"No," he said, "not yet. But perhaps some day--I am trying to follow you, Athalia."
She caught her breath with a frightened look. "Follow--ME?" Then she burst out crying.
"Why, Tay!" he said, bewildered; "what is it, dear?" But she had left him, stumbling blindly as she walked, her face hidden in her hands.
Lewis went back into his house, and, lighting his lamp, sat down to pore over one of Brother Nathan"s books. He was concerned, but he smiled a little; it was so like Athalia to cry when she was happy! He did not see his wife for several days. The Eldress said Sister "Thalia was not well, and Lewis looked sorry, but made no comment. He was a little anxious, but he did not dwell upon his anxiety. In the next few days he worked hard all day in Brother Nathan"s herb-house, where the air was hazy with the aromatic dust of tansy and pennyroyal, then hurried home at night to sit down to his books, so profoundly absorbed in them that sometimes he only knew that it was time to sleep because the dawn fell white across the black-lettered page.
But one night, a week later, when he came home from work, he did not open his Bible; he stood a long time in his doorway, looking at the sunset, and, as he looked, his face seemed to shine with some inner light. The lake was like gla.s.s; high in the upper heavens thin golden lines of cloud had turned to rippling copper; the sky behind the black circle of the hills was a clear, pale green, and in the growing dusk the water whitened like snow. ""Gla.s.s mingled with fire,"" he murmured to himself; "yes, "great and marvellous are Thy works, Lord G.o.d Almighty; just and true are Thy ways, Thou King of Saints!"" And what more marvellous work than this wonder of his own salvation? Brought here against his will, against his judgment! How he had struggled against the Spirit. He was humbled to the earth at the remembrance of it; "if I had my way, we wouldn"t have walked up the hill from the station that morning!"...
The flushing heavens faded into ashes, but the solemn glow of half-astonished grat.i.tude lingered on his face.
"Lewis," some one said in the darkness of the lane--"LEWIS!" Athalia came up the path swiftly and put her hands on his arm. "Lewis, I--I want to go home." She sobbed as she spoke.
He started as if she had struck him.
"Lewis, Lewis, let us go home!"
The flame of mystical satisfaction went out of his face as a lighted candle goes out in the wind.
"There isn"t any home now, Athalia," he said, with a sombre look; "there"s only a house. Come in," he added, heavily; "we must talk this out."
She followed him, and for a moment they neither of them spoke; he fumbled about in the warm darkness for a match, and lifting the shade, lighted the lamp on the table; then he looked at her. "Athalia," he said, in a terrified voice, "I am--_I am a Shaker!_"
"No--no--no!" she said. She grew very white, and sat down, breathing quickly. Then the color came back faintly into her lips. "Don"t say it, Lewis; it isn"t true. It can"t be true!"
"It is true," he said, with a groan. He had sunk into a chair, and his face was hidden in his hands. "What are we going to do?" he said, hoa.r.s.ely.
"Why, you mustn"t be!" she cried; "you can"t be--that"s all. You can"t STAY if I go!"
"I must stay," he said.
There was a stunned silence. Then she said, in an amazed whisper:
"What! You don"t love me any more?"
Still he was silent.
"You--don"t--love--me," she said, as if repeating some astounding fact, which she could not yet believe.
He seemed to gather his courage up.
"I have--" he tried to speak; faltered, broke, went on: "I have--the kindliest feelings toward you, "Thalia"--his last word was in a whisper.
"Stop!" she protested, with a frightened look--"oh, stop!--don"t say THAT!" He did not speak; and suddenly, looking at his fixed face, she cried out, violently: "Oh, why, why did I go up to the graveyard that day? Why did you let me?" She stared at him, her forget-me-not eyes dilating with dismay. "It all came from that. If we hadn"t walked up the hill that morning--" He was speechless. Then, abruptly, she sprang to her feet, and, running to him, knelt beside him and tried to pull down the hands in which he had again hidden his face. "Lewis, it"s I--Tay!
You don"t "feel kindly" to ME? Lewis, you haven"t stopped loving me?"
"I am a Shaker," he said, helplessly. "I can"t give up my religion, even for you."
He got on his feet and stood before her, his empty palms hanging at his sides in that strange gesture of entire hopelessness; he tried to speak, but no words came. The lamp on the table flickered a little. Their shadows loomed gigantic on the wall behind them; the little hot room was very still.
"You think you don"t love me?" Athalia said, between set teeth; "_I know better!_" With a laugh she caught his arm with both her shaking hands, and kissed him once, and then again. Still he was silent. Then with a cry she threw herself against his breast. "I love you," she said, pa.s.sionately, "and you love me! Nothing on earth will make me believe you don"t love me,"--and for one vital moment her lips burned against his.
His arms did not close about her,--but his hands clinched slightly. Then he moved back a step or two, and she heard him sigh. "Don"t, sister," he said, gently.
She threw up her hands with a frantic gesture. "SISTER? My G.o.d!" she said; and left him.
There was no further struggle between them. A week later she went away.
As he told her, "the house was there"--and to that she went until she should go to find some whirl of life that would make her deaf to voices of the past.
As for Lewis, he did not see that miserable departure from the Family House in the shabby old carryall that had been the Shakers" one vehicle for more than thirty years. He told Nathan he wanted to mow the burial-ground up on the hill that morning. From that high and silent spot he could see the long white road up from the settlement on one side and down to the covered bridge on the other side. He sat under the pine-tree, his scythe against the stone wall behind him, his clinched hands between his knees. Sitting thus, he watched the road and the slow crawl of the shaky old carriage. ... After it had pa.s.sed the burying-ground and was out of sight, he hid his face in his bent elbow.
It was some ten years afterward that word came to Eldress Hannah that Athalia Hall was dying and wanted to see her husband; would he come to her?
"Will you go, Brother Lewis?" Eldress asked him, doubtfully.
"Yee, if you think best," he said.
"I do think best," the old woman said.
He went, a bent, elderly man in a gray coat, threading his wavering way through the noisy buffet of the streets of the city where Athalia had elected to dwell. He found her in a gaudy hotel, full of the glare of pushing, hurrying life. He sat down at her bedside, a little breathless, and looked at her with mild, remote eyes.
"Do you forgive me, Lewis?" she said.
"I have nothing to forgive, sister," he told her.
"Don"t call me that!" she cried, with feeble pa.s.sion.
He looked a little bewildered. "Yee," he said, "I forgive you."
"Oh, Lewis!--Lewis!--Lewis!" she mourned; "this is what I have done!"
She wept pitifully. His face grew vaguely troubled, as if he did not quite understand.... Then, abruptly, the veil lifted: his eyes dilated with pain; he pa.s.sed his hand over his forehead once or twice and sighed. Then he looked down at the poor, dying face that once he had loved.
"Why, "Thalia!" he said, in a surprised and anguished voice; suddenly he put his arm under the restless head. "There, there, little Tay; don"t cry," he said, and smiled at her.
And with that she was content to fall asleep.