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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Homespun Tales, by Kate Douglas Wiggin
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Homespun Tales
+
+Author: Kate Douglas Wiggin
+
+Posting Date: February 1, 2009 [EBook #3492]
+Release Date: October, 2002
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOMESPUN TALES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by A Elizabeth Warren
+
+
+
+
+
+HOMESPUN TALES
+
+By Kate Douglas Wiggin
+
+
+
+
+Introduction
+
+These three stories are now brought together under one cover because
+they have not quite outworn their welcome; but in their first estate
+two of them appeared as gift-books, with decorative borders and wide
+margins, a style not compatible with the stringent economies of
+the present moment. Luckily they belong together by reason of their
+background, which is an imaginary village, any village you choose,
+within the confines, or on the borders of York County, in the State of
+Maine.
+
+In the first tale the river, not "Rose," is the principal character; no
+one realizes this better than I. If an author spends her summers on
+the banks of Saco Water it fills the landscape. It flows from the White
+Mountains to the Atlantic in a tempestuous torrent, breaking here and
+there into glorious falls of amber glimpsed through snowy foam; its
+rapids dash through rocky cliffs crowned with pine trees, under which
+blue harebells and rosy columbines blossom in gay profusion. There is
+the glint of the mirror-like lake above the falls, and the sound of the
+surging floods below; the witchery of feathery elms reflected in its
+clear surfaces, and the enchantment of the full moon on its golden
+torrents, never twice alike and always beautiful! How is one to forget,
+evade, scorn, belittle it, by leaving its charms untold; and who could
+keep such a river out of a book? It has flowed through many of mine
+and the last sound I expect to hear in life will be the faint, far-away
+murmur of Saco Water!
+
+The old Tory Hill Meeting House bulks its way into the foreground of the
+next story, and the old Peabody Pew (which never existed) has somehow
+assumed a quasi-historical aspect never intended by its author. There
+is a Dorcas Society, and there is a meeting house; my dedication assures
+the reader of these indubitable facts; and the Dorcas Society, in a
+season of temporary bankruptcy, succeeding a too ample generosity,
+did scrub the pews when there was no money for paint. Rumors of our
+strenuous, and somewhat unique, activities spread through our parish
+to many others, traveling so far (even over seas) that we became
+embarrassed at our easily won fame. The book was read and people
+occasionally came to church to see the old Peabody Pew, rather resenting
+the information that there had never been any Peabodys in the parish
+and, therefore, there could be no Peabody Pew. Matters became worse
+when I made, very reverently, what I suppose must be called a dramatic
+version of the book, which we have played for several summers in the old
+meeting house to audiences far exceeding our seating capacity. Inasmuch
+as the imaginary love-tale of my so-called Nancy Wentworth and Justin
+Peabody had begun under the shadow of the church steeple, and after the
+ten years of parting the happy reunion had come to them in the selfsame
+place, it was possible to present their story simply and directly,
+without offense, in a church building. There was no curtain, no stage,
+no scenery, no theatricalism. The pulpit was moved back, and four young
+pine trees were placed in front of it for supposed Christmas decoration.
+The pulpit platform, and the "wing pews" left vacant for the village
+players, took the place of a stage; the two aisles served for exits and
+entrances; and the sexton with three rings of the church bell, announced
+the scenes. The Carpet Committee of the Dorcas Society furnished the
+exposition of the first act, while sewing the last breadths of the new,
+hardly-bought ingrain carpet. The scrubbing of the pews ends the act,
+with dialogue concerning men, women, ministers, church-members and their
+ways, including the utter failure of Justin Peabody, Nancy's hero, to
+make a living anywhere, even in the West. The Dorcas members leave the
+church for their Saturday night suppers of beans and brown bread, but
+Nancy returns with her lantern at nightfall to tack down the carpet in
+the old Peabody pew and iron out the tattered, dog's eared leaves of the
+hymn-book from which she has so often sung "By cool Siloam's shady rill"
+with her lover in days gone by. He, still a failure, having waited for
+years for his luck to turn, has come back to spend Christmas in the home
+of his boyhood; and seeing a dim light in the church, he enters quietly
+and surprises Nancy at her task of carpeting the Peabody Pew, so that
+it shall look as well as the others at next day's services. The rest
+is easy to imagine. One can deny the reality of a book, but when two or
+three thousand people have beheld Justin Peabody and Nancy Wentworth in
+the flesh, and have seen the paint of the old Peabody Pew wiped with
+a damp cloth, its cushion darned and its carpet tacked in place, it is
+useless to argue; any more than it would be to deny the validity of the
+egg of Columbus or the apple of William Tell.
+
+As for "Susanna and Sue" the story would never have been written had I
+not as a child and girl been driven once a year to the Shaker meeting at
+the little village of Alfred, sixteen miles distant. The services were
+then open to the public, but eventually permission to attend them was
+withdrawn, because of the careless and sometimes irreverent behavior
+of young people who regarded the Shaker costumes, the solemn dances
+or marches, the rhythmic movements of the hands, the almost hypnotic
+crescendo of the singing, as a sort of humorous spectacle. I learned
+to know the brethren and sisters, and the Elder, as years went by,
+and often went to the main house to spend a day or two as the guest of
+Eldress Harriet, a saint, if ever there was one, or, later, with dear
+Sister Lucinda.
+
+The shining cleanliness and order, the frugality and industry, the
+serenity and peace of these people, who had resigned the world and
+"life on the plane of Adam," vowing themselves to celibacy, to public
+confession of sins, and the holding of goods in common,--all this has
+always had a certain exquisite and helpful influence upon my thought,
+and Mr. W. D. Howells paid a far more beautiful tribute to them in "The
+Undiscovered Country."
+
+It is needless to say that I read every word of the book to my Shaker
+friends before it was published. They took a deep interest in it,
+evincing keen delight in my rather facetious but wholly imaginary
+portrait of "Brother Ansel," a "born Shaker," and sadly confessing that
+my two young lovers, "Hetty" and "Nathan," who could not endure the
+rigors of the Shaker faith and fled together in the night to marry and
+join the world's people,--that this tragedy had often occurred in their
+community.
+
+Here, then, are the three simple homespun tales. I believe they are true
+to life as I see it. I only wish my readers might hear the ripple of the
+Maine river running through them; breathe the fragrance of New England
+for-ests, and though never for a moment getting, through my poor pen,
+the atmosphere of Maine's rugged cliffs and the tang of her salt sea
+air, they might at least believe for an instant that they had found a
+modest Mayflower in her pine woods.
+
+KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN. July, 1920.
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+    ROSE O' THE RIVER
+
+    I. The Pine and the Rose
+    II. The "Old Kennebec"
+    III. The Edgewood "Drive"
+    IV. "Blasphemious Swearin'"
+    V. The Game of Jackstraws
+    VI. Hearts and Other Hearts
+    VII. The Little House
+    VIII. The Garden of Eden
+    IX. The Serpent
+    X. The Turquoise Ring
+    XI. Rose Sees the World
+    XII. Gold and Pinchbeck
+    XIII. A Country Chevalier
+    XIV. Housebreaking
+    XV. The Dream Room
+
+
+    THE OLD PEABODY PEW
+
+
+    SUSANNA AND SUE
+
+    I. Mother Ann's Children
+    II. A Son of Adam
+    III. Divers Doctrines
+    IV. Louisa's Mind
+    V. the Little Quail Bird
+    VI. Susanna Speaks in Meeting
+    VII. "The Lower Plane"
+    VIII. Concerning Backsliders
+    IX. Love Manifold
+    X. Brother and Sister
+    XI. "The Open Door"
+    XII. The Hills of Home
+
+
+
+
+
+ROSE O' THE RIVER
+
+
+
+
+I. The Pine And the Rose
+
+
+It was not long after sunrise, and Stephen Waterman, fresh from his
+dip in the river, had scrambled up the hillside from the hut in the
+alder-bushes where he had made his morning toilet.
+
+An early ablution of this sort was not the custom of the farmers along
+the banks of the Saco, but the Waterman house was hardly a stone's throw
+from the water, and there was a clear, deep swimming-hole in the Willow
+Cove that would have tempted the busiest man, or the least cleanly, in
+York County. Then, too, Stephen was a child of the river, born, reared,
+schooled on its very brink, never happy unless he were on it, or in it,
+or beside it, or at least within sight or sound of it.
+
+The immensity of the sea had always silenced and overawed him, left him
+cold in feeling. The river wooed him, caressed him, won his heart.
+It was just big enough to love. It was full of charms and changes, of
+varying moods and sudden surprises. Its voice stole in upon his ear with
+a melody far sweeter and more subtle than the boom of the ocean. Yet it
+was not without strength, and when it was swollen with the freshets of
+the spring and brimming with the bounty of its sister streams, it could
+dash and roar, boom and crash, with the best of them.
+
+Stephen stood on the side porch, drinking in the glory of the sunrise,
+with the Saco winding like a silver ribbon through the sweet loveliness
+of the summer landscape.
+
+And the river rolled on toward the sea, singing its morning song,
+creating and nourishing beauty at every step of its onward path. Cradled
+in the heart of a great mountain-range, it pursued its gleaming way,
+here lying silent in glassy lakes, there rushing into tinkling little
+falls, foaming great falls, and thundering cataracts. Scores of bridges
+spanned its width, but no steamers flurried its crystal depths. Here and
+there a rough little rowboat, tethered to a willow, rocked to and fro in
+some quiet bend of the shore. Here the silver gleam of a rising perch,
+chub, or trout caught the eye; there a pickerel lay rigid in the clear
+water, a fish carved in stone: here eels coiled in the muddy bottom
+of some pool; and there, under the deep shadows of the rocks, lay fat,
+sleepy bass, old, and incredibly wise, quite untempted by, and wholly
+superior to, the rural fisherman's worm.
+
+The river lapped the shores of peaceful meadows; it flowed along banks
+green with maple, beech, sycamore, and birch; it fell tempestuously over
+dams and fought its way between rocky cliffs crowned with stately firs.
+It rolled past forests of pine and hemlock and spruce, now gentle,
+now terrible; for there is said to be an Indian curse upon the Saco,
+whereby, with every great sun, the child of a paleface shall be drawn
+into its cruel depths. Lashed into fury by the stony reefs that impeded
+its progress, the river looked now sapphire, now gold, now white, now
+leaden gray; but always it was hurrying, hurrying on its appointed way
+to the sea.
+
+After feasting his eyes and filling his heart with a morning draught
+of beauty, Stephen went in from the porch and, pausing at the stairway,
+called in stentorian tones: "Get up and eat your breakfast, Rufus! The
+boys will be picking the side jams today, and I'm going down to work on
+the logs. If you come along, bring your own pick-pole and peavey." Then,
+going to the kitchen pantry, he collected, from the various shelves,
+a pitcher of milk, a loaf of bread, half an apple pie, and a bowl of
+blueberries, and, with the easy methods of a household unswayed by
+feminine rule, moved toward a seat under an apple tree and took his
+morning meal in great apparent content. Having finished, and washed his
+dishes with much more thoroughness than is common to unsuperintended
+man, and having given Rufus the second call to breakfast with the vigor
+and acrimony that usually mark that unpleasant performance, he strode to
+a high point on the riverbank and, shading his eyes with his hand, gazed
+steadily downstream.
+
+Patches of green fodder and blossoming potatoes melted into soft fields
+that had been lately mown, and there were glimpses of tasseling corn
+rising high to catch the sun. Far, far down on the opposite bank of the
+river was the hint of a brown roof, and the tip of a chimney that sent a
+slender wisp of smoke into the clear air. Beyond this, and farther back
+from the water, the trees apparently hid a cluster of other chimneys,
+for thin spirals of smoke ascended here and there. The little brown
+roof could never have revealed itself to any but a lover's eye; and that
+discerned something even smaller, something like a pinkish speck, that
+moved hither and thither on a piece of greensward that sloped to the
+waterside.
+
+"She's up!" Stephen exclaimed under his breath, his eyes shining, his
+lips smiling. His voice had a note of hushed exaltation about it, as if
+"she," whoever she might be, had, in condescending to rise, conferred a
+priceless boon upon a waiting universe. If she were indeed "up" (so his
+tone implied), then the day, somewhat falsely heralded by the sunrise,
+had really begun, and the human race might pursue its appointed tasks,
+inspired and uplifted by the consciousness of her existence. It might
+properly be grateful for the fact of her birth; that she had grown to
+woman's estate; and, above all, that, in common with the sun, the lark,
+the morning-glory, and other beautiful things of the early day, she was
+up and about her lovely, cheery, heart-warming business.
+
+The handful of chimneys and the smoke-spirals rising here and there
+among the trees on the river-bank belonged to what was known as the
+Brier Neighborhood. There were only a few houses in all, scattered along
+a side road leading from the river up to Liberty Center. There were no
+great signs of thrift or prosperity, but the Wiley cottage, the only
+one near the water, was neat and well cared for, and Nature had done her
+best to conceal man's indolence, poverty, or neglect.
+
+Bushes of sweetbrier grew in fragrant little forests as tall as the
+fences. Clumps of wild roses sprang up at every turn, and over all the
+stone walls, as well as on every heap of rocks by the wayside, prickly
+blackberry vines ran and clambered and clung, yielding fruit and thorns
+impartially to the neighborhood children.
+
+The pinkish speck that Stephen Waterman had spied from his side of the
+river was Rose Wiley of the Brier Neighborhood on the Edgewood side. As
+there was another of her name on Brigadier Hill, the Edgewood minister
+called one of them the climbing Rose and the other the brier Rose, or
+sometimes Rose of the river. She was well named, the pinkish speck. She
+had not only some of the sweetest attributes of the wild rose, but the
+parallel might have been extended as far as the thorns, for she had
+wounded her scores,--hearts, be it understood, not hands. The wounding
+was, on the whole, very innocently done; and if fault could be imputed
+anywhere, it might rightly have been laid at the door of the kind powers
+who had made her what she was, since the smile that blesses a single
+heart is always destined to break many more.
+
+She had not a single silk gown, but she had what is far better, a
+figure to show off a cotton one. Not a brooch nor a pair of earrings was
+numbered among her possessions, but any ordinary gems would have looked
+rather dull and trivial when compelled to undergo comparison with her
+bright eyes. As to her hair, the local milliner declared it impossible
+for Rose Wiley to get an unbecoming hat; that on one occasion, being
+in a frolicsome mood, Rose had tried on all the headgear in the village
+emporium,--children's gingham "Shakers," mourning bonnets for aged
+dames, men's haying hats and visored caps,--and she proved superior
+to every test, looking as pretty as a pink in the best ones and simply
+ravishing in the worst. In fact, she had been so fashioned and
+finished by Nature that, had she been set on a revolving pedestal in a
+show-window, the bystanders would have exclaimed, as each new charm came
+into view: "Look at her waist! See her shoulders! And her neck and chin!
+And her hair!" While the children, gazing with raptured admiration,
+would have shrieked, in unison, "I choose her for mine."
+
+All this is as much as to say that Rose of the river was a beauty, yet
+it quite fails to explain, nevertheless, the secret of her power. When
+she looked her worst the spell was as potent as when she looked her
+best. Hidden away somewhere was a vital spark which warmed every one
+who came in contact with it. Her lovely little person was a trifle below
+medium height, and it might as well be confessed that her soul, on the
+morning when Stephen Waterman saw her hanging out the clothes on the
+river-bank, was not large enough to be at all out of proportion; but
+when eyes and dimples, lips and cheeks, enslave the onlooker, the soul
+is seldom subjected to a close or critical scrutiny. Besides, Rose Wiley
+was a nice girl, neat as wax, energetic, merry, amiable, economical. She
+was a dutiful granddaughter to two of the most irritating old people
+in the county; she never patronized her pug-nosed, pasty-faced girl
+friends; she made wonderful pies and doughnuts; and besides, small
+souls, if they are of the right sort, sometimes have a way of growing,
+to the discomfiture of cynics and the gratification of the angels.
+
+So, on one bank of the river grew the brier rose, a fragile thing,
+swaying on a slender stalk and looking at its pretty reflection in the
+water; and on the other a sturdy pine tree, well rooted against wind and
+storm. And the sturdy pine yearned for the wild rose; and the rose, so
+far as it knew, yearned for nothing at all, certainly not for rugged
+pine trees standing tall and grim in rocky soil. If, in its present
+stage of development, it gravitated toward anything in particular, it
+would have been a well-dressed white birch growing on an irreproachable
+lawn.
