Homespun Tales Part 20

"Yee, we do," said Brother Thomas Scattergood, devoutly. "To him that overcometh shall the great prize be given."

"G.o.d help the weaker brethren!" murmured young Brother Nathan, in so low a voice that few could hear him. Moved by the same impulse, Tabitha, Abby, and Martha burst into one of the most triumphant of the Shaker songs, one that was never sung save when the meeting was "full of the Spirit":--

"I draw no blank nor miss the prize, I see the work, the sacrifice, And I'll be loyal, I'll be wise, A faithful overcomer!"

The company rose and began again to march in a circle around the center of the room, the Brethren two abreast leading the column, the Sisters following after. There was a waving movement of the hands by drawing inward as if gathering in spiritual good and storing it up for future need. In the marching and countermarching the wors.h.i.+pers frequently changed their positions, ultimately forming into four circles, symbolical of the four dispensations as expounded in Shakerism, the first from Adam to Abraham; the second from Abraham to Jesus; the third from Jesus to Mother Ann Lee; and the fourth the millennial era.

The marching grew livelier; the bodies of the singers swayed lightly with emotion, the faces glowed with feeling.

Over and over the hymn was sung, gathering strength and fullness as the Believers entered more and more into the spirit of their wors.h.i.+p.

Whenever the refrain came in with its militant fervor, crude, but sincere and effective, the singers seemed faith-intoxicated; and Sister Martha in particular might have been treading the heavenly streets instead of the meetinghouse floor, so complete was her absorption. The voices at length grew softer, and the movement slower, and after a few moments' reverent silence the company filed out of the room solemnly and without speech.

I am as sure that heav'n is mine As though my vision could define Or pencil draw the boundary line Where love and truth shall conquer.

"The Lord ain't shaken Susanna hard enough yet," thought Brother Ansel shrewdly from his place in the rear. "She ain't altogether gathered in, not by no manner o' means, because of that unregenerate son of Adam she's left behind; but there's the makin's of a pow'ful good Shaker in Susanna, if she finally takes holt!"

"What manner of life is my husband living, now that I have deserted him?

Who is being a mother to Jack?" These were the thoughts that troubled Susanna Hathaway's soul as she crossed the gra.s.s to her own building.

VII. "The Lower Plane"

Brother Nathan Bennett was twenty years old and Sister Hetty Arnold was eighteen. They had been left with the Shakers by their respective parents ten years before, and, growing up in the faith, they formally joined the Community when they reached the age of discretion. Thus they had known each other from early childhood, never in the familiar way common to the children of the world, but with the cool, cheerful, casual, wholly impersonal att.i.tude of Shaker friends.h.i.+p, a relation seemingly outside of and superior to s.e.x, a relation more like that of two astral bodies than the more intimate one of a budding Adam and Eve.

When and where had this relations.h.i.+p changed its color and meaning?

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 s.p.a.ce 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 s.p.a.ce that is the very essence and sign of Shakerism. The dance had just ceased, and there was a long, solemn stillness when G.o.d 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 s.p.a.ce, 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 pa.s.sed. 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 brus.h.i.+ng the gra.s.s 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 fas.h.i.+on 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.

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, pa.s.sions, feelings, and a.s.sociations, 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 G.o.dliness 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. n.o.body 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 pa.s.sionately. "What have you had to give up? Nothing but a husband you did n't love and a home you did n'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 n.o.body thinks of calling them wicked!" sobbed Hetty, flinging herself down, and putting her head in Susanna's ap.r.o.ned 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 have n'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 everyday 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 did n'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 would n'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 tonight to the minister in Albion."

"What if he would n't do it?"

"Why should n't he? Shakers take no vows, though I feel bound, hand and foot, out of grat.i.tude. 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 tonight, I'll leave you in some safe home and we 'll walk to Portland tomorrow. I'm young and strong, and I know I can earn our living somehow."

"But we have n't the price of a lodging or a breakfast between us,"

Hetty said tearfully. "Would it be sinful to take some of my basketwork and send back the money next week?"