"Shaker Settlement!" cried John, starting up from his seat on the steps. "What"s that? I know Shaker egg-beaters and garden-seeds and rocking-chairs and oh, yes, I remember their religion"s against marriage. That"s the worst thing you could have told me; that ends all hope; if they once get hold of a woman like Susanna, they"ll never let go of her; if they don"t believe in a woman"s marrying a good man, they"d never let her go back to a bad one. Oh, if I had only known this before; if only you"d told me, Louisa, perhaps I could have done something. Maybe they take vows or sign contracts, and so I have lost her altogether."
"I don"t know much about their beliefs, and Susanna never explained them," returned Louisa, nervously "but now that you"ve got something to offer her, why don"t you write and ask her to come back to you? I"ll send your letter to her."
"I don"t dare, Louisa, I don"t dare," groaned John, leaning his head against one of the pillars of the porch. "I can"t tell you the fear I have of Susanna after the way I"ve neglected her this last year. If she should come in at the gate this minute, I could n"t meet her eyes; if you"d read the letter she left me, you"d feel the same way. I deserved it, to the last word, but oh, it was like so many separate strokes of lightning, and every one of them burned. It was nothing but the truth, but it was cut in with a sharp sword. Unless she should come back to me of her own accord, and she never will, I have n"t got the courage to ask her; just have n"t got the courage, that"s all there is to say about it." And here John buried his head in his hands.
A very queer thing happened to Louisa Banks at this moment. A 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 which she had always regarded and her opinion had never yet 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 makeup.
"There, there, John, don"t be so downhearted," 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 has n"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 have n"t said a word about you because I did n"t know how long your reformation was going to hold out; but I won"t let the gra.s.s 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 tonight 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 G.o.d! 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 have n"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 bunghole 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 is n"t made that way.
He"s a changed man; now, what we"ve got to do is to _keep_ him changed.
He does n"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"
On the Sat.u.r.day evening before the yearly Day of Sacrifice the spiritual heads of each Shaker family called upon all the Believers to enter heartily next day into the humiliations and blessings of open confession.
The Sabbath dawns upon an awed and solemn household. Footfalls are hushed, the children"s chatter is stilled, and all go to the morning meal in silence. There is a strange quiet, but it is not sadness; it is a hush, as when in Israel"s camp the silver trumpets sounded and the people stayed in their tents. "Then," Elder Gray explained to Susanna, "a summons comes to each Believer, for all have been searching the heart and scanning the life of the months past. Softly the one called goes to the door of the one appointed by the Divine Spirit, the human representative who is to receive the gift of the burdened soul. Woman confesses to woman, man to man; it is the open door that leads to G.o.d."
Susanna lifted Eldress Abby"s latch and stood in her strong, patient presence; then all at once she knelt impulsively and looked up into her serene eyes.
"Do you come as a Believer, Susanna?" tremblingly asked the Eldress.
"No, Eldress Abby. I come as a child of the world who wants to go back to her duty, and hopes to do it better than she ever did before. She ought to be able to, because you have chastened her pride, taught her the lesson of patience, strengthened her will, purified her spirit, and cleansed her soul from bitterness and wrath. I waited till afternoon when all the confessions were over. May I speak now?"
Eldress Abby bowed, but she looked weak and stricken and old.
"I had something you would have called a vision last night, but I think of it as a dream, and I know just what led to it. You told me Polly Reed"s story, and the little quail bird had such a charm for Sue that I"ve repeated it to her more than once. In my sleep I seemed to see a mother quail with a little one beside her. The two were always together, happily flying or hopping about under the trees; but every now and then I heard a sad little note, as of a deserted bird somewhere in the wood.
I walked a short distance, and parting the branches, saw on the open ground another parent bird and a young one by its side darting hither and thither, as if lost; they seemed to be restlessly searching for something, and always they uttered the soft, sad note, as if the nest had disappeared and they had been parted from the little flock. Of course my brain had changed the very meaning of the Shaker story and translated it into different terms, but when I woke this morning, I could think of nothing but my husband and my boy. The two of them seemed to me to be needing me, searching for me in the dangerous open country, while I was hidden away in the safe shelter of the wood--I and the other little quail bird I had taken out of the nest."
"Do you think you could persuade your husband to unite with us?" asked Abby, wiping her eyes.
The tension of the situation was too tightly drawn for mirth, or Susanna could have smiled, but she answered soberly, "No; if John could develop the best in himself, he could be a good husband and father, a good neighbor and citizen, and an upright business man, but never a Shaker."
"Did n"t he insult your wifely honor and disgrace your home?" "Yes, in the last few weeks before I left him. All his earlier offenses were more against himself than me, in a sense. I forgave him many a time, but I am not certain it was the seventy times seven that the Bible bids us. I am not free from blame myself. I was hard the last year, for I had lost hope and my pride was trailing in the dust. I left him a bitter letter, one without any love or hope or faith in it, just because at the moment I believed I ought, once in my life, to let him know how I felt toward him."
"How can you go back and live under his roof with that feeling? It"s degradation."
"It has changed. I was morbid then, and so wounded and weak that I could not fight any longer. I am rested now, and calm. My pluck has come back, and my strength. I"ve learned a good deal here about casting out my own devils; now I am going home and help him to cast out his. Perhaps he won"t be there; perhaps he does n"t want me, though when he was his very best self he loved me dearly; but that was long, long ago!" sighed Susanna, drearily.
"Oh, this thing the world"s people call love!" groaned Abby.
"There is love and love, even in the world outside; for if it is Adam"s world it is G.o.d"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 G.o.d 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. "G.o.d speaks to you in one voice, to me in another. Does it matter so much as long as we both hear Him? Surely it"s the hearing and the obeying that counts most! Wish me well, dear friend, and help me to say goodbye to the Elder."
The two women found Elder Gray in the office, and Abby, still unresigned, laid Susanna"s case before him.
"The Great Architect has need of many kinds of workmen in His building,"
said the Elder. "There are those who are willing to put aside the ties of flesh for the kingdom of heaven"s sake; "he that is able to receive it, let him receive it!""
"There may also he those who are willing to take up the ties of the flesh for the kingdom of heaven"s sake," answered Susanna, gently, but with a certain courage.
Her face glowed with emotion, her eyes shone, her lips were parted. It was a new thought. Abby and Daniel gazed at her for a moment without speaking, then Daniel said: "It"s a terrible cross to some of the Brethren and Sisters to live here outside of the world, but maybe it"s more of a cross for such as you to live in it, under such conditions as have surrounded you of late years. To pursue good and resist evil, to bear your cross cheerfully and to grow in grace and knowledge of truth while you"re bearing it that"s the lesson of life, I suppose. If you find you can"t learn it outside, come back to us, Susanna."