+
+And the river, now deep, now shallow, now smooth, now tumultuous,
+now sparkling in sunshine, now gloomy under clouds, rolled on to the
+engulfing sea. It could not stop to concern itself with the petty
+comedies and tragedies that were being enacted along its shores, else it
+would never have reached its destination. Only last night, under a full
+moon, there had been pairs of lovers leaning over the rails of all the
+bridges along its course; but that was a common sight, like that of the
+ardent couples sitting on its shady banks these summer days, looking
+only into each other's eyes, but exclaiming about the beauty of the
+water. Lovers would come and go, sometimes reappearing with successive
+installments of loves in a way wholly mysterious to the river. Meantime
+it had its own work to do and must be about it, for the side jams were
+to be broken and the boom "let out" at the Edgewood bridge.
+
+
+
+
+II. "Old Kennebec"
+
+
+It was just seven o'clock that same morning when Rose Wiley smoothed the
+last wrinkle from her dimity counterpane, picked up a shred of corn-husk
+from the spotless floor under the bed, slapped a mosquito on the
+window-sill, removed all signs of murder with a moist towel, and before
+running down to breakfast cast a frowning look at her pincushion.
+Almira, otherwise "Mite," Shapley had been in her room the afternoon
+before and disturbed with her careless hand the pattern of Rose's pins.
+They were kept religiously in the form of a Maltese cross; and if, while
+she was extricating one from her clothing, there had been an alarm
+of fire, Rose would have stuck the pin in its appointed place in the
+design, at the risk of losing her life.
+
+Entering the kitchen with her light step, she brought the morning
+sunshine with her. The old people had already engaged in differences of
+opinion, but they commonly suspended open warfare in her presence.
+There were the usual last things to be done for breakfast, offices that
+belonged to her as her grandmother's assistant. She took yesterday's
+soda biscuits out of the steamer where they were warming and softening;
+brought an apple pie and a plate of seed cakes from the pantry; settled
+the coffee with a piece of dried fish skin and an egg shell; and
+transferred some fried potatoes from the spider to a covered dish.
+
+"Did you remember the meat, grandpa? We're all out," she said, as she
+began buttoning a stiff collar around his reluctant neck.
+
+"Remember? Land, yes! I wish't I ever could forgit anything! The butcher
+says he's 'bout tired o' travelin' over the country lookin' for critters
+to kill, but if he finds anything he'll be up along in the course of a
+week. He ain't a real smart butcher, Cyse Higgins ain't.--Land, Rose,
+don't button that dickey clean through my epperdummis! I have to sport
+starched collars in this life on account o' you and your gran'mother
+bein' so chock full o' style; but I hope to the Lord I shan't have to
+wear 'em in another world!"
+
+"You won't," his wife responded with the snap of a dish towel, "or if
+you do, they'll wilt with the heat."
+
+Rose smiled, but the soft hand with which she tied the neckcloth about
+the old man's withered neck pacified his spirit, and he smiled knowingly
+back at her as she took her seat at the breakfast table spread near the
+open kitchen door. She was a dazzling Rose, and, it is to be feared,
+a wasted one, for there was no one present to observe her clean pink
+calico and the still more subtle note struck in the green ribbon which
+was tied round her throat,--the ribbon that formed a sort of calyx, out
+of which sprang the flower of her face, as fresh and radiant as if it
+had bloomed that morning.
+
+"Give me my coffee turrible quick," said Mr. Wiley; "I must be down to
+the bridge 'fore they start dog-warpin' the side jam."
+
+"I notice you're always due at the bridge on churnin' days," remarked
+his spouse, testily.
+
+"'T ain't me as app'ints drivin' dates at Edgewood," replied the old
+man. "The boys'll hev a turrible job this year. The logs air ricked up
+jest like Rose's jack-straws; I never see 'em so turrible ricked up in
+all my exper'ence; an' Lije Dennett don' know no more 'bout pickin' a
+jam than Cooper's cow. Turrible sot in his ways, too; can't take a
+mite of advice. I was tellin' him how to go to work on that bung that's
+formed between the gre't gray rock an' the shore,--the awfullest place
+to bung that there is between this an' Biddeford,--and says he: 'Look
+here, I've be'n boss on this river for twelve year, an' I'll be doggoned
+if I'm goin' to be taught my business by any man!' 'This ain't no
+river,' says I, 'as you'd know,' says I, 'if you'd ever lived on the
+Kennebec.' 'Pity you hed n't stayed on it,' says he. 'I wish to the land
+I hed,' says I. An' then I come away, for my tongue's so turrible spry
+an' sarcustic that I knew if I stopped any longer I should stir up
+strife. There's some folks that'll set on addled aigs year in an' year
+out, as if there wa'n't good fresh ones bein' laid every day; an' Lije
+Dennett's one of 'em, when it comes to river-drivin'."
+
+"There's lots o' folks as have made a good livin' by mindin' their own
+business," observed the still sententious Mrs. Wiley, as she speared a
+soda biscuit with her fork.
+
+"Mindin' your own business is a turrible selfish trade," responded
+her husband loftily. "If your neighbor is more ignorant than what you
+are,--partic'larly if he's as ignorant as Cooper's cow,--you'd ought,
+as a Kennebec man an' a Christian, to set him on the right track,
+though it's always a turrible risky thing to do." Rose's grandfather was
+called, by the irreverent younger generation, sometimes "Turrible Wiley"
+and sometimes "Old Kennebec," because of the frequency with which these
+words appeared in his conversation. There were not wanting those of late
+who dubbed him Uncle Ananias, for reasons too obvious to mention. After
+a long, indolent, tolerably truthful, and useless life, he had, at
+seventy-five, lost sight of the dividing line between fact and fancy,
+and drew on his imagination to such an extent that he almost staggered
+himself when he began to indulge in reminiscence. He was a feature of
+the Edgewood "drive," being always present during the five or six days
+that it was in progress, sometimes sitting on the river-bank, sometimes
+leaning over the bridge, sometimes reclining against the butt-end of
+a huge log, but always chewing tobacco and expectorating to incredible
+distances as he criticized and damned impartially all the expedients in
+use at the particular moment.
+
+"I want to stay down by the river this afternoon," said Rose. "Ever
+so many of the girls will be there, and all my sewing is done up. If
+grandpa will leave the horse for me, I'll take the drivers' lunch to
+them at noon, and bring the dishes back in time to wash them before
+supper."
+
+"I suppose you can go, if the rest do," said her grandmother, "though
+it's an awful lazy way of spendin' an afternoon. When I was a girl there
+was no such dawdlin' goin' on, I can tell you. Nobody thought o' lookin'
+at the river in them days; there was n't time."
+
+"But it's such fun to watch the logs!" Rose exclaimed. "Next to dancing,
+the greatest fun in the world."
+
+"'Specially as all the young men in town will be there, watchin', too,"
+was the grandmother's reply. "Eben Brooks an' Richard Bean got home
+yesterday with their doctors' diplomas in their pockets. Mrs. Brooks
+says Eben stood forty-nine in a class o' fifty-five, an' seemed
+consid'able proud of him; an' I guess it is the first time he ever stood
+anywheres but at the foot. I tell you when these fifty-five new doctors
+git scattered over the country there'll be consid'able many folks
+keepin' house under ground. Dick Bean's goin' to stop a spell with Rufe
+an' Steve Waterman. That'll make one more to play in the river."
+
+"Rufus ain't hardly got his workin' legs on yit," allowed Mr. Wiley,
+"but Steve's all right. He's a turrible smart driver, an' turrible
+reckless, too. He'll take all the chances there is, though to a man
+that's lived on the Kennebec there ain't what can rightly be called any
+turrible chances on the Saco."
+
+"He'd better be 'tendin' to his farm," objected Mrs. Wiley.
+
+"His hay is all in," Rose spoke up quickly, "and he only helps on the
+river when the farm work is n't pressing. Besides, though it's all play
+to him, he earns his two dollars and a half a day."
+
+"He don't keer about the two and a half," said her grandfather. "He jest
+can't keep away from the logs. There's some that can't. When I first
+moved here from Gard'ner, where the climate never suited me--"
+
+
+"The climate of any place where you hev regular work never did an'
+never will suit you," remarked the old man's wife; but the interruption
+received no comment: such mistaken views of his character were too
+frequent to make any impression.
+
+"As I was sayin', Rose," he continued, "when we first moved here from
+Gard'ner, we lived neighbor to the Watermans. Steve an' Rufus was little
+boys then, always playin' with a couple o' wild cousins o' theirn,
+consid'able older. Steve would scare his mother pretty nigh to death
+stealin' away to the mill to ride on the 'carriage,' 'side o' the log
+that was bein' sawed, hitchin' clean out over the river an' then jerkin'
+back 'most into the jaws o' the machinery."
+
+"He never hed any common sense to spare, even when he was a young one,"
+remarked Mrs. Wiley; "and I don't see as all the 'cademy education
+his father throwed away on him has changed him much." And with this
+observation she rose from the table and went to the sink.
+
+"Steve ain't nobody's fool," dissented the old man; "but he's kind o'
+daft about the river. When he was little he was allers buildin' dams in
+the brook, an' sailin' chips, an' runnin' on the logs; allers choppin'
+up stickins an' raftin' 'em together in the pond. I cai'late Mis'
+Waterman died consid'able afore her time, jest from fright, lookin' out
+the winders and seein' her boys slippin' between the logs an' gittin'
+their daily dousin'. She could n't understand it, an' there's a heap o'
+things women-folks never do an' never can understand,--jest because they
+_air_ women-folks."
+
+"One o' the things is men, I s'pose," interrupted Mrs. Wiley.
+
+"Men in general, but more partic'larly husbands," assented Old Kennebec;
+"howsomever, there's another thing they don't an' can't never take in,
+an' that's sport. Steve does river-drivin' as he would horse-racin' or
+tiger-shootin' or tight-rope dancin'; an' he always did from a boy. When
+he was about twelve to fifteen, he used to help the river-drivers spring
+and fall, reg'lar. He could n't do nothin' but shin up an' down the
+rocks after hammers an' hatchets an' ropes, but he was turrible
+pleased with his job. 'Stepanfetchit,' they used to call him them
+days,--Stepanfetchit Waterman."
+
+"Good name for him yet," came in acid tones from the sink. "He's still
+steppin' an' fetchin', only it's Rose that's doin' the drivin' now."
+
+"I'm not driving anybody, that I know of," answered Rose, with
+heightened color, but with no loss of her habitual self-command.
+
+"Then, when he graduated from errants," went on the crafty old man, who
+knew that when breakfast ceased, churning must begin, "Steve used to
+get seventy-five cents a day helpin' clear up the river--if you can call
+this here silv'ry streamlet a river. He'd pick off a log here an' there
+an' send it afloat, an' dig out them that hed got ketched in the rocks,
+and tidy up the banks jest like spring house-cleanin'. If he'd hed any
+kind of a boss, an' hed be'n trained on the Kennebec, he'd 'a' made a
+turrible smart driver, Steve would."
+
+"He'll be drownded, that's what'll become o' him," prophesied Mrs. Wiley;
+"specially if Rose encourages him in such silly foolishness as ridin'
+logs from his house down to ourn, dark nights."
+
+"Seein' as how Steve built ye a nice pigpen last month, 'pears to me
+you might have a good word for him now an' then, mother," remarked Old
+Kennebec, reaching for his second piece of pie.
+
+"I wa'n't a mite deceived by that pigpen, no more'n I was by Jed Towle's
+hencoop, nor Ivory Dunn's well-curb, nor Pitt Packard's shed-steps. If
+you hed ever kep' up your buildin's yourself, Rose's beaux would n't hev
+to do their courtin' with carpenters' tools."
+
+"It's the pigpen an' the hencoop you want to keep your eye on, mother,
+not the motives of them as made 'em. It's turrible onsettlin' to inspeck
+folks' motives too turrible close."
+
+"Riding a log is no more to Steve than riding a horse, so he says,"
+interposed Rose, to change the subject; "but I tell him that a horse
+does n't revolve under you, and go sideways at the same time that it is
+going forwards."
+
+"Log-ridin' ain't no trick at all to a man of sperit," said Mr. Wiley.
+"There's a few places in the Kennebec where the water's too shaller to
+let the logs float, so we used to build a flume, an' the logs would whiz
+down like arrers shot from a bow. The boys used to collect by the side
+o' that there flume to see me ride a log down, an' I've watched 'em drop
+in a dead faint when I spun by the crowd; but land! you can't drownd
+some folks, not without you tie nail-kags to their head an' feet an'
+drop 'em in the falls; I've rid logs down the b'ilin'est rapids o' the
+Kennebec an' never lost my head. I remember well the year o' the gre't
+freshet, I rid a log from--"
+
+"There, there, father, that'll do," said Mrs. Wiley, decisively. "I'll
+put the cream in the churn, an' you jest work off' some o' your steam by
+bringin' the butter for us afore you start for the bridge. It don't
+do no good to brag afore your own women-folks; work goes consid'able
+better'n stories at every place 'cept the loafers' bench at the tavern."
+
+And the baffled raconteur, who had never done a piece of work cheerfully
+in his life, dragged himself reluctantly to the shed, where, before
+long, one could hear him moving the dasher up and down sedately to his
+favorite "churning tune" of
+
+  Broad is the road that leads to death,
+    And thousands walk together there;
+  But Wisdom shows a narrow path,
+    With here and there a traveler.
+
+
+
+
+III. The Edgewood "Drive"
+
+
+Just where the bridge knits together the two little villages of Pleasant
+River and Edgewood, the glassy mirror of the Saco broadens suddenly,
+sweeping over the dam in a luminous torrent. Gushes of pure amber mark
+the middle of the dam, with crystal and silver at the sides, and from
+the seething vortex beneath the golden cascade the white spray dashes
+up in fountains. In the crevices and hollows of the rocks the mad water
+churns itself into snowy froth, while the foam-flecked torrent, deep,
+strong, and troubled to its heart, sweeps majestically under the bridge,
+then dashes between wooded shores piled high with steep masses of rock,
+or torn and riven by great gorges.
+
+There had been much rain during the summer, and the Saco was very
+high, so on the third day of the Edgewood drive there was considerable
+excitement at the bridge, and a goodly audience of villagers from both
+sides of the river. There were some who never came, some who had no
+fancy for the sight, some to whom it was an old story, some who were
+too busy, but there were many to whom it was the event of events, a
+never-ending source of interest.
+
+Above the fall, covering the placid surface of the river, thousands of
+logs lay quietly "in boom" until the "turning out" process, on the last
+day of the drive, should release them and give them their chance
+of display, their brief moment of notoriety, their opportunity of
+interesting, amusing, exciting, and exasperating the onlookers by their
+antics.
+
+Heaps of logs had been cast up on the rocks below the dam, where they
+lay in hopeless confusion, adding nothing, however, to the problem of
+the moment, for they too bided their time. If they had possessed wisdom,
+discretion, and caution, they might have slipped gracefully over the
+falls and, steering clear of the hidden ledges (about which it would
+seem they must have heard whispers from the old pine trees along the
+river), have kept a straight course and reached their destination
+without costing the Edgewood Lumber Company a small fortune. Or, if
+they had inclined toward a jolly and adventurous career, they could have
+joined one of the various jams or "bungs," stimulated by the thought
+that any one of them might be a key-log, holding for a time the entire
+mass in its despotic power. But they had been stranded early in the
+game, and, after lying high and dry for weeks, would be picked off one
+by one and sent downstream.
+
+In the tumultuous boil, the foaming hubbub and flurry at the foot of
+the falls, one enormous peeled log wallowed up and clown like a huge
+rhinoceros, greatly pleasing the children by its clumsy cavortings. Some
+conflict of opposing forces kept it ever in motion, yet never set it
+free. Below the bridge were always the real battle-grounds, the scenes
+of the first and the fiercest conflicts. A ragged ledge of rock,
+standing well above the yeasty torrent, marked the middle of the
+river. Stephen had been stranded there once, just at dusk, on a stormy
+afternoon in spring. A jam had broken under the men, and Stephen, having
+taken too great risks, had been caught on the moving mass, and, leaping
+from log to log, his only chance for life had been to find a footing on
+Gray Rock, which was nearer than the shore.
+
+Rufus was ill at the time, and Mrs. Waterman so anxious and nervous
+that processions of boys had to be sent up to the River Farm, giving the
+frightened mother the latest bulletins of her son's welfare. Luckily,
+the river was narrow just at the Gray Rock, and it was a quite possible
+task, though no easy one, to lash two ladders together and make a narrow
+bridge on which the drenched and shivering man could reach the shore.
