shall never be here again, perhaps, and somehow it
seems to me as if you, Elder Gray, with your education and your gifts,
ought to be leading a larger life than this."
"I've hunted in the wild Maine forests, in my young days; I've speared
salmon in her rivers and shot rapids in a birch-bark canoe," said the
Elder, looking up from the pine table that served as a desk. "I've been
before the mast and seen strange countries; I've fought Indians; I've
faced perils on land and sea; but this Shaker life is the greatest
adventure of all!"
"Adventure?" echoed Susanna, uncomprehendingly.
"Adventure!" repeated the Elder, smiling at his own thoughts. "Whether I
fail, or whether I succeed, it's a splendid adventure in ethics."
Abby and Daniel looked at each other when Susanna passed out of the
office door.
"'They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been
of us, they would have continued with us,'" he quoted quietly.
Abby wiped her eyes with her apron. "It's a hard road to travel
sometimes, Daniel!" she said.
"Yee; but think where it leads, Abby, think where it leads! You're not
going to complain of dust when you're treading the King's Highway!"
* * * * *
Susanna left the office with a drooping head, knowing the sadness she
had left behind. Brother Ansel sat under the trees near by, and his
shrewd eye perceived the drift of coming events.
"Well, Susanna," he drawled, "you're goin' to leave us, like most o' the
other 'jiners.' I can see that with one eye shut."
"Yes," she replied, with a half smile; "but you see, Ansel, I 'jined'
John Hathaway before I knew anything about Shaker doctrines."
"Yee; but what's to prevent your on-jinin' him? They used to tie up
married folks in the old times so't they couldn't move an inch. When
they read the constitution and by-laws over 'em they used to put in
'till death do us part.' That's the way my father was hitched to _his_
three wives, but death _did_ 'em part--fortunately for him!"
"'Till death us do part' is still in the marriage service," Susanna
said, "and I think of it very often."
"I want to know if that's there yit!" exclaimed Ansel, with apparent
surprise; "I thought they must be leavin' it out, there's so much
on-jinin' nowadays! Well, accordin' to my notions, if there _is_
anything wuss 'n marriage, it's hevin' it hold till death, for then
men-folks don't git any chance of a speritual life till afterwards. They
certainly don't when they're being dragged down by women-folks an' young
ones."
"I think the lasting part of the bargain makes it all the more solemn,"
Susanna argued.
"Oh, yes, it's solemn enough, but so's a prayer meetin', an' consid'able
more elevatin'"; and here Ansel regarded the surrounding scenery with
frowning disapproval, as if it left much to be desired.
"Don't you think that there are _any_ agreeable and pleasant women,
Ansel?" ventured Susanna.
"Land, yes; heaps of 'em; but they all wear Shaker bunnits!"
"I suppose you know more about the women in the outside world than most
of the Brothers, on account of traveling so much?"
"I guess anybody't drives a seed-cart or peddles stuff along the road
knows enough o' women to keep clear of 'em. They'll come out the kitchen
door, choose their papers o' seasonin' an' bottles o' flavorin', worry
you 'bout the price an' take the aidge off every dime, make up an' then
onmake their minds 'bout what they want, ask if it's pure, an' when by
good luck you git your cart out o' the yard, they come runnin' along the
road after ye to git ye to swop a bottle o' vanilla for some spruce gum
an' give 'em back the change."
Susanna could not help smiling at Ansel's arraignment of her sex. "Do
you think they follow you for the pleasure of shopping, or the pleasure
of your conversation, Ansel?" she asked slyly.
"A little o' both, mebbe; though the pleasure's all on their side,"
returned the unchivalrous Ansel. "But take them same women, cut their
hair close to their heads (there's a heap o' foolishness in hair,
somehow), purge 'em o' their vanity, so they won't be lookin' in the
glass all the time, make 'em depend on one another for sassiety, so they
won't crave no conversation with men-folks, an' you git an article
that's 'bout as good and 'bout as stiddy as a man!"
"You never seem to remember that men are just as dangerous to women's
happiness and goodness as women are to men's," said Susanna,
courageously.
"It don't seem so to me! Never see a man, hardly, that could stick to
the straight an' narrer if a woman wanted him to go the other way. Weak
an' unstable as water, men-folks are, an' women are pow'ful strong."
"Have your own way, Ansel! I'm going back to the world, but no man shall
ever say I hindered him from being good. You'll see women clearer in
another world."
"There'll be precious few of 'em to see!" retorted Ansel. "You're about
the best o' the lot, but even you have a kind of a managin' way with ye,
besides fillin' us all full o' false hopes that we'd gathered in a
useful Believer, one cal'lated to spread the doctrines o' Mother Ann!"
"I know, I know, Ansel, and oh, how sorry I am! You would never believe
how I long to stay and help you, never believe how much you have helped
me! Good-by, Ansel; you've made me smile when my heart was breaking. I
shan't forget you!"
XII
THE HILLS OF HOME
[Illustration]
Susanna had found Sue in the upper chamber at the Office Building, and
began to make the simple preparations for her homeward journey.
It was the very hour when John Hathaway was saying:--
"Set her place at hearth and board
As it used to be."
Sue interfered with the packing somewhat by darting to and fro, bringing
her mother sacred souvenirs given her by the Shaker sisters and the
children--needle-books, pin-balls, thimble-cases, packets of
flower-seeds, polished pebbles, bottles of flavoring extract.
"This is for Fardie," she would say, "and this for Jack and this for
Ellen and this for Aunt Louisa--the needle-book, 'cause she's so useful.