+There were loud cheers when Stephen ran lightly across the slender
+pathway that led to safety--ran so fast that the ladders had scarce time
+to bend beneath his weight. He had certainly "taken chances," but when
+did he not do that? The logger's life is one of "moving accidents by
+flood and field," and Stephen welcomed with wild exhilaration every
+hazard that came in his path. To him there was never a dull hour from
+the moment that the first notch was cut in the tree (for he sometimes
+joined the boys in the lumber camp just for a frolic) till the later
+one when the hewn log reached its final destination. He knew nothing
+of "tooling" a four-in-hand through narrow lanes or crowded
+thoroughfares,--nothing of guiding a horse over the hedges and through
+the pitfalls of a stiff bit of hunting country; his steed was the
+rearing, plunging, kicking log, and he rode it like a river god.
+
+The crowd loves daring, and so it welcomed Stephen with bravos, but it
+knew, as he knew, that he was only doing his duty by the Company, only
+showing the Saco that man was master, only keeping the old Waterman name
+in good repute. "Ye can't drownd some folks," Old Kennebec had said, as
+he stood in a group on the shore; "not without you tie sand-bags to 'em
+an' drop 'em in the Great Eddy. I'm the same kind; I remember when I was
+stranded on jest sech a rock in the Kennebec, only they left me there
+all night for dead, an' I had to swim the rapids when it come daylight."
+
+"We're well acquainted with that rock and them rapids," exclaimed one of
+the river-drivers, to the delight of the company.
+
+Rose had reason to remember Stephen's adventure, for he had clambered
+up the bank, smiling and blushing under the hurrahs of the boys, and,
+coming to the wagon where she sat waiting for her grandfather, had
+seized a moment to whisper: "Did you care whether I came across safe,
+Rose? Say you did!"
+
+Stephen recalled that question, too, on this August morning; perhaps
+because this was to be a red-letter day, and some time, when he had a
+free moment,--some time before supper, when he and Rose were sitting
+apart from the others, watching the logs,--he intended again to ask her
+to marry him. This thought trembled in him, stirring the deeps of his
+heart like a great wave, almost sweeping him off his feet when he held
+it too close and let it have full sway. It would be the fourth time
+that he had asked Rose this question of all questions, but there was
+no unerceptible difference in his excitement, for there was always the
+possible chance that she might change her mind and say yes, if only for
+variety. Wanting a thing continuously, unchangingly, unceasingly, year
+after year, he thought,--longing to reach it as the river longed to
+reach the sea,--such wanting might, in course of time, mean having.
+
+Rose drove up to the bridge with the men's luncheon, and the under boss
+came up to take the baskets and boxes from the back of the wagon.
+
+"We've had a reg'lar tussle this mornin', Rose," he said. "The logs
+are determined not to move. Ike Billings, that's the han'somest and
+fluentest all-round swearer on the Saco, has tried his best on the side
+jam. He's all out o' cuss-words and there hain't a log budged. Now, stid
+o' dog-warpin' this afternoon, an' lettin' the oxen haul off all them
+stubborn logs by main force, we're goin' to ask you to set up on the
+bank and smile at the jam. 'Land! she can do it!' says Ike a minute ago.
+'When Rose starts smilin',' he says, 'there ain't a jam nor a bung in
+_me_ that don't melt like wax and jest float right off same as the logs
+do when they get into quiet, sunny water.'"
+
+Rose blushed and laughed, and drove up the hill to Mite Shapley's, where
+she put up the horse and waited till the men had eaten their luncheon.
+The drivers slept and had breakfast and supper at the Billings house, a
+mile down-river, but for several years Mrs. Wiley had furnished the
+noon meal, sending it down piping hot on the stroke of twelve. The boys
+always said that up or down the whole length of the Saco there was
+no such cooking as the Wileys', and much of this praise was earned by
+Rose's serving. It was the old grandmother who burnished the tin
+plates and dippers till they looked like silver; for--crotchety and
+sharp-tongued as she was--she never allowed Rose to spoil her hands with
+soft soap and sand: but it was Rose who planned and packed, Rose who
+hemmed squares of old white table-cloths and sheets to line the baskets
+and keep things daintily separate, Rose, also, whose tarts and cakes
+were the pride and admiration of church sociables and sewing societies.
+
+Where could such smoking pots of beans be found? A murmur of ecstatic
+approval ran through the crowd when the covers were removed. Pieces of
+sweet home-fed pork glistened like varnished mahogany on the top of the
+beans, and underneath were such deeps of fragrant juice as come only
+from slow fires and long, quiet hours in brick ovens. Who else could
+steam and bake such mealy loaves of brown bread, brown as plum-pudding,
+yet with no suspicion of sogginess? Who such soda biscuits, big,
+feathery, tasting of cream, and hardly needing butter? And green-apple
+pies! Could such candied lower crusts be found elsewhere, or more
+delectable filling? Or such rich, nutty doughnuts?--doughnuts that had
+spurned the hot fat which is the ruin of so many, and risen from its
+waves like golden-brown Venuses.
+
+"By the great seleckmen!" ejaculated Jed Towle, as he swallowed his
+fourth, "I'd like to hev a wife, two daughters, and four sisters like
+them Wileys, and jest set still on the river-bank an' hev 'em cook
+victuals for me. I'd hev nothin' to wish for then but a mouth as big as
+the Saco's."
+
+"And I wish this custard pie was the size o' Bonnie Eagle Pond," said
+Ike Billings. "I'd like to fall into the middle of it and eat my way
+out!"
+
+"Look at that bunch o' Chiny asters tied on t' the bail o' that
+biscuit-pail!" said Ivory Dunn. "That's the girl's doin's, you bet;
+women-folks don't seem to make no bo'quets after they git married. Let's
+divide 'em up an' wear 'em drivin' this afternoon; mebbe they'll ketch
+the eye so 't our rags won't show so bad. Land! it's lucky my hundred
+days is about up! If I don't git home soon, I shall be arrested for
+goin' without clo'es. I set up 'bout all night puttin' these blue
+patches in my pants an' tryin' to piece together a couple of old
+red-flannel shirts to make one whole one. That's the worst o' drivin' in
+these places where the pretty girls make a habit of comin' down to the
+bridge to see the fun. You hev to keep rigged up jest so stylish; you
+can't git no chance at the rum bottle, an' you even hev to go a leetle
+mite light on swearin'."
+
+
+
+
+IV. "Blasphemious Swearin'"
+
+"Steve Waterman's an awful nice feller," exclaimed Ivory Dunn just
+then. Stephen had been looking intently across the river, watching the
+Shapleys' side door, from which Rose might issue at any moment; and at
+this point in the discussion he had lounged away from the group, and,
+moving toward the bridge, began to throw pebbles idly into the water.
+
+"He's an awful smart driver for one that don't foller drivin' the
+year round," continued Ivory; "and he's the awfullest clean-spoken,
+soft-spoken feller I ever see."
+
+"There's be'n two black sheep in his family a'ready, an' Steve kind
+o' feels as if he'd ought to be extry white," remarked Jed Towle. "You
+fellers that belonged to the old drive remember Pretty Quick Waterman
+well enough? Steve's mother brought him up."
+
+Yes; most of them remembered the Waterman twins, Stephen's cousins, now
+both dead,--Slow Waterman, so moderate in his steps and actions that you
+had to fix a landmark somewhere near him to see if he moved; and Pretty
+Quick, who shone by comparison with his twin. "I'd kind o' forgot that
+Pretty Quick Waterman was cousin to Steve," said the under boss; "he
+never worked with me much, but he wa'n't cut off the same piece o' goods
+as the other Watermans. Great hemlock! but he kep' a cussin' dictionary,
+Pretty Quick did! Whenever he heard any new words he must 'a' writ 'em
+down, an' then studied 'em all up in the winter-time, to use in the
+spring drive."
+
+"Swearin' 's a habit that hed ought to be practiced with turrible
+caution," observed old Mr. Wiley, when the drivers had finished luncheon
+and taken out their pipes. "There's three kinds o' swearin',--plain
+swearin', profane swearin', an' blasphemious swearin'. Logs air jest
+like mules: there's times when a man can't seem to rip up a jam in good
+style 'thout a few words that's too strong for the infant classes in
+Sunday-schools; but a man hed n't ought to tempt Providence. When he's
+ridin' a log near the falls at high water, or cuttin' the key-log in a
+jam, he ain't in no place for blasphemious swearin'; jest a little
+easy, perlite 'damn' is 'bout all he can resk, if he don't want to git
+drownded an' hev his ghost walkin' the river-banks till kingdom come.
+
+"You an' I, Long, was the only ones that seen Pretty Quick go, wa'n't
+we?" continued Old Kennebec, glancing at Long Abe Dennett (cousin to
+Short Abe), who lay on his back in the grass, the smoke-wreaths rising
+from his pipe, and the steel spikes in his heavy, calked-sole boots
+shining in the sun.
+
+"There was folks on the bridge," Long answered, "but we was the only
+ones near enough to see an' hear. It was so onexpected, an' so soon
+over, that them as was watchin' upstream, where the men was to work on
+the falls, would n't 'a' hed time to see him go down. But I did, an'
+nobody ain't heard me swear sence, though it's ten years ago. I allers
+said it was rum an' bravadder that killed Pretty Quick Waterman that
+day. The boys hed n't give him a 'dare' that he hed n't took up. He
+seemed like he was possessed, an' the logs was the same way; they was
+fairly wild, leapin' around in the maddest kind o' water you ever see.
+The river was b'ilin' high that spring; it was an awful stubborn jam,
+an' Pretty Quick, he'd be'n workin' on it sence dinner."
+
+"He clumb up the bank more'n once to have a pull at the bottle that was
+hid in the bushes," interpolated Mr. Wiley. "Like as not; that was his
+failin'. Well, most o' the boys were on the other side o' the river,
+workin' above the bridge, an' the boss hed called Pretty Quick to come
+off an' leave the jam till mornin', when they'd get horses an' dog-warp
+it off, log by log. But when the boss got out o' sight, Pretty Quick
+jest stood right still, swingin' his axe, an' blasphemin' so it would
+freeze your blood, vowin' he would n't move till the logs did, if he
+stayed there till the crack o' doom. Jest then a great, ponderous log,
+that hed be'n churnin' up an' down in the falls for a week, got free an'
+come blunderin' an' thunderin' down-river. Land! it was chock full o'
+water, an' looked 'bout as big as a church! It come straight along,
+butt-end foremost, an' struck that jam, full force, so 't every log in
+it shivered. There was a crack,--the crack o' doom, sure enough, for
+Pretty Quick,--an' one o' the logs le'p' right out an' struck him jest
+where he stood, with his axe in the air, blasphemin'. The jam kind o'
+melted an' crumbled up, an' in a second Pretty Quick was whirlin' in the
+white water. He never riz,--at least where we could see him,--an' we did
+n't find him for a week. That's the whole story, an' I guess Steve takes
+it as a warnin'. Anyway, he ain't no friend to rum nor swearin', Steve
+ain't. He knows Pretty Quick's ways shortened his mother's life, an' you
+notice what a sharp lookout he keeps on Rufus."
+
+"He needs it," Ike Billings commented tersely.
+
+"Some men seem to lose their wits when they're workin' on logs,"
+observed Mr. Wiley, who had deeply resented Long Dennett's telling of a
+story which he knew fully as well and could have told much better. "Now,
+nat'rally, I've seen things on the Kennebec--"
+
+"Three cheers for the Saco! Hats off, boys!" shouted Jed Towle, and his
+directions were followed with a will.
+
+"As I was sayin'," continued the old man, peacefully, "I've seen things
+on the Kennebec that would n't happen on a small river, an' I've be'n in
+turrible places an' taken turrible resks resks that would 'a' turned a
+Saco River man's hair white; but them is the times when my wits work the
+quickest. I remember once I was smokin' my pipe when a jam broke
+under me. 'T was a small jam, or what we call a small jam on the
+Kennebec,--only about three hundred thousand pine logs. The first thing
+I knowed, I was shootin' back an' forth in the b'ilin' foam, hangin' on
+t' the end of a log like a spider. My hands was clasped round the log,
+and I never lost control o' my pipe. They said I smoked right along,
+jest as cool an' placid as a pond-lily."
+
+"Why 'd you quit drivin'?" inquired Ivory.
+
+"My strength wa'n't ekal to it," Mr. Wiley responded sadly. "I was all
+skin, bones, an' nerve. The Comp'ny would n't part with me altogether,
+so they give me a place in the office down on the wharves."
+
+"That wa'n't so bad," said Jed Towle; "why did n't you hang on to it,
+so's to keep in sight o' the Kennebec?"
+
+"I found I could n't be confined under cover. My liver give all out,
+my appetite failed me, an' I wa'n't wuth a day's wages. I'd learned
+engineerin' when I was a boy, an' I thought I'd try runnin' on the road
+a spell, but it did n't suit my constitution. My kidneys ain't turrible
+strong, an' the doctors said I'd have Bright's disease if I did n't git
+some kind o' work where there wa'n't no vibrations."
+
+"Hard to find, Mr. Wiley; hard to find!" said Jed Towle.
+
+"You're right," responded the old man feelingly. "I've tried all kinds
+o' labor. Some of 'em don't suit my liver, some disagrees with my
+stomach, and the rest of 'em has vibrations; so here I set, high an' dry
+on the banks of life, you might say, like a stranded log."
+
+As this well-known simile fell upon the ear, there was a general stir in
+the group, for Turrible Wiley, when rhetorical, sometimes grew tearful,
+and this was a mood not to be encouraged.
+
+"All right, boss," called Ike Billings, winking to the boys; "we'll be
+there in a jiffy!" for the luncheon hour had flown, and the work of the
+afternoon was waiting for them. "You make a chalk-mark where you left
+off, Mr. Wiley, an' we'll hear the rest tomorrer; only don't you forgit
+nothin'! Remember 't was the Kennebec you was talkin' about."
+
+"I will, indeed," responded the old man. "As I was sayin' when
+interrupted, I may be a stranded log, but I'm proud that the mark o' the
+Gard'ner Lumber Comp'ny is on me, so 't when I git to my journey's end
+they'll know where I belong and send me back to the Kennebec. Before
+I'm sawed up I'd like to forgit this triflin' brook in the sight of a
+good-sized river, an' rest my eyes on some full-grown logs, 'stead o'
+these little damn pipestems you boys are playin' with!"
+
+
+
+
+
+V. The Game of Jackstraws
+
+There was a roar of laughter at the old man's boast, but in a moment all
+was activity. The men ran hither and thither like ants, gathering their
+tools. There were some old-fashioned pick-poles, straight, heavy levers
+without any "dog," and there were modern pick-poles and peaveys, for
+every river has its favorite equipment in these things. There was no
+dynamite in those days to make the stubborn jams yield, and the dog-warp
+was in general use. Horses or oxen, sometimes a line of men, stood on
+the river-bank. A long rope was attached by means of a steel spike
+to one log after another, and it was dragged from the tangled mass.
+Sometimes, after unloading the top logs, those at the bottom would rise
+and make the task easier; sometimes the work would go on for hours with
+no perceptible progress, and Mr. Wiley would have opportunity to tell
+the bystanders of a "turrible jam" on the Kennebec that had cost the
+Lumber Company ten thousand dollars to break.
+
+There would be great arguments on shore, among the villagers as well as
+among the experts, as to the particular log which might be a key to the
+position. The boss would study the problem from various standpoints,
+and the drivers themselves would pass from heated discussion into long
+consultations.
+
+"They're paid by the day," Old Kennebec would philosophize to the
+doctor; "an' when they're consultin' they don't hev to be doggin', which
+is a turrible sight harder work."
+
+Rose had created a small sensation, on one occasion, by pointing out to
+the under boss the key-log in a jam. She was past mistress of the pretty
+game of jackstraws, much in vogue at that time. The delicate little
+lengths of polished wood or bone were shaken together and emptied on the
+table. Each jackstraw had one of its ends fashioned in the shape of some
+sort of implement,--a rake, hoe, spade, fork, or mallet. All the pieces
+were intertwined by the shaking process, and they lay as they fell, in a
+hopeless tangle. The task consisted in taking a tiny pick-pole, scarcely
+bigger than a match, and with the bit of curved wire on the end lifting
+off the jackstraws one by one without stirring the pile or making
+it tremble. When this occurred, you gave place to your opponent, who
+relinquished his turn to you when ill fortune descended upon him, the
+game, which was a kind of river-driving and jam-picking in miniature,
+being decided by the number of pieces captured and their value. No
+wonder that the under boss asked Rose's advice as to the key-log. She
+had a fairy's hand, and her cunning at deciding the pieces to be moved,
+and her skill at extricating and lifting them from the heap, were looked
+upon in Edgewood as little less than supernatural. It was a favorite
+pastime; and although a man's hand is ill adapted to it, being
+over-large and heavy, the game has obvious advantages for a lover in
+bringing his head very close to that of his beloved adversary. The
+jackstraws have to be watched with a hawk's eagerness, since the
+"trembling" can be discerned only by a keen eye; but there were moments
+when Stephen was willing to risk the loss of a battle if he could watch
+Rose's drooping eyelashes, the delicate down on her pink cheek, and the
+feathery curls that broke away from her hair.
+
+He was looking at her now from a distance, for she and Mite Shapley were
+assisting Jed Towle to pile up the tin plates and tie the tin dippers
+together. Next she peered into one of the bean-pots, and seemed pleased
+that there was still something in its depths; then she gathered the
+fragments neatly together in a basket, and, followed by her friend,
+clambered down the banks to a shady spot where the Boomshers, otherwise
+known as the Crambry family, were "lined up" expectantly.
+
+It is not difficult to find a single fool in any community, however
+small; but a family of fools is fortunately somewhat rarer. Every
+county, however, can boast of one fool-family, and York County is
+always in the fashion, with fools as with everything else. The
+unique, much-quoted, and undesirable Boomshers could not be claimed
+as indigenous to the Saco valley, for this branch was an offshoot of a
+still larger tribe inhabiting a distant township. Its beginnings were
+shrouded in mystery. There was a French-Canadian ancestor somewhere, and
+a Gypsy or Indian grandmother. They had always intermarried from time
+immemorial. When one of the selectmen of their native place had been
+asked why the Boomshers always married cousins, and why the habit was
+not discouraged, he replied that he really did n't know; he s'posed they
+felt it would be kind of odd to go right out and marry a stranger.
+
+Lest "Boomsher" seem an unusual surname, it must be explained that
+the actual name was French and could not be coped with by Edgewood or
+Pleasant River, being something as impossible to spell as to
+pronounce. As the family had lived for the last few years somewhere
+near the Killick Cranberry Meadows, they were called--and completely
+described in the calling--the Crambry fool-family. A talented and much
+traveled gentleman who once stayed over night at the Edgewood tavern,
+proclaimed it his opinion that Boomsher had been gradually corrupted
+from Beaumarchais. When he wrote the word on his visiting card and
+showed it to Mr. Wiley, Old Kennebec had replied, that in the judgment
+of a man who had lived in large places and seen a turrible lot o' life,
+such a name could never have been given either to a Christian or a
+heathen family, that the way in which the letters was thrown together
+into it, and the way in which they was sounded when read out loud, was
+entirely ag'in reason. It was true, he said, that Beaumarchais, bein'
+such a fool-name, might 'a' be'n invented a-purpose for a fool-family,
+but he would n't hold even with callin' 'em Boomsher; Crambry was well
+enough for 'em an' a sight easier to speak.
+
+Stephen knew a good deal about the Crambrys, for he passed their
+so-called habitation in going to one of his wood-lots. It was only
+a month before that he had found them all sitting outside their
+broken-down fence, surrounded by decrepit chairs, sofas, tables,
+bedsteads, bits of carpet, and stoves.
+
+"What's the matter?" he called out from his wagon.
+
+"There ain't nothin' the matter," said Alcestis Crambry. "Father's
+dead, an' we're dividin' up the furnerchure."
+
+Alcestis was the pride of the Crambrys, and the list of his attainments
+used often to be on his proud father's lips. It was he who was the
+largest, "for his size," in the family; he who could tell his brothers
+Paul and Arcadus "by their looks"; he who knew a sour apple from a sweet
+one the minute he bit it; he who, at the early age of ten, was bright
+enough to point to the cupboard and say, "Puddin', dad!"
+
+Alcestis had enjoyed, in consequence of his unusual intellectual powers,
+some educational privileges, and the Killick school-mistress well
+remembered his first day at the village seat of learning. Reports of
+what took place in this classic temple from day to day may have been
+wafted to the dull ears of the boy, who was not thought ready for school
+until he had attained the ripe age of twelve. It may even have been
+that specific rumors of the signs, symbols, and hieroglyphics used
+in educational institutions had reached him in the obscurity of his
+cranberry meadows. At all events, when confronted by the alphabet chart,
+whose huge black capitals were intended to capture the wandering eyes
+of the infant class, Alcestis exhibited unusual, almost unnatural,
+excitement. "That is 'A,' my boy," said the teacher genially, as she
+pointed to the first character on the chart. "Good God, is that 'A'!"
+cried Alcestis, sitting down heavily on the nearest bench. And neither
+teacher nor scholars could discover whether he was agreeably surprised
+or disappointed in the letter,--whether he had expected, if he ever
+encountered it, to find it writhing in coils on the floor of a cage, or
+whether it simply bore no resemblance to the ideal already established
+in his mind.
+
+Mrs. Wiley had once tried to make something of Mercy, the oldest
+daughter of the family, but at the end of six weeks she announced that
+a girl who could n't tell whether the clock was going "forrards or
+backwards," and who rubbed a pocket-handkerchief as long as she did a
+sheet, would be no help in her household.
+
+The Crambrys had daily walked the five or six miles from their home to
+the Edgewood bridge during the progress of the drive, not only for
+the social and intellectual advantages to be gained from the company
+present, but for the more solid compensation of a good meal. They all
+adored Rose, partly because she gave them food, and partly because she
+was sparkling and pretty and wore pink dresses that caught their dull
+eyes.
+
+
+The afternoon proved a lively one. In the first place, one of the
+younger men slipped into the water between two logs, part of a lot
+chained together waiting to be let out of the boom. The weight of
+the mass higher up and the force of the current wedged him in rather
+tightly, and when he had been "pried" out he declared that he felt like
+an apple after it had been squeezed in the cider-mill, so he drove home,
+and Rufus Waterman took his place.
+
+Two hours' hard work followed this incident, and at the end of that time
+the "bung" that reached from the shore to Waterman's Ledge (the rock
+where Pretty Quick met his fate) was broken up, and the logs that
+composed it were started down-river. There remained now only the great
+side jam at Gray Rock. This had been allowed to grow, gathering logs as
+they drifted past, thus making higher water and a stronger current on
+the other side of the rock, and allowing an easier passage for the logs
+at that point.
+
+All was excitement now, for, this particular piece of work accomplished,
+the boom above the falls would be "turned out," and the river would once
+more be clear and clean at the Edgewood bridge.
+
+Small boys, perching on the rocks with their heels hanging, hands and
+mouths full of red Astrakhan apples, cheered their favorites to the
+echo, while the drivers shouted to one another and watched the signs and
+signals of the boss, who could communicate with them only in that way,
+so great was the roar of the water.
+
+The jam refused to yield to ordinary measures. It was a difficult
+problem, for the rocky river-bed held many a snare and pitfall. There
+was a certain ledge under the water, so artfully placed that every log
+striking under its projecting edges would wedge itself firmly there,
+attracting others by its evil example.
+
+"That galoot-boss ought to hev shoved his crew down to that jam this
+mornin'," grumbled Old Kennebec to Alcestis Crambry, who was always his
+most loyal and attentive listener. "But he would n't take no advice, not
+if Pharaoh nor Boaz nor Herod nor Nicodemus come right out o' the Bible
+an' give it to him. The logs air contrary today. Sometimes they'll go
+along as easy as an old shoe, an' other times they'll do nothin' but
+bung, bung, bung! There's a log nestlin' down in the middle o' that jam
+that I've be'n watchin' for a week. It's a cur'ous one, to begin with;
+an' then it has a mark on it that you can reco'nize it by. Did ye ever
+hear tell o' George the Third, King of England, Alcestis, or ain't he
+known over to the crambry medders? Well, once upon a time men used to
+go through the forests over here an' slash a mark on the trunks o' the
+biggest trees. That was the royal sign, as you might say, an' meant that
+the tree was to be taken over to England to make masts an' yard-arms for
+the King's ships. What made me think of it now is that the King's mark
+was an arrer, an' it's an arrer that's on that there log I'm showin'
+ye. Well, sir, I seen it fust at Milliken's Mills a Monday. It was in
+trouble then, an' it's be'n in trouble ever sence. That's allers the
+way; there'll be one pesky, crooked, contrary, consarne'd log that can't
+go anywheres without gittin' into difficulties. You can yank it out an'
+set it afloat, an' before you hardly git your doggin' iron off of it,
+it'll be snarled up agin in some new place. From the time it's chopped
+down to the day it gets to Saco, it costs the Comp'ny 'bout ten times
+its pesky valler as lumber. Now they've sent over to Benson's for a team
+of horses, an' I bate ye they can't git 'em. I wish i was the boss on
+this river, Alcestis."
+
+"I wish I was," echoed the boy.
+
+"Well, your head-fillin' ain't the right kind for a boss, Alcestis, an'
+you'd better stick to dry land. You set right down here while I go back
+a piece an' git the pipe out o' my coat pocket. I guess nothin' ain't
+goin' to happen for a few minutes."
+
+The surmise about the horses, unlike most of Old Kennebec's, proved
+to be true. Benson's pair had gone to Portland with a load of hay;
+accordingly the tackle was brought, the rope was adjusted to a log, and
+five of the drivers, standing on the river-bank, attempted to drag it
+from its intrenched position. It refused to yield the fraction of an
+inch. Rufus and Stephen joined the five men, and the augmented crew of
+seven were putting all their strength on the rope when a cry went up
+from the watchers on the bridge. The "dog" had loosened suddenly, and
+the men were flung violently to the ground. For a second they were
+stunned both by the surprise and by the shock of the blow, but in the
+same moment the cry of the crowd swelled louder. Alcestis Crambry had
+stolen, all unnoticed, to the rope, and had attempted to use his feeble
+powers for the common good. When the blow came he fell backward, and,
+making no effort to control the situation, slid over the bank and into
+the water.
+
+The other Crambrys, not realizing the danger, laughed audibly, but there
+was no jeering from the bridge.
+
+Stephen had seen Alcestis slip, and in the fraction of a moment had
+taken off his boots and was coasting down the slippery rocks behind him;
+in a twinkling he was in the water, almost as soon as the boy himself.
+
+"Doggoned idjut!" exclaimed Old Kennebec, tearfully. "Wuth the hull
+fool-family! If I hed n't 'a' be'n so old, I'd 'a' jumped in myself, for
+you can't drownd a Wiley, not without you tie nail-kags to their head
+an' feet an' drop 'em in the falls."
+
+Alcestis, who had neither brains, courage, nor experience, had, better
+still, the luck that follows the witless. He was carried swiftly down
+the current; but, only fifty feet away, a long, slender log, wedged
+between two low rocks on the shore, jutted out over the water, almost
+touching its surface. The boy's clothes were admirably adapted to the
+situation, being full of enormous rents. In some way the end of the log
+caught in the rags of Alcestis's coat and held him just seconds enough
+to enable Stephen to swim to him, to seize him by the nape of the neck,
+to lift him on the log, and thence to the shore. It was a particularly
+bad place for a landing, and there was nothing to do but to lower ropes
+and drag the drenched men to the high ground above.
+
+Alcestis came to his senses in ten or fifteen minutes, and seemed as
+bright as usual, with a kind of added swagger at being the central
+figure in a dramatic situation.
+
+"I wonder you hed n't stove your brains out, when you landed so turrible
+suddent on that rock at the foot of the bank," said Mr. Wiley to him.
+
+"I should, but I took good care to light on my head," responded
+Alcestis; a cryptic remark which so puzzled Old Kennebec that he mused
+over it for some hours.
+
+
+
+
+
+VI. Hearts And Other Hearts
+
+Stephen had brought a change of clothes, as he had a habit of being
+ducked once at least during the day; and since there was a halt in the
+proceedings and no need of his services for an hour or two, he found
+Rose and walked with her to a secluded spot where they could watch the
+logs and not be seen by the people.
+
+"You frightened everybody almost to death, jumping into the river,"
+chided Rose.
+
+Stephen laughed. "They thought I was a fool to save a fool, I suppose."
+
+"Perhaps not as bad as that, but it did seem reckless."
+
+"I know; and the boy, no doubt, would be better off dead; but so should
+I be, if I could have let him die."
+
+Rose regarded this strange point of view for a moment, and then silently
+acquiesced in it. She was constantly doing this, and she often felt that
+her mental horizon broadened in the act; but she could not be sure that
+Stephen grew any dearer to her because of his moral altitudes.
+
+"Besides," Stephen argued, "I happened to be nearest to the river, and
+it was my job."
+
+"How do you always happen to be nearest to the people in trouble, and
+why is it always your 'job'?"
+
+"If there are any rewards for good conduct being distributed, I'm right
+in line with my hand stretched out," Stephen replied, with meaning in
+his voice.
+
+Rose blushed under her flowery hat as he led the way to a bench under a
+sycamore tree that overhung the water.
+
+She had almost convinced herself that she was as much in love with
+Stephen Waterman as it was in her nature to be with anybody. He was
+handsome in his big way, kind, generous, temperate, well educated, and
+well-to-do. No fault could be found with his family, for his mother had
+been a teacher, and his father, though a farmer, a college graduate.
+Stephen himself had had one year at Bowdoin, but had been recalled, as
+the head of the house, when his father died. That was a severe blow;
+but his mother's death, three years after, was a grief never to be quite
+forgotten. Rose, too, was the child of a gently bred mother, and all her
+instincts were refined. Yes; Stephen in himself satisfied her in all the
+larger wants of her nature, but she had an unsatisfied hunger for the
+world,--the world of Portland, where her cousins lived; or, better
+still, the world of Boston, of which she heard through Mrs. Wealthy
+Brooks, whose nephew Claude often came to visit her in Edgewood. Life
+on a farm a mile and a half distant from post-office and stores; life
+in the house with Rufus, who was rumored to be somewhat wild and
+unsteady,--this prospect seemed a trifle dull and uneventful to the
+trivial part of her, though to the better part it was enough. The better
+part of her loved Stephen Waterman, dimly feeling the richness of his
+nature, the tenderness of his affection, the strength of his character.
+Rose was not destitute either of imagination or sentiment. She did not
+relish this constant weighing of Stephen in the balance: he was too good
+to be weighed and considered. She longed to be carried out of herself on
+a wave of rapturous assent, but something seemed to hold her back,--some
+seed of discontent with the man's environment and circumstances, some
+germ of longing for a gayer, brighter, more varied life. No amount of
+self-searching or argument could change the situation. She always loved
+Stephen more or less: more when he was away from her, because she never
+approved his collars nor the set of his shirt bosom; and as he naturally
+wore these despised articles of apparel whenever he proposed to her, she
+was always lukewarm about marrying him and settling down on the River
+Farm. Still, today she discovered in herself, with positive gratitude,
+a warmer feeling for him than she had experienced before. He wore a new
+and becoming gray flannel shirt, with the soft turn-over collar that
+belonged to it, and a blue tie, the color of his kind eyes. She knew
+that he had shaved his beard at her request not long ago, and that when
+she did not like the effect as much as she had hoped, he had meekly
+grown a mustache for her sake; it did seem as if a man could hardly do
+more to please an exacting ladylove.
+
+And she had admired him unreservedly when he pulled off his boots and
+jumped into the river to save Alcestis Crambry's life, without giving a
+single thought to his own.
+
+And was there ever, after all, such a noble, devoted, unselfish fellow,
+or a better brother? And would she not despise herself for rejecting
+him simply because he was countrified, and because she longed to see the
+world of the fashion plates in the magazines?
+
+"The logs are so like people!" she exclaimed as they sat down. "I could
+name nearly every one of them for somebody in the village. Look at Mite
+Shapley, that dancing little one, slipping over the falls and skimming
+along the top of the water, keeping out of all the deep places, and
+never once touching the rocks."
+
+Stephen fell into her mood. "There's Squire Anderson coming down
+crosswise and bumping everything in reach. You know he's always buying
+lumber and logs without knowing what he is going to do with them. They
+just lie and rot by the roadside. The boys always say that a toadstool
+is the old Squire's 'mark' on a log."
+
+"And that stout, clumsy one is Short Dennett.--What are you doing,
+Stephen?"
+
+"Only building a fence round this clump of harebells," Stephen replied.
+"They've just got well rooted, and if the boys come skidding down the
+bank with their spiked shoes, the poor things will never hold up their
+heads again. Now they're safe.--Oh, look, Rose! There come the minister
+and his wife!"