Oh, I'm glad we're going home, Mardie, though I do love it here, and I
was most ready to be a truly Shaker. It's kind of pityish to have your
hair shingled and your stocking half-knitted and know how to say 'Yee'
and then have it all wasted."
Susanna dropped a tear on the dress she was folding. The child was going
home, as she had come away from it, gay, irresponsible, and merry; it
was only the mothers who hoped and feared and dreaded.
The very universe was working toward Susanna's desire at that moment,
but she was all unaware of the happiness that lay so near. She could not
see the freshness of the house in Farnham, the new bits of furniture
here and there; the autumn leaves in her own bedroom; her work-table
full of the records of John's sorrowful summer; Jack handsomer and
taller, and softer, also, in his welcoming mood; Ellen rosy and excited.
She did not know that Joel Atterbury had said to John that day, "I take
it all back, old man, and I hope you'll stay on in the firm!" nor that
Aunt Louisa, who was putting stiff, short-stemmed chrysanthemums in cups
and tumblers here and there through the house, was much more flexible
and human than was natural to her; nor that John, alternating between
hope and despair, was forever humming:--
"Set her place at hearth and board
As it used to be;
Higher are the hills of home,
Bluer is the sea!"
It is often so. They who go weeping to look for the dead body of a
sorrow, find a vision of angels where the body has lain.
"I hope Fardie'll be glad to see us and Ellen will have gingerbread,"
Sue chattered; then, pausing at the window, she added, "I'm sorry to
leave the hills, 'cause I 'specially like them, don't you, Mardie?"
"We are leaving the Shaker hills, but we are going to the hills of
home," her mother answered cheerily. "Don't you remember the Farnham
hills, dear?"
"Yes, I remember," and Sue looked thoughtful; "they were farther off and
covered with woods; these are smooth and gentle. And we shall miss the
lake, Mardie."
"Yes; but we can look at the blue sea from your bedroom window, Sue!"
"And we'll tell Fardie about Polly Reed and the little quail bird, won't
we?"
"Yes; but he and Jack will have a great deal to say to us, and we
mustn't talk all the time about the dear, kind Shakers, you know!"
"You're all '_buts_,' Mardie!" at which Susanna smiled through her
tears.
Twilight deepened into dusk, and dusk into dark, and then the moon rose
over the poplar trees outside the window where Susanna and Sue were
sleeping. The Shaker Brethren and Sisters were resting serenely after
their day of confession. It was the aged Tabitha's last Sabbath on
earth, but had she known, it would have made no difference; if ever a
soul was ready for heaven, it was Tabitha's.
There was an Irish family at the foot of the long hill that lay between
the Settlement and the village of Albion; father, mother, and children
had prayed to the Virgin before they went to bed; and the gray-haired
minister in the low-roofed parsonage was writing his communion sermon on
a text sacred to the orthodox Christian world. The same moon shone over
all, and over millions of others worshiping strange idols and holding
strange beliefs in strange far lands, yet none of them owned the whole
of heaven; for as Elder Gray said, "It is a big place and belongs to
God."
Susanna Hathaway went back to John thinking it her plain duty, and to me
it seems beautiful that she found waiting for her at the journey's end
a new love that was better than the old; found a husband to whom she
could say in that first sacred hour when they were alone together,
"Never mind, John! Let's forget, and begin all over again."
* * * * *
When Susanna and Sue alighted at the little railway station at Farnham,
and started to walk through the narrow streets that led to the suburbs,
the mother's heart beat more and more tumultuously as she realized that
the issues of four lives would be settled before nightfall.
Little did Sue reck of life issues, skipping like a young roe from one
side of the road to the other. "There are the hills, not a bit changed,
Mardie!" she cried; "and the sea is just where it was!... Here's the
house with the parrot, do you remember? Now the place where the dog
barks and snarls is coming next.... P'raps he'll be dead ... or p'raps
he'll be nicer.... Keep close to me till we get past the gate.... He
didn't come out, so p'raps he is dead or gone a-visiting.... There's
that 'specially lazy cow that's always lying down in the Buxtons'
field.... I don't b'lieve she's moved since we came away.... Do you
s'pose she stands up to be milked, Mardie? There's the old bridge over
the brook, just the same, only the woodbine's red.... There's ...
There's ... Oh, Mardie, look, look!... I do b'lieve it's our Jacky!"
Sue flew over the ground like a swallow, calling "Jack-y! Jack-y! it's
me and Mardie come home!"
Jack extricated himself from his sister's strangling hug and settled his
collar. "I'm awful glad to see you, Sukey," he said, "but I'm getting
too big to be kissed. Besides, my pockets are full of angleworms and
fishhooks."
"Are you too big to be kissed even by mother?" called Susanna, hurrying
to her boy, who submitted to her embrace with better grace. "O Jack,
Jack! say you're glad to see mother! Say it, say it; I can't wait,
Jack!"
"Course I'm glad! why wouldn't I be? I tell you I'm tired of Aunt
Louisa, though she's easier than she was. Time and again I've packed my
lunch basket and started to run away, but I always made it a picnic and
went back again, thinking they'd make such a row over me."
"Aunt Louisa is always kind when you're obedient," Susanna urged.
"She ain't so stiff as she was. Ellen is real worried about her and
thinks she's losing her strength, she's so easy to get along with."
"How's ... father...?"
"Better'n he was."
"Hasn't he been well?"
"Not so very; always quiet and won't eat, nor play, nor anything. I'm
home with him since Sunday."
"What is the matter with your clothes?" asked Susanna, casting a
maternal eye over him while she pulled him down here and up there, with
anxious disapproving glances. "You look so patched, and wrinkled, and
grubby."