+
+A portly couple of peeled logs, exactly matched in size, came
+ponderously over the falls together, rose within a second of each other,
+joined again, and swept under the bridge side by side.
+
+"And--oh! oh!--Dr. and Mrs. Cram just after them! Isn't that funny?"
+laughed Rose, as a very long, slender pair of pines swam down, as close
+to each other as if they had been glued in that position. Rose thought,
+as she watched them, who but Stephen would have cared what became of the
+clump of delicate harebells. How gentle such a man would be to a woman!
+How tender his touch would be if she were ill or in trouble!
+
+Several single logs followed,--crooked ones, stolid ones, adventurous
+ones, feeble swimmers, deep divers. Some of them tried to start a small
+jam on their own account; others stranded themselves for good and all,
+as Rose and Stephen sat there side by side, with little Dan Cupid for an
+invisible third on the bench.
+
+"There never was anything so like people," Rose repeated, leaning
+forward excitedly. "And, upon my word, the minister and doctor couples
+are still together. I wonder if they'll get as far as the fails at
+Union? That would be an odd place to part, would n't it--Union?"
+
+Stephen saw his opportunity, and seized it.
+
+"There's a reason, Rose, why two logs go downstream better than one, and
+get into less trouble. They make a wider path, create more force and a
+better current. It's the same way with men and women. Oh, Rose, there
+is n't a man in the world that's loved you as long, or knows how to love
+you any better than I do. You're just like a white birch sapling, and
+I'm a great, clumsy fir tree; but if you 'll only trust yourself to me,
+Rose, I'll take you safely down-river."
+
+Stephen's big hand closed on Rose's little one; she returned its
+pressure softly and gave him the kiss that with her, as with him, meant
+a promise for all the years to come. The truth and passion in the man
+had broken the girl's bonds for the moment. Her vision was clearer, and,
+realizing the treasures of love and fidelity that were being offered
+her, she accepted them, half unconscious that she was not returning
+them in kind. How is the belle of two villages to learn that she should
+"thank Heaven, fasting, for a good man's love"?
+
+And Stephen? He went home in the dusk, not knowing whether his feet were
+touching the solid earth or whether he was treading upon rainbows.
+
+Rose's pink calico seemed to brush him as he walked in the path that was
+wide enough only for one. His solitude was peopled again when he fed
+the cattle, for Rose's face smiled at him from the haymow; and when he
+strained the milk, Rose held the pans.
+
+His nightly tasks over, he went out and took his favorite seat under the
+apple tree. All was still, save for the crickets' ceaseless chirp,
+the soft thud of an August sweeting dropping in the grass, and the
+swish-swash of the water against his boat, tethered in the Willow Cove.
+
+He remembered when he first saw Rose, for that must have been when he
+began to love her, though he was only fourteen and quite unconscious
+that the first seed had been dropped in the rich soil of his boyish
+heart.
+
+He was seated on the kerosene barrel in the Edgewood post-office, which
+was also the general country store, where newspapers, letters, molasses,
+nails, salt codfish, hairpins, sugar, liver pills, canned goods, beans,
+and ginghams dwelt in genial proximity. When she entered, just a
+little pink-and-white slip of a thing with a tin pail in her hand and a
+sunbonnet falling off her wavy hair, Stephen suddenly stopped swinging
+his feet. She gravely announced her wants, reading them from a bit of
+paper,--1 quart molasses, 1 package ginger, 1 lb. cheese, 2 pairs shoe
+laces, 1 card shirt buttons.
+
+While the storekeeper drew off the molasses she exchanged shy looks with
+Stephen, who, clean, well-dressed, and carefully mothered as he was,
+felt all at once uncouth and awkward, rather as if he were some clumsy
+lout pitch-forked into the presence of a fairy queen. He offered her the
+little bunch of bachelor's buttons he held in his hand, augury of
+the future, had he known it,--and she accepted them with a smile. She
+dropped her memorandum; he picked it up, and she smiled again, doing
+still more fatal damage than in the first instance. No words were
+spoken, but Rose, even at ten, had less need of them than most of her
+sex, for her dimples, aided by dancing eyes, length of lashes, and curve
+of lips, quite took the place of conversation. The dimples tempted,
+assented, denied, corroborated, deplored, protested, sympathized, while
+the intoxicated beholder cudgeled his brain for words or deeds which
+should provoke and evoke more and more dimples.
+
+The storekeeper hung the molasses pail over Rose's right arm and tucked
+the packages under her left, and as he opened the mosquito-netting door
+to let her pass out she looked back at Stephen, perched on the kerosene
+barrel, just a little girl, a little glance, a little dimple, and
+Stephen was never quite the same again. The years went on, and the boy
+became man, yet no other image had ever troubled the deep, placid waters
+of his heart. Now, after many denials, the hopes and longings of his
+nature had been answered, and Rose had promised to marry him. He would
+sacrifice his passion for logging and driving in the future, and become
+a staid farmer and man of affairs, only giving himself a river holiday
+now and then. How still and peaceful it was under the trees, and how
+glad his mother would be to think that the old farm would wake from its
+sleep, and a woman's light foot be heard in the sunny kitchen!
+
+Heaven was full of silent stars, and there was a moonglade on the water
+that stretched almost from him to Rose. His heart embarked on that
+golden pathway and sailed on it to the farther shore. The river was free
+of logs, and under the light of the moon it shone like a silver mirror.
+The soft wind among the fir branches breathed Rose's name; the river,
+rippling against the shore, sang "Rose "; and as Stephen sat there
+dreaming of the future, his dreams, too, could have been voiced in one
+word, and that word "Rose."
+
+
+
+
+VII. The Little House
+
+
+The autumn days flew past like shuttles in a loom. The river reflected
+the yellow foliage of the white birch and the scarlet of the maples. The
+wayside was bright with goldenrod, with the red tassels of the sumac,
+with the purple frost-flower and feathery clematis.
+
+If Rose was not as happy as Stephen, she was quietly content, and
+felt that she had more to be grateful for than most girls, for Stephen
+surprised her with first one evidence and then another of thoughtful
+generosity. In his heart of hearts he felt that Rose was not wholly his,
+that she reserved, withheld something; and it was the subjugation of
+this rebellious province that he sought. He and Rose had agreed to wait
+a year for their marriage, in which time Rose's cousin would finish
+school and be ready to live with the old people; meanwhile Stephen had
+learned that his maiden aunt would be glad to come and keep house for
+Rufus. The work at the River Farm was too hard for a girl, so he had
+persuaded himself of late, and the house was so far from the village
+that Rose was sure to be lonely. He owned a couple of acres between
+his place and the Edgewood bridge, and here, one afternoon only a month
+after their engagement, he took Rose to see the foundations of a little
+house he was building for her. It was to be only a story-and-a-half
+cottage of six small rooms, the two upper chambers to be finished off
+later on. Stephen had placed it well back from the road, leaving space
+in front for what was to be a most wonderful arrangement of flower-beds,
+yet keeping a strip at the back, on the river-brink, for a small
+vegetable garden. There had been a house there years before-so many
+years that the blackened ruins were entirely overgrown; but a few elms
+and an old apple-orchard remained to shade the new dwelling and give
+welcome to the coming inmates.
+
+Stephen had fifteen hundred dollars in bank, he could turn his hand to
+almost anything, and his love was so deep that Rose's plumb-line had
+never sounded bottom; accordingly he was able, with the help of two
+steady workers, to have the roof on before the first of November. The
+weather was clear and fine, and by Thanksgiving clapboards, shingles,
+two coats of brown paint, and even the blinds had all been added. This
+exhibition of reckless energy on Stephen's part did not wholly commend
+itself to the neighborhood.
+
+"Steve's too turrible spry," said Rose's grandfather; "he'll trip
+himself up some o' these times."
+
+"_You_ never will," remarked his better half, sagely.
+
+"The resks in life come along fast enough, without runnin' to meet 'em,"
+continued the old man. "There's good dough in Rose, but it ain't more'n
+half riz. Let somebody come along an' drop in a little more yeast, or
+set the dish a little mite nearer the stove, an' you'll see what 'll
+happen."
+
+"Steve's kept house for himself some time, an' I guess he knows more
+about bread-makin' than you do."
+
+"There don't nobody know more'n I do about nothin', when my pipe's
+drawin' real good an' nobody's thornin' me to go to work," replied Mr.
+Wiley; "but nobody's willin' to take the advice of a man that's seen
+the world an' lived in large places, an' the risin' generation is in a
+turrible hurry. I don' know how 't is: young folks air allers settin'
+the clock forrard an' the old ones puttin' it back."
+
+"Did you ketch anything for dinner when you was out this mornin'?" asked
+his wife.
+
+"No, I fished an' fished, till I was about ready to drop, an' I did git
+a few shiners, but land, they wa'n't as big as the worms I was ketchin'
+'em with, so i pitched 'em back in the water an' quit."
+
+During the progress of these remarks Mr. Wiley opened the door under the
+sink, and from beneath a huge iron pot drew a round tray loaded with a
+glass pitcher and half a dozen tumblers, which he placed carefully
+on the kitchen table. "This is the last day's option I've got on this
+lemonade-set," he said, "an' if I'm goin' to Biddeford tomorrer I've got
+to make up my mind here an' now."
+
+With this observation he took off his shoes, climbed in his stocking
+feet to the vantage ground of a kitchen chair, and lifted a stone china
+pitcher from a corner of the highest cup-board shelf where it had been
+hidden. "This lemonade's gittin' kind o' dusty," he complained. "I
+cal'lated to hev a kind of a spree on it when I got through choosin'
+Rose's weddin' present, but I guess the pig 'll hev to help me out."
+The old man filled one of the glasses from the pitcher, pulled up the
+kitchen shades to the top, put both hands in his pockets, and walked
+solemnly round the table, gazing at his offering from every possible
+point of view. There had been three lemonade-sets in the window of a
+Biddeford crockery store when Mr. Wiley chanced to pass by, and he had
+brought home the blue and green one on approval. To th': casual cyc it
+would have appeared as quite uniquely hideous until the red and yellow
+or the purple and orange ones had been seen; after that, no human
+being could have made a decision, where each was so unparalleled in its
+ugliness, and Old Kennebec's confusion of mind would have been perfectly
+understood by the connoisseur.
+
+"How do you like it with the lemonade in, mother?" he inquired eagerly.
+"The thing that plagues me most is that the red an' yaller one I hed
+home last week lights up better'n this, an' I believe I'll settle on
+that; for as I was thinkin' last night in bed, lemonade is mostly an
+evenin' drink an' Rose won't be usin' the set much by daylight. Root
+beer looks the han'somest in this purple set, but Rose loves lemonade
+better'n beer, so I guess I'll pack up this one an' change it tomorrer.
+Mebbe when I get it out o' sight an' give the lemonade to the pig I'll
+be easier in my mind."
+
+In the opinion of the community at large Stephen's forehandedness in the
+matter of preparations for his marriage was imprudence, and his desire
+for neatness and beauty flagrant extravagance. The house itself was a
+foolish idea, it was thought, but there were extenuating circumstances,
+for the maiden aunt really needed a home, and Rufus was likely to marry
+before long and take his wife to the River Farm. It was to be hoped
+in his case that he would avoid the snares of beauty and choose a
+good stout girl who would bring the dairy back to what it was in Mrs.
+Waterman's time.
+
+All winter long Stephen labored on the inside of the cottage, mostly
+by himself. He learned all trades in succession, Love being his only
+master. He had many odd days to spare from his farm work, and if he had
+not found days he would have taken nights. Scarcely a nail was driven
+without Rose's advice; and when the plastering was hard and dry, the
+wallpapers were the result of weeks of consultation.
+
+Among the quiet joys of life there is probably no other so deep, so
+sweet, so full of trembling hope and delight, as the building and making
+of a home,--a home where two lives are to be merged in one and flow on
+together, a home full of mysterious and delicious possibilities, hidden
+in a future which is always rose-colored.
+
+Rose's sweet little nature broadened under Stephen's influence; but she
+had her moments of discontent and unrest, always followed quickly by
+remorse.
+
+At the Thanksgiving sociable some one had observed her turquoise
+engagement ring,--some one who said that such a hand was worthy of a
+diamond, that turquoises were a pretty color, but that there was
+only one stone for an engagement ring, and that was a diamond. At the
+Christmas dance the same some one had said that her waltzing would make
+her "all the rage" in Boston. She wondered if it were true, and wondered
+whether, if she had not promised to marry Stephen, some splendid being
+from a city would have descended from his heights, bearing diamonds
+in his hand. Not that she would have accepted them; she only wondered.
+These disloyal thoughts came seldom, and she put them resolutely away,
+devoting herself with all the greater assiduity to her muslin curtains
+and ruffled pillow-shams. Stephen, too, had his momentary pangs. There
+were times when he could calm his doubts only by working on the little
+house. The mere sight of the beloved floors and walls and ceilings
+comforted his heart, and brought him good cheer.
+
+The winter was a cold one, so bitterly cold that even the rapid water at
+the Gray Rock was a mass of curdled yellow ice, something that had
+only occurred once or twice before within the memory of the oldest
+inhabitant.
+
+It was also a very gay season for Pleasant River and Edgewood. Never had
+there been so many card-parties, sleigh-rides, and tavern dances, and
+never such wonderful skating. The river was one gleaming, glittering
+thoroughfare of ice from Milliken's Mills to the dam at the Edgewood
+bridge. At sundown bonfires were built here and there on the mirror-like
+surface, and all the young people from the neighboring villages gathered
+on the ice; while detachments of merry, rosy-cheeked boys and girls,
+those who preferred coasting, met at the top of Brigadier Hill, from
+which one could get a longer and more perilous slide than from any other
+point in the township.
+
+Claude Merrill, in his occasional visits from Boston, was very much in
+evidence at the Saturday evening ice parties. He was not an artist
+at the sport himself, but he was especially proficient in the art of
+strapping on a lady's skates, and murmuring,--as he adjusted the last
+buckle,--"The prettiest foot and ankle on the river!" It cannot be
+denied that this compliment gave secret pleasure to the fair village
+maidens who received it, but it was a pleasure accompanied by electric
+shocks of excitement. A girl's foot might perhaps be mentioned, if a
+fellow were daring enough, but the line was rigidly drawn at the ankle,
+which was not a part of the human frame ever alluded to in the polite
+society of Edgewood at that time.
+
+Rose, in her red linsey-woolsey dress and her squirrel furs and cap,
+was the life of every gathering, and when Stephen took her hand and they
+glided upstream, alone together in the crowd, he used to wish that they
+might skate on and on up the crystal ice-path of the river, to the moon
+itself, whither it seemed to lead them.
+
+
+
+
+VIII. The Garden of Eden
+
+But the Saco all this time was meditating one of its surprises. The
+snapping cold weather and the depth to which the water was frozen were
+aiding it in its preparation for the greatest event of the season. On
+a certain gray Saturday in March, after a week of mild temperature, it
+began to rain as if, after months of snowing, it really enjoyed a new
+form of entertainment. Sunday dawned with the very flood-gates of heaven
+opening, so it seemed. All day long the river was rising under its miles
+of unbroken ice, rising at the threatening rate of four inches an hour.
+
+Edgewood went to bed as usual that night, for the bridge at that point
+was set too high to be carried away by freshets, but at other villages
+whose bridges were in less secure position there was little sleep and
+much anxiety.
+
+At midnight a cry was heard from the men watching at Milliken's Mills.
+The great ice jam had parted from Rolfe's Island and was swinging out
+into the open, pushing everything before it. All the able-bodied men in
+the village turned out of bed, and with lanterns in hand began to clear
+the stores and mills, for it seemed that everything near the river-banks
+must go before that avalanche of ice.
+
+Stephen and Rufus were there helping to save the property of their
+friends and neighbors; Rose and Mite Shapley had stayed the night with
+a friend, and all three girls were shivering with fear and excitement as
+they stood near the bridge, watching the never-to-be-forgotten sight.
+It is needless to say that the Crambry family was on hand, for whatever
+instincts they may have lacked, the instinct for being on the spot
+when anything was happening, was present in them to the most remarkable
+extent. The town was supporting them in modest winter quarters somewhat
+nearer than Killick to the center of civilization, and the first alarm
+brought them promptly to the scene, Mrs. Crambry remarking at intervals:
+"If I'd known there'd be so many out I'd ought to have worn my bunnit;
+but I ain't got no bunnit, an' if I had they say I ain't got no head to
+wear it on!"
+
+By the time the jam neared the falls it had grown with its
+accumulations, until it was made up of tier after tier of huge ice
+cakes, piled side by side and one upon another, with heaps of trees and
+branches and drifting lumber holding them in place. Some of the blocks
+stood erect and towered like icebergs, and these, glittering in the
+lights of the twinkling lanterns, pushed solemnly forward, cracking,
+crushing, and cutting everything in their way. When the great mass
+neared the planing mill on the east shore the girls covered their eyes,
+expecting to hear the crash of the falling building; but, impelled by
+the force of some mysterious current, it shook itself ponderously,
+and then, with one magnificent movement, slid up the river-bank, tier
+following tier in grand confusion. This left a water way for the main
+drift; the ice broke in every direction, and down, down, down, from
+Bonnie Eagle and Moderation swept the harvest of the winter freezing. It
+came thundering over the dam, bringing boats, farming implements, posts,
+supports, and every sort of floating lumber with it; and cutting under
+the flour mill, tipped it cleverly over on its side and went crashing on
+its way down-river. At Edgewood it pushed colossal blocks of ice up the
+banks into the roadway, piling them end upon end ten feet in air. Then,
+tearing and rumbling and booming through the narrows, it covered the
+intervale at Pleasant Point and made a huge ice bridge below Union
+Falls, a bridge so solid that it stood there for days, a sight for all
+the neighboring villages.
+
+This exciting event would have forever set apart this winter from all
+others in Stephen's memory, even had it not been also the winter when
+he was building a house for his future wife. But afterwards, in looking
+back on the wild night of the ice freshet, Stephen remembered that
+Rose's manner was strained and cold and evasive, and that when he had
+seen her talking with Claude Merrill, it had seemed to him that that
+whippersnapper had looked at her as no honorable man in Edgewood ever
+looked at an engaged girl. He recalled his throb of gratitude that
+Claude lived at a safe distance, and his subsequent pang of remorse at
+doubting, for an instant, Rose's fidelity.
+
+So at length April came, the Saco was still high, turbid, and angry,
+and the boys were waiting at Limington Falls for the "Ossipee drive"
+to begin. Stephen joined them there, for he was restless, and the
+river called him, as it did every spring. Each stubborn log that he
+encountered gave him new courage and power of overcoming. The rush of
+the water, the noise and roar and dash, the exposure and danger, all
+made the blood run in his veins like new wine. When he came back to
+the farm, all the cobwebs had been blown from his brain, and his first
+interview with Rose was so intoxicating that he went immediately to
+Portland, and bought, in a kind of secret penitence for his former
+fears, a pale pink-flowered wall-paper for the bedroom in the new home.
+It had once been voted down by the entire advisory committee. Mrs. Wiley
+said that pink was foolish and was always sure to fade; and the
+border, being a mass of solid roses, was five cents a yard, virtually
+a prohibitive price. Mr. Wiley said he "should hate to hev a spell of
+sickness an' lay abed in a room where there was things growin' all over
+the place." He thought "rough-plastered walls, where you could lay an'
+count the spots where the roof leaked, was the most entertainin'
+in sickness." Rose had longed for the lovely pattern, but had sided
+dutifully with the prudent majority, so that it was with a feeling
+of unauthorized and illegitimate joy that Stephen papered the room at
+night, a few strips at a time.
+
+On the third evening, when he had removed all signs of his work, he
+lighted two kerosene lamps and two candles, finding the effect, under
+this illumination, almost too brilliant and beautiful for belief. Rose
+should never see it now, he determined, until the furniture was in
+place. They had already chosen the kitchen and bedroom things, though
+they would not be needed for some months; but the rest was to wait until
+summer, when there would be the hay-money to spend.
+
+Stephen did not go back to the River Farm till one o'clock that night;
+the pink bedroom held him in fetters too powerful to break. It looked
+like the garden of Eden, he thought. To be sure, it was only fifteen
+feet square; Eden might have been a little larger, possibly, but
+otherwise the pink bedroom had every advantage. The pattern of roses
+growing on a trellis was brighter than any flower-bed in June; and the
+border--well, if the border had been five dollars a foot Stephen would
+not have grudged the money when he saw the twenty running yards of rosy
+bloom rioting under the white ceiling.
+
+Before he blew out the last light he raised it high above his head and
+took one fond, final look. "It's the only place I ever saw," he thought,
+"that is pretty enough for her. She will look just as if she was growing
+here with all the other flowers, and I shall always think of it as the
+garden of Eden. I wonder, if I got the license and the ring and took her
+by surprise, whether she'd be married in June instead of August? I could
+be all ready if I could only persuade her."
+
+At this moment Stephen touched the summit of happiness; and it is a
+curious coincidence that as he was dreaming in his garden of Eden, the
+serpent, having just arrived at Edgewood, was sleeping peacefully at the
+house of Mrs. Brooks.
+
+It was the serpent's fourth visit that season, and he explained to
+inquiring friends that his former employer had sold the business, and
+that the new management, while reorganizing, had determined to enlarge
+the premises, the three clerks who had been retained having two weeks'
+vacation with half pay.
+
+It is extraordinary how frequently "wise serpents" are retained by the
+management on half, or even full, salary, while the services of the
+"harmless doves" are dispensed with, and they are set free to flutter
+where they will.
+
+
+
+
+IX. The Serpent
+
+
+Rose Wiley had the brightest eyes in Edgewood. It was impossible to
+look at her without realizing that her physical sight was perfect. What
+mysterious species of blindness is it that descends, now and then,
+upon human creatures, and renders them incapable of judgment or
+discrimination?
+
+Claude Merrill was a glove salesman in a Boston fancy-goods store. The
+calling itself is undoubtedly respectable, and it is quite conceivable
+that a man can sell gloves and still be a man; but Claude Merrill was a
+manikin. He inhabited a very narrow space behind a very short counter,
+but to him it seemed the earth and the fullness thereof.
+
+When, irreproachably neat and even exquisite in dress, he gave a
+Napoleonic glance at his array of glove-boxes to see if the female
+assistant had put them in proper order for the day, when, with that
+wonderful eye for detail that had wafted him to his present height
+of power, he pounced upon the powder-sprinklers and found them, as
+he expected, empty; when, with masterly judgment, he had made up and
+ticketed a basket of misfits and odd sizes to attract the eyes of women
+who were their human counterparts, he felt himself bursting with the
+pride and pomp of circumstance. His cambric handkerchief adjusted in
+his coat with the monogram corner well displayed, a last touch to
+the carefully trained lock on his forehead, and he was ready for his
+customers.
+
+"Six, did you say, miss? I should have thought five and three
+quarters--Attend to that gentleman, Miss Dix, please; I am very busy."
+
+"Six-and-a-half gray sue'de? Here they are, an exquisite shade. Shall
+I try them on? The right hand, if you will. Perhaps you'd better remove
+your elegant ring; I should n't like to have anything catch in the
+setting."
+
+"Miss Dix! Six-and-a-half black glace'--upper shelf, third box--for
+this lady. She's in a hurry. We shall see you often after this, I hope,
+madam."
+
+"No; we don't keep silk or lisle gloves. We have no call for them; our
+customers prefer kid."
+
+Oh, but he was in his element, was Claude Merrill; though the glamour
+that surrounded him in the minds of the Edgewood girls did not emanate
+wholly from his finicky little person: something of it was the glamour
+that belonged to Boston,--remote, fashionable, gay, rich, almost
+inaccessible Boston, which none could see without the expenditure of
+five or six dollars in railway fare, with the added extravagance of
+a night in a hotel, if one would explore it thoroughly and come home
+possessed of all its illimitable treasures of wisdom and experience.
+
+When Claude came to Edgewood for a Sunday, or to spend a vacation with
+his aunt, he brought with him something of the magic of a metropolis.
+Suddenly, to Rose's eye, Stephen looked larger and clumsier, his shoes
+were not the proper sort, his clothes were ordinary, his neckties were
+years behind the fashion. Stephen's dancing, compared with Claude's, was
+as the deliberate motion of an ox to the hopping of a neat little robin.
+When Claude took a girl's hand in the "grand right-and-left," it was
+as if he were about to try on a delicate glove; the manner in which he
+"held his lady" in the polka or schottische made her seem a queen. Mite
+Shapley was so affected by it that when Rufus attempted to encircle her
+for the mazurka she exclaimed, "Don't act as if you were spearing logs,
+Rufus!"
+
+Of the two men, Stephen had more to say, but Claude said more. He was
+thought brilliant in conversation; but what wonder, when one considered
+his advantages and his dazzling experiences! He had customers who were
+worth their thousands; ladies whose fingers never touched dish-water;
+ladies who would n't buy a glove of anybody else if they went
+bare-handed to the grave. He lived with his sister Maude Arthurlena in a
+house where there were twenty-two other boarders who could be seated at
+meals all at the same time, so immense was the dining-room. He ate his
+dinner at a restaurant daily, and expended twenty-five cents for it
+without blenching. He went to the theater once a week, and was often
+accompanied by "lady friends" who were "elegant dressers."
+
+In a moment of wrath Stephen had called him a "counter-jumper," but it
+was a libel. So short and rough a means of exit from his place of power
+was wholly beneath Claude's dignity. It was with a "Pardon me, Miss
+Dix," that, the noon hour having arrived, he squeezed by that slave and
+victim, and raising the hinged board that separated his kingdom from
+that of the ribbon department, passed out of the store, hat in hand,
+serene in the consciousness that though other clerks might nibble
+luncheon from a brown paper bag, he would speedily be indulging in an
+expensive repast; and Miss Dix knew it, and it was a part of his almost
+invincible attraction for her.
+
+It seemed flying in the face of Providence to decline the attentions of
+such a gorgeous butterfly of fashion simply because one was engaged to
+marry another man at some distant day.
+
+All Edgewood femininity united in saying that there never was such
+a perfect gentleman as Claude Merrill; and during the time when his
+popularity was at its height Rose lost sight of the fact that Stephen
+could have furnished the stuff for a dozen Claudes and have had enough
+left for an ordinary man besides.
+
+April gave place to May, and a veil hung between the lovers,--an
+intangible, gossamer-like thing, not to be seen with the naked eye, but,
+oh! so plainly to be felt. Rose hid herself thankfully behind it,
+while Stephen had not courage to lift a corner. She had twice been seen
+driving with Claude Merrill--that Stephen knew; but she had explained
+that there were errands to be done, that her grandfather had taken
+the horse, and that Mr. Merrill's escort had been both opportune and
+convenient for these practical reasons. Claude was everywhere present,
+the center of attraction, the observed of all observers. He was
+irresistible, contagious, almost epidemic. Rose was now gay, now silent;
+now affectionate, now distant, now coquettish; in fine, everything that
+was capricious, mysterious, agitating, incomprehensible.
+
+One morning Alcestis Crambry went to the post-office for Stephen and
+brought him back the newspapers and letters. He had hung about the River
+Farm so much that Stephen finally gave him bed and food in exchange for
+numberless small errands. Rufus was temporarily confined in a dark room
+with some strange pain and trouble in his eyes, and Alcestis proved of
+use in many ways. He had always been Rose's slave, and had often brought
+messages and notes from the Brier Neighborhood, so that when Stephen saw
+a folded note among the papers his heart gave a throb of anticipation.
+
+The note was brief, and when he had glanced through it he said: "This is
+not mine, Alcestis; it belongs to Miss Rose. Go straight back and give
+it to her as you were told; and another time keep your wits about you,
+or I'll send you back to Killick."
+
+Alcestis Crambry's ideas on all subjects were extremely vague. Claude
+Merrill had given him a letter for Rose, but his notion was that
+anything that belonged to her belonged to Stephen, and the Waterman
+place was much nearer than the Wileys', particularly at dinner-time!
+
+When the boy had slouched away, Stephen sat under the apple tree, now a
+mass of roseate bloom, and buried his face in his hands.
+
+It was not precisely a love-letter that he had read, nevertheless it
+blackened the light of the sun for him. Claude asked Rose to meet him
+anywhere on the road to the station and to take a little walk, as he was
+leaving that afternoon and could not bear to say good-bye to her in
+the presence of her grandmother. "_Under the circumstances_," he wrote,
+deeply underlining the words, "I cannot remain a moment longer in
+Edgewood, where I have been so happy and so miserable!" He did not refer
+to the fact that the time limit on his return-ticket expired that day,
+for his dramatic instinct told him that such sordid matters have no
+place in heroics.
+
+Stephen sat motionless under the tree for an hour, deciding on some plan
+of action. He had work at the little house, but he did not dare go there
+lest he should see the face of dead Love looking from the windows of the
+pink bedroom; dead Love, cold, sad, merciless. His cheeks burned as he
+thought of the marriage license and the gold ring hidden away upstairs
+in the drawer of his shaving stand. What a romantic fool he had been, to
+think he could hasten the glad day by a single moment! What a piece of
+boyish folly it had been, and how it shamed him in his own eyes!
+
+When train time drew near he took his boat and paddled downstream.
+If for the Finland lover's reindeer there was but one path in all the
+world, and that the one that led to Her, so it was for Stephen's canoe,
+which, had it been set free on the river by day or by night, might have
+floated straight to Rose.
+
+He landed at the usual place, a bit of sandy shore near the Wiley house,
+and walked drearily up the bank through the woods. Under the shade
+of the pines the white stars of the hepatica glistened and the pale
+anemones were coming into bloom. Partridge-berries glowed red under
+their glossy leaves, and clumps of violets sweetened the air. Squirrels
+chattered, woodpeckers tapped, thrushes sang; but Stephen was blind and
+deaf to all the sweet harbingers of spring.
+
+Just then he heard voices, realizing with a throb of delight that, at
+any rate, Rose had not left home to meet Claude, as he had asked her to
+do. Looking through the branches, he saw the two standing together, Mrs.
+Brooks's horse, with the offensive trunk in the back of the wagon, being
+hitched to a tree near by. There was nothing in the tableau to stir
+Stephen to fury, but he read between the lines and suffered as he
+read--suffered and determined to sacrifice himself if he must, so that
+Rose could have what she wanted, this miserable apology for a man. He
+had never been the husband for Rose; she must take her place in a larger
+community, worthy of her beauty and charm.
+
+Claude was talking and gesticulating ardently. Rose's head was bent and
+the tears were rolling down her cheeks. Suddenly Claude raised his hat,
+and with a passionate gesture of renunciation walked swiftly to the
+wagon, and looking back once, drove off with the utmost speed of which
+the Brooks's horse was capable,--Rose waving him a farewell with one
+hand and wiping her eyes with the other.
+
+
+
+
+X. The Turquoise Ring
+
+
+Stephen stood absolutely still in front of the opening in the trees, and
+as Rose turned she met him face to face. She had never dreamed his eyes
+could be so stern, his mouth so hard, and she gave a sob like a child.
+
+"You seem to be in trouble," Stephen said in a voice so cold she thought
+it could not be his.
+
+"I am not in trouble, exactly," Rose stammered, concealing her
+discomfiture as well as possible. "I am a little unhappy because I
+have made some one else unhappy; and now that you know it, you will be
+unhappy too, and angry besides, I suppose, though you've seen everything
+there was to see."
+
+"There is no occasion for sorrow," Stephen said. "I did n't mean to
+break in on any interview; I came over to give you back your freedom.
+If you ever cared enough for me to marry me, the time has gone by. I am
+willing to own that I over-persuaded you, but I am not the man to take a
+girl against her inclinations, so we will say good-bye and end the thing
+here and now. I can only wish"--here his smothered rage at fate almost
+choked him--"that, when you were selecting another husband, you had
+chosen a whole man!"
+
+Rose quivered with the scorn of his tone. "Size is n't everything!" she
+blazed.
+
+"Not in bodies, perhaps; but it counts for something in hearts and
+brains, and it is convenient to have a sense of honor that's at least as
+big as a grain of mustard-seed."
+
+"Claude Merrill is not dishonorable," Rose exclaimed impetuously; "or
+at least he is n't as bad as you think: he has never asked me to marry
+him."
+
+"Then he probably was not quite ready to speak, or perhaps you were not
+quite ready to hear," retorted Stephen, bitterly; "but don't let us have
+words,-there'll be enough to regret without adding those. I have seen,
+ever since New Year's, that you were not really happy or contented; only
+I would n't allow it to myself; I kept hoping against hope that I was
+mistaken. There have been times when I would have married you, willing
+or unwilling, but I did n't love you so well then; and now that there's
+another man in the case, it's different, and I'm strong enough to do the
+right thing. Follow your heart and be happy; in a year or two I shall be
+glad I had the grit to tell you so. Good-bye, Rose!"
+
+Rose, pale with amazement, summoned all her pride, and drawing the
+turquoise engagement ring from her finger, handed it silently to
+Stephen, hiding her face as he flung it vehemently down the river-bank.
+His dull eyes followed it and half uncomprehendingly saw it settle and
+glisten in a nest of brown pine-needles. Then he put out his hand for a
+last clasp and strode away without a word.
+
+Presently Rose heard first the scrape of his boat on the sand, then
+the soft sound of his paddles against the water, then nothing but
+the squirrels and the woodpeckers and the thrushes, then not even
+these,--nothing but the beating of her own heart.
+
+She sat down heavily, feeling as if she were wide awake for the first
+time in many weeks. How had things come to this pass with her?
+
+Claude Merrill had flattered her vanity and given her some moments of
+restlessness and dissatisfaction with her lot; but he had not until
+today really touched her heart or tempted her, even momentarily, from
+her allegiance to Stephen. His eyes had always looked unspeakable
+things; his voice had seemed to breathe feelings that he had never dared
+put in words; but today he had really stirred her, for although he had
+still been vague, it was easy to see that his love for her had passed
+all bounds of discretion. She remembered his impassioned farewells, his
+despair, his doubt as to whether he could forget her by plunging into
+the vortex of business, or whether he had better end it all in the
+river, as so many other broken-hearted fellows had done. She had been
+touched by his misery, even against her better judgment; and she had
+intended to confess it all to Stephen sometime, telling him that she
+should never again accept attentions from a stranger, lest a tragedy
+like this should happen twice in a lifetime.
+
+She had imagined that Stephen would be his large-minded,
+great-hearted, magnanimous self, and beg her to forget this fascinating
+will-o'-the-wisp by resting in his deeper, serener love. She had meant
+to be contrite and faithful, praying nightly that poor Claude might live
+down his present anguish, of which she had been the innocent cause.
+
+Instead, what had happened? She had been put altogether in the wrong.
+Stephen had almost cast her off, and that, too, without argument. He
+had given her her liberty before she had asked for it, taking it for
+granted, without question, that she desired to be rid of him. Instead
+of comforting her in her remorse, or sympathizing with her for so
+nobly refusing to shine in Claude's larger world of Boston, Stephen had
+assumed that she was disloyal in every particular.
+
+And pray how was she to cope with such a disagreeable and complicated
+situation?
+
+It would not be long before the gossips rolled under their tongues the
+delicious morsel of a broken engagement, and sooner or later she must
+brave the displeasure of her grandmother.
+
+And the little house--that was worse than anything. Her tears flowed
+faster as she thought of Stephen's joy in it, of his faithful labor, of
+the savings he had invested in it. She hated and despised herself
+when she thought of the house, and for the first time in her life she
+realized the limitations of her nature, the poverty of her ideals.
+
+What should she do? She had lost Stephen and ruined his life. Now, in
+order that she need not blight a second career, must she contrive to
+return Claude's love? To be sure, she thought, it seemed indecent to
+marry any other man than Stephen, when they had built a house together,
+and chosen wallpapers, and a kitchen stove, and dining-room chairs; but
+was it not the only way to evade the difficulties?
+
+Suppose that Stephen, in a fit of pique, should ask somebody else to
+share the new cottage?
+
+As this dreadful possibility came into view, Rose's sobs actually
+frightened the birds and the squirrels. She paced back and forth under
+the trees, wondering how she could have been engaged to a man for eight
+months and know so little about him as she seemed to know about Stephen
+Waterman today. Who would have believed he could be so autocratic, so
+severe, SS so unapproachable? Who could have foreseen that she, Rose
+Wiley, would ever be given up to another man,--handed over as coolly as
+if she had been a bale of cotton? She wanted to return Claude Merrill's
+love because it was the only way out of the tangle; but at the moment
+she almost hated him for making so much trouble, for hurting Stephen,
+for abasing her in her own eyes, and, above all, for giving her rustic
+lover the chance of impersonating an injured emperor.
+
+It did not simplify the situation to have Mite Shapley come in during
+the evening and run upstairs, uninvited, to sit on the foot of her bed
+and chatter.
+
+Rose had closed her blinds and lay in the dark, pleading a headache.
+Mite was in high feather. She had met Claude Merrill going to the
+station that afternoon. He was much too early for the train, which the
+station agent reported to be behind time, so he had asked her to take
+a drive. She did n't know how it happened, for he looked at his watch
+every now and then; but, anyway, they got to laughing and "carrying on,"
+and when they came back to the station the train had gone. Was n't that
+the greatest joke of the season? What did Rose suppose they did next?
+
+Rose did n't know and did n't care; her head ached too badly.
+
+Well, they had driven to Wareham, and Claude had hired a livery team
+there, and had been taken into Portland with his trunk, and she had
+brought Mrs. Brooks's horse back to Edgewood. Was n't that ridiculous?
+And had n't she cut out Rose where she least expected?
+
+Rose was distinctly apathetic, and Mite Shapley departed after a very
+brief call, leaving behind her an entirely new train of thought.
+
+If Claude Merrill were so love-blighted that he could only by the
+greatest self-control keep from flinging himself into the river, how
+could he conceal his sufferings so completely from Mite Shapley,--little
+shallow-pated, scheming coquette?
+
+
+"So that pretty Merrill feller has gone, has he, mother?" inquired Old
+Kennebec that night, as he took off his wet shoes and warmed his feet
+at the kitchen oven. "Well, it ain't a mite too soon. I allers distrust
+that pink-an'-white, rosy-posy kind of a man. One of the most turrible
+things that ever happened in Gard'ner was brought about by jest sech
+a feller. Mothers hed n't hardly ought to name their boy babies Claude
+without they expect 'em to play the dickens with the girls. I don' know
+nothin' 'bout the fust Claude, there ain't none of 'em in the Bible, air
+they, but whoever he was, I bate ye he hed a deceivin' tongue. If it
+hed n't be'n for me, that Claude in Gard'ner would 'a' run away with
+my brother's fust wife; an' I'll tell ye jest how I contrived to put a
+spoke in his wheel."
+
+But Mrs. Wiley, being already somewhat familiar with the circumstances,
+had taken her candle and retired to her virtuous couch.
+
+
+
+
+XI. Rose Sees the World
+
+
+Was this the world, after all? Rose asked herself; and, if so, what
+was amiss with it, and where was the charm, the bewilderment, the
+intoxication, the glamour?
+
+She had been glad to come to Boston, for the last two weeks in Edgewood
+had proved intolerable. She had always been a favorite heretofore, from
+the days when the boys fought for the privilege of dragging her sled
+up the hills, and filling her tiny mitten with peppermints, down to
+the year when she came home from the Wareham Female Seminary, an
+acknowledged belle and beauty. Suddenly she had felt her popularity
+dwindling. There was no real change in the demeanor of her
+acquaintances, but there was a certain subtle difference of atmosphere.
+Everybody sympathized tacitly with Stephen, and she did not wonder, for
+there were times when she secretly took his part against herself. Only
+a few candid friends had referred to the rupture openly in conversation,
+but these had been blunt in their disapproval.
+
+It seemed part of her ill fortune that just at this time Rufus should
+be threatened with partial blindness, and that Stephen's heart, already
+sore, should be torn with new anxieties. She could hardly bear to see
+the doctor's carriage drive by day after day, and hear night after night
+that Rufus was unresigned, melancholy, half mad; while Stephen, as the
+doctor said, was brother, mother, and father in one, as gentle as a
+woman, as firm as Gibraltar.
+
+These foes to her peace of mind all came from within; but without was
+the hourly reproach of her grandmother, whose scorching tongue touched
+every sensitive spot in the girl's nature and burned it like fire.
+
+Finally a way of escape opened. Mrs. Wealthy Brooks, who had always been
+rheumatic, grew suddenly worse. She had heard of a "magnetic" physician
+in Boston, also of one who used electricity with wonderful effect, and
+she announced her intention of taking both treatments impartially and
+alternately. The neighbors were quite willing that Wealthy Ann Brooks
+should spend the deceased Ezra's money in any way she pleased,--she
+had earned it, goodness knows, by living with him for twenty-five
+years,--but before the day for her departure arrived her right arm
+and knee became so much more painful that it was impossible for her to
+travel alone.
+
+At this juncture Rose was called upon to act as nurse and companion in
+a friendly way. She seized the opportunity hungrily as a way out of her
+present trouble; but, knowing what Mrs. Brooks's temper was in time of
+health, she could see clearly what it was likely to prove when pain and
+anguish wrung the brow.
+
+Rose had been in Boston now for some weeks, and she was sitting in the
+Joy Street boarding-house,--Joy Street, forsooth! It was nearly bedtime,
+and she was looking out upon a huddle of roofs and back yards, upon
+a landscape filled with clothes-lines, ash-barrels, and ill-fed cats.
+There were no sleek country tabbies, with the memory in their eyes of
+tasted cream, nothing but city-born, city-bred, thin, despairing cats of
+the pavement, cats no more forlorn than Rose herself.
+
+She had "seen Boston," for she had accompanied Mrs. Brooks in the
+horse-cars daily to the two different temples of healing where that
+lady worshiped and offered sacrifices. She had also gone with Maude
+Arthurlena to Claude Merrill's store to buy a pair of gloves, and had
+overheard Miss Dix (the fashionable "lady assistant" before mentioned)
+say to Miss Brackett of the ribbon department, that she thought Mr.
+Merrill must have worn his blinders that time he stayed so long in
+Edgewood. This bit of polished irony was unintelligible to Rose at
+first, but she mastered it after an hour's reflection. She was n't
+looking her best that day, she knew; the cotton dresses that seemed
+so pretty at home were common and countrified here, and her best black
+cashmere looked cheap and shapeless beside Miss Dix's brilliantine. Miss
+Dix's figure was her strong point, and her dressmaker was particularly
+skillful in the arts of suggestion, concealment, and revelation. Beauty
+has its chosen backgrounds. Rose in white dimity, standing knee deep in
+her blossoming brier bushes, the river running at her feet, dark pine
+trees behind her graceful head, sounded depths and touched heights of
+harmony forever beyond the reach of the modish Miss Dix, but she was out
+of her element and suffered accordingly.
+
+Rose had gone to walk with Claude one evening when she first arrived. He
+had shown her the State House and the Park Street Church, and sat with
+her on one of the benches in the Common until nearly ten. She knew that
+Mrs. Brooks had told her nephew of the broken engagement, but he made no
+reference to the matter, save to congratulate her that she was rid of
+a man who was so clumsy, so dull and behind the times, as Stephen
+Waterman, saying that he had always marveled she could engage herself to
+anybody who could insult her by offering her a turquoise ring.
+
+Claude was very interesting that evening, Rose thought, but
+rather gloomy and unlike his former self. He referred to his grave
+responsibilities, to the frail health of Maude Arthurlena, and to the
+vicissitudes of business. He vaguely intimated that his daily life in
+the store was not so pleasant as it had been formerly; that there
+were "those" (he would speak no more plainly) who embarrassed him with
+undesired attentions, "those" who, without the smallest shadow of right,
+vexed him with petty jealousies.
+
+Rose dared not ask questions on so delicate a topic, but she remembered
+in a flash Miss Dix's heavy eyebrows, snapping eyes, and high color.
+Claude seemed very happy that Rose had come to Boston, though he was
+surprised, knowing what a trial his aunt must be, now that she was so
+helpless. It was unfortunate, also, that Rose could not go on excursions
+without leaving his aunt alone, or he should have been glad to offer his
+escort. He pressed her hand when he left her at her door, telling her
+she could never realize what a comfort her friendship was to him;
+could never imagine how thankful he was that she had courageously freed
+herself from ties that in time would have made her wretched. His heart
+was full, he said, of feelings he dared not utter; but in the near
+future, when certain clouds had rolled by, he would unlock its
+treasures, and then--but no more tonight: he could not trust himself.
+
+Rose felt as if she were assuming one of the characters in a mysterious
+romance, such as unfolded itself only in books or in Boston; but
+thrilling as it was, it was nevertheless extremely unsatisfactory.
+
+Convinced that Claude Merrill was passionately in love with her, one of
+her reasons for coming to Boston had been to fall more deeply in love
+with him, and thus heal some, at least, of the wounds she had inflicted.
+It may have been a foolish idea, but after three weeks it seemed still
+worse,--a useless one; for after several interviews she felt herself
+drifting farther and farther from Claude; and if he felt any burning
+ambition to make her his own, he certainly concealed it with admirable
+art. Given up, with the most offensive magnanimity, by Stephen, and not
+greatly desired by Claude,--that seemed the present status of proud Rose
+Wiley of the Brier Neighborhood.
+
+It was June, she remembered, as she leaned out of the open window; at
+least it was June in Edgewood, and she supposed for convenience' sake
+they called it June in Boston. Not that it mattered much what the poor
+city prisoners called it. How beautiful the river would be at home, with
+the trees along the banks in full leaf! How she hungered and thirsted
+for the river,--to see it sparkle in the sunlight; to watch the
+moonglade stretching from one bank to the other; to hear the soft lap
+of the water on the shore, and the distant murmur of the falls at the
+bridge! And the Brier Neighborhood would be at its loveliest, for the
+wild roses were in blossom by now. And the little house! How sweet it
+must look under the shade of the elms, with the Saco rippling at the
+back! Was poor Rufus still lying in a darkened room, and was Stephen
+nursing him,--disappointed Stephen, dear, noble old Stephen?
+
+
+
+
+XII. Gold and Pinchbeck
+
+
+Just then Mrs. Brooks groaned in the next room and called Rose, who went
+in to minister to her real needs, or to condole with her fancied ones,
+whichever course of action appeared to be the more agreeable at the
+moment.
+
+Mrs. Brooks desired conversation, it seemed, or at least she desired an
+audience for a monologue, for she recognized no antiphonal obligations
+on the part of her listeners. The doctors were not doing her a speck of
+good, and she was just squandering money in a miserable boarding-house,
+when she might be enjoying poor health in her own home; and she did n't
+believe her hens were receiving proper care, and she had forgotten
+to pull down the shades in the spare room, and the sun would fade the
+carpet out all white before she got back, and she did n't believe Dr.
+Smith's magnetism was any more use than a cat's foot, nor Dr. Robinson's
+electricity any better than a bumblebee's buzz, and she had a great mind
+to go home and try Dr. Lord from Bonnie Eagle; and there was a letter
+for Rose on the bureau, which had come before supper, but the shiftless,
+lazy, worthless landlady had forgotten to send it up till just now.
+
+The letter was from Mite Shapley, but Rose could read only half of it to
+Mrs. Brooks, little beside the news that the Waterman barn, the finest
+barn in the whole township, had been struck by lightning and burned
+to the ground. Stephen was away at the time, having taken Rufus to
+Portland, where an operation on his eyes would shortly be performed at
+the hospital, and one of the neighbors was sleeping at the River Farm
+and taking care of the cattle; still the house might not have been saved
+but for one of Alcestis Crambry's sudden bursts of common sense, which
+occurred now quite regularly. He succeeded not only in getting the
+horses out of the stalls, but gave the alarm so promptly that the whole
+neighborhood was soon on the scene of action. Stephen was the only man,
+Mite reminded Rose, who ever had any patience with, or took any pains to
+teach, Alcestis, but he never could have expected to be rewarded in this
+practical way. The barn was only partly insured; and when she had met
+Stephen at the station next day, and condoled with him on his loss,
+he had said: "Oh, well, Mite, a little more or less does n't make much
+difference just now."
+
+"The rest would n't interest you, Mrs. Brooks," said Rose, precipitately
+preparing to leave the room.
+
+"Something about Claude, I suppose," ventured that astute lady. "I think
+Mite kind of fancied him. I don't believe he ever gave her any real
+encouragement; but he'd make love to a pump, Claude Merrill would, and
+so would his father before him. How my sister Abby made out to land him
+we never knew, for they said he'd proposed to every woman in the town
+of Bingham, not excepting the wooden Indian girl in front of the
+cigar-store, and not one of 'em but our Abby ever got a chance to name
+the day. Abby was as set as the everlastin' hills, and if she'd made up
+her mind to have a man he could n't wriggle away from her nohow in
+the world. It beats all how girls do run after these slick-haired,
+sweet-tongued, Miss Nancy kind o' fellers, that ain't but little good as
+beaux an' worth less than nothing as husbands."
+
+Rose scarcely noticed what Mrs. Brooks said, she was too anxious to read
+the rest of Mite Shapley's letter in the quiet of her own room.
+
+   Stephen looks thin and pale [so it ran on], but he does not allow anybody
+   to sympathize with him. I think you ought to know something that I have n't
+   told before for fear of hurting your feelings; but if I were in your place
+   I'd like to hear everything, and then you'll know how to act when you come
+   home. Just after you left, Stephen ploughed up all the land in front of
+   your new house,--every inch of it, all up and down the road, between the
+   fence and the front doorstep,--and then he planted corn where you were
+   going to have your flower-beds. He has closed all the blinds and hung a "To
+   Let" sign on the large elm at the gate. Stephen never was spiteful in his
+   life, but this looks a little like spite. Perhaps he only wanted to save
+   his self-respect and let people know that everything between you was over
+   forever. Perhaps he thought it would stop talk once and for all. But you
+   won't mind, you lucky girl, staying nearly three months in Boston! [So
+   Almira purled on in violet ink, with shaded letters.] How I wish it had
+   come my way, though I'm not good at rubbing rheumatic patients, even when
+   they are _his_ aunt. Is _he_ as devoted as ever? And when will _it_ be? How
+   do you like the theater? Mother thinks you won't attend; but, by what he
+   used to say, I am sure church members in Boston always go to amusements.
+
+       Your loving friend,
+              Almira Shapley.
+
+   P.S. They say Rufus's doctor's bills here, and the operation and hospital
+   expenses in Portland, will mount up to five hundred dollars. Of course
+   Stephen will be dreadfully hampered by the toss of his barn, and maybe he
+   wants to let your house that was to be, because he really needs money. In
+   that case the dooryard won't be very attractive to tenants, with corn
+   planted right up to the steps and no path left! It's two feet tall now, and
+   by August (just when you were intending to move in) it will hide the front
+   windows. Not that you'll care, with a diamond on your engagement finger!
+
+
+The letter was more than flesh and blood could stand, and Rose flung
+herself on her bed to think and regret and repent, and, if possible, to
+sob herself to sleep.
+
+She knew now that she had never admired and respected Stephen so much
+as at the moment when, under the reproach of his eyes, she had given him
+back his ring. When she left Edgewood and parted with him forever she
+had really loved him better than when she had promised to marry him.
+
+Claude Merrill, on his native Boston heath, did not appear the romantic,
+inspiring figure he had once been in her eyes. A week ago she distrusted
+him; tonight she despised him.
+
+What had happened to Rose was the dilation of her vision. She saw things
+under a wider sky and in a clearer light. Above all, her heart was wrung
+with pity for Stephen--Stephen, with no comforting woman's hand to help
+him in his sore trouble; Stephen, bearing his losses alone, his burdens
+and anxieties alone, his nursing and daily work alone. Oh, how she felt
+herself needed! Needed! that was the magic word that unlocked her better
+nature. "Darkness is the time for making roots and establishing plants,
+whether of the soil or of the soul," and all at once Rose had become a
+woman: a little one, perhaps, but a whole woman--and a bit of an angel,
+too, with healing in her wings. When and how had this metamorphosis come
+about? Last summer the fragile brier-rose had hung over the river and
+looked at its pretty reflection in the placid surface of the water. Its
+few buds and blossoms were so lovely, it sighed for nothing more. The
+changes in the plant had been wrought secretly and silently. In some
+mysterious way, as common to soul as to plant life, the roots had
+gathered in more nourishment from the earth, they had stored up strength
+and force, and all at once there was a marvelous fructifying of the
+plant, hardiness of stalk, new shoots everywhere, vigorous leafage, and
+a shower of blossoms.
+
+But everything was awry: Boston was a failure; Claude was a weakling and
+a flirt; her turquoise ring was lying on the river-bank; Stephen did
+not love her any longer; her flower-beds were ploughed up and planted in
+corn; and the cottage that Stephen had built and she had furnished, that
+beloved cottage, was to let.
+
+She was in Boston; but what did that amount to, after all? What was
+the State House to a bleeding heart, or the Old South Church to a pride
+wounded like hers?
+
+At last she fell asleep, but it was only by stopping her ears to the
+noises of the city streets and making herself imagine the sound of
+the river rippling under her bedroom windows at home. The backyards of
+Boston faded, and in their place came the banks of the Saco, strewn
+with pine-needles, fragrant with wild flowers. Then there was the bit of
+sunny beach, where Stephen moored his boat. She could hear the sound of
+his paddle. Boston lovers came a-courting in the horse-cars, but hers
+had floated downstream to her just at dusk in a birch-bark canoe, or
+sometimes, in the moonlight, on a couple of logs rafted together.
+
+But it was all over now, and she could see only Stephen's stern face as
+he flung the despised turquoise ring down the river-bank.
+
+
+
+
+XIII. A Country Chevalier
+
+
+It was early in August when Mrs. Wealthy Brooks announced her speedy
+return from Boston to Edgewood.
+
+"It's jest as well Rose is comin' back," said Mr. Wiley to his wife. "I
+never favored her goin' to Boston, where that rosy-posy Claude feller
+is. When he was down here he was kep' kind o' tied up in a box-stall,
+but there he's caperin' loose round the pastur'."
+
+"I should think Rose would be ashamed to come back, after the way she's
+carried on," remarked Mrs. Wiley, "but if she needed punishment I guess
+she's got it bein' comp'ny-keeper to Wealthy Ann Brooks. Bein' a church
+member in good an' reg'lar standin', I s'pose Wealthy Ann'll go to
+heaven, but I can only say that it would be a sight pleasanter place for
+a good many if she did n't."
+
+"Rose has be'n foolish an' flirty an' wrong-headed," allowed her
+grandfather; "but it won't do no good to treat her like a hardened
+criminile, same's you did afore she went away. She ain't hardly got her
+wisdom teeth cut, in love affairs! She ain't broke the laws of the
+State o' Maine, nor any o' the ten commandments; she ain't disgraced the
+family, an' there's a chance for her to reform, seein' as how she ain't
+twenty year old yet. I was turrible wild an' hot-headed myself afore you
+ketched me an' tamed me down."
+
+"You ain't so tame now as I wish you was," Mrs. Wiley replied testily.
+
+"If you could smoke a clay pipe 't would calm your nerves, mother, an'
+help you to git some philosophy inter you; you need a little philosophy
+turrible bad."
+
+"I need patience consid'able more," was Mrs. Wiley's withering retort.
+
+"That's the way with folks," said Old Kennebec reflectively, as he went
+on peacefully puffing. "If you try to indoose 'em to take an int'rest in
+a bran'-new virtue, they won't look at it; but they 'll run down a side
+street an' buy half a yard more o' some turrible old shop-worn trait
+o' character that they've kep' in stock all their lives, an' that
+everybody's sick to death of. There was a man in Gard'ner--"
+
+But alas! the experiences of the Gardiner man, though told in the same
+delightful fashion that had won Mrs. Wiley's heart many years
+before, now fell upon the empty air. In these years of Old Kennebec's
+"anecdotage," his pipe was his best listener and his truest confidant.
+
+Mr. Wiley's constant intercessions with his wife made Rose's home-coming
+somewhat easier, and the sight of her own room and belongings soothed
+her troubled spirit, but the days went on, and nothing happened to
+change the situation. She had lost a lover, that was all, and there were
+plenty more to choose from, or there always had been; but the only one
+she wanted was the one who made no sign. She used to think that she
+could twist Stephen around her little finger; that she had only to
+beckon to him and he would follow her to the ends of the earth. Now fear
+had entered her heart. She no longer felt sure, because she no longer
+felt worthy, of him, and feeling both uncertainty and unworthiness, her
+lips were sealed and she was rendered incapable of making any bid for
+forgiveness.
+
+So the little world of Pleasant River went on, to all outward seeming,
+as it had ever gone. On one side of the stream a girl's heart was
+longing, and pining, and sickening, with hope deferred, and growing,
+too, with such astonishing rapidity that the very angels marveled! And
+on the other, a man's whole vision of life and duty was widening and
+deepening under the fructifying influence of his sorrow.
+
+The corn waved high and green in front of the vacant riverside cottage,
+but Stephen sent no word or message to Rose. He had seen her once, but
+only from a distance. She seemed paler and thinner, he thought,--the
+result, probably, of her metropolitan gayeties. He heard no rumor of any
+engagement and he wondered if it were possible that her love for Claude
+Merrill had not, after all, been returned in kind. This seemed a wild
+impossibility. His mind refused to entertain the supposition that any
+man on earth could resist falling in love with Rose, or, having fallen
+in, that he could ever contrive to climb out. So he worked on at his
+farm harder than ever, and grew soberer and more careworn daily. Rufus
+had never seemed so near and dear to him as in these weeks when he had
+lived under the shadow of threatened blindness. The burning of the barn
+and the strain upon their slender property brought the brothers together
+shoulder to shoulder.
+
+"If you lose your girl, Steve," said the boy, "and I lose my eyesight,
+and we both lose the barn, why, it'll be us two against the world, for a
+spell!"
+
+The "To Let" sign on the little house was an arrant piece of hypocrisy.
+Nothing but the direst extremity could have caused him to allow an alien
+step on that sacred threshold. The ploughing up of the flower-beds and
+planting of the corn had served a double purpose. It showed the too
+curious public the finality of his break with Rose and her absolute
+freedom; it also prevented them from suspecting that he still entered
+the place. His visits were not many, but he could not bear to let the
+dust settle on the furniture that he and Rose had chosen together; and
+whenever he locked the door and went back to the River Farm, he thought
+of a verse in the Bible: "Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the
+Garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken."
+
+
+It was now Friday of the last week in August.
+
+The river was full of logs, thousands upon thousands of them covering
+the surface of the water from the bridge almost up to the Brier
+Neighborhood. The Edgewood drive was late, owing to a long drought and
+low water; but it was to begin on the following Monday, and Lije Dennett
+and his under boss were looking over the situation and planning the
+campaign. As they leaned over the bridge-rail they saw Mr. Wiley driving
+clown the river road. When he caught sight of them he hitched the old
+white horse at the corner and walked toward them, filling his pipe the
+while in his usual leisurely manner. "We're not busy this forenoon,"
+said Lije Dennett. "S'pose we stand right here and let Old Kennebec have
+his say out for once. We've never heard the end of one of his stories,
+an' he's be'n talkin' for twenty years."
+
+"All right," rejoined his companion, with a broad grin at the idea. "I'm
+willin', if you are; but who's goin' to tell our fam'lies the reason
+we've deserted 'em? I bate yer we shan't budge till the crack o' doom.
+The road commissioner'll come along once a year and mend the bridge
+under our feet, but Old Kennebec'll talk straight on till the day o'
+jedgment."
+
+Mr. Wiley had one of the most enjoyable mornings of his life, and felt
+that after half a century of neglect his powers were at last appreciated
+by his fellow citizens.
+
+He proposed numerous strategic movements to be made upon the logs,
+whereby they would move more swiftly than usual. He described several
+successful drives on the Kennebec, when the logs had melted down the
+river almost by magic, owing to his generalship; and he paid a tribute,
+in passing, to the docility of the boss, who on that occasion had never
+moved a single log without asking his advice.
+
+From this topic he proceeded genially to narrate the life-histories
+of the boss, the under boss, and several Indians belonging to the
+crew,--histories in which he himself played a gallant and conspicuous
+part. The conversation then drifted naturally to the exploits of
+river-drivers in general, and Mr. Wiley narrated the sorts of feats in
+log-riding, pick-pole-throwing, and the shooting of rapids that he had
+done in his youth. These stories were such as had seldom been heard by
+the ear of man; and, as they passed into circulation instantaneously, we
+are probably enjoying some of them to this day.
+
+They were still being told when a Crambry child appeared on the bridge,
+bearing a note for the old man. Upon reading it he moved off rapidly in
+the direction of the store, ejaculating: "Bless my soul! I clean forgot
+that saleratus, and mother's settin' at the kitchen table with the bowl
+in her lap, waitin' for it! Got so int'rested in your list'nin' I never
+thought o' the time."
+
+The connubial discussion that followed this breach of discipline began
+on the arrival of the saleratus, and lasted through supper; and Rose
+went to bed almost immediately afterward for very dullness and apathy.
+Her life stretched out before her in the most aimless and monotonous
+fashion. She saw nothing but heartache in the future; and that she
+richly deserved it made it none the easier to bear.
+
+Feeling feverish and sleepless, she slipped on her gray Shaker cloak
+and stole quietly downstairs for a breath of air. Her grandfather and
+grandmother were talking on the piazza, and good humor seemed to have
+been restored. "I was over to the tavern tonight," she heard him say,
+as she sat down at a little distance. "I was over to the tavern tonight,
+an' a feller from Gorham got to talkin' an' braggin' 'bout what a stock
+o' goods they kep' in the store over there. 'An',' says I, 'I bate ye
+dollars to doughnuts that there hain't a darn thing ye can ask for at
+Bill Pike's store at Pleasant River that he can't go down cellar, or up
+attic, or out in the barn chamber an' git for ye.' Well, sir, he took me
+up, an' I borrered the money of Joe Dennett, who held the stakes, an'
+we went right over to Bill Pike's with all the boys follerin' on behind.
+An' the Gorham man never let on what he was going to ask for till the
+hull crowd of us got inside the store. Then says he, as p'lite as a
+basket o' chips, 'Mr. Pike, I'd like to buy a pulpit if you can oblige
+me with one.'
+
+"Bill scratched his head an' I held my breath. Then says he, ''Pears to
+me I'd ought to hev a pulpit or two, if I can jest remember where I keep
+'em. I don't never cal'late to be out o' pulpits, but I'm so plagued for
+room I can't keep 'em in here with the groc'ries. Jim (that's his new
+store boy), you jest take a lantern an' run out in the far corner o' the
+shed, at the end o' the hickory woodpile, an' see how many pulpits we've
+got in stock!' Well, Jim run out, an' when he come back he says, 'We've
+got two, Mr. Pike. Shall I bring one of 'em in?'
+
+"At that the boys all bust out laughin' an' hollerin' an' tauntin' the
+Gorham man, an' he paid up with a good will, I tell ye!"
+
+"I don't approve of bettin'," said Mrs. Wiley grimly, "but I'll try to
+sanctify the money by usin' it for a new wash-boiler."
+
+"The fact is," explained Old Kennebec, somewhat confused, "that the boys
+made me spend every cent of it then an' there."
+
+Rose heard her grandmother's caustic reply, and then paid no further
+attention until her keen ear caught the sound of Stephen's name. It was
+a part of her unhappiness that since her broken engagement no one
+would ever allude to him, and she longed to hear him mentioned, so that
+perchance she could get some inkling of his movements.
+
+"I met Stephen tonight for the first time in a week," said Mr. Wiley.
+"He kind o' keeps out o' my way lately. He's goin' to drive his span
+into Portland tomorrow mornin' and bring Rufus home from the hospital
+Sunday afternoon. The doctors think they've made a success of their job,
+but Rufus has got to be bandaged up a spell longer. Stephen is goin' to
+join the drive Monday mornin' at the bridge here, so I'll get the latest
+news o' the boy. Land! I'll be turrible glad if he gets out with his
+eyesight, if it's only for Steve's sake. He's a turrible good fellow,
+Steve is! He said something tonight that made me set more store by him
+than ever. I told you I hed n't heard an unkind word ag'in' Rose sence
+she come home from Boston, an' no more I hev till this evenin'. There
+was two or three fellers talkin' in the post-office, an' they did n't
+suspicion I was settin' on the steps outside the screen door. That Jim
+Jenkins, that Rose so everlastin'ly snubbed at the tavern dance, spoke
+up, an' says he: 'This time last year Rose Wiley could 'a' hed the
+choice of any man on the river, an' now I bet ye she can't get nary
+one.'
+
+"Steve was there, jest goin' out the door, with some bags o' coffee an'
+sugar under his arm.
+
+"'I guess you're mistaken about that,' he says, speakin' up jest like
+lightnin'; 'so long as Stephen Waterman's alive, Rose Wiley can have
+him, for one; and that everybody's welcome to know.'
+
+"He spoke right out, loud an' plain, jest as if he was readin' the
+Declaration of Independence. I expected the boys would everlastin'ly
+poke fun at him, but they never said a word. I guess his eyes flashed,
+for he come out the screen door, slammin' it after him, and stalked by
+me as if he was too worked up to notice anything or anybody. I did n't
+foller him, for his long legs git over the ground too fast for me, but
+thinks I, 'Mebbe I'll hev some use for my lemonade-set after all.'"
+
+"I hope to the land you will," responded Mrs. Wiley, "for I'm about sick
+o' movin' it round when I sweep under my bed. And I shall be glad if
+Rose an' Stephen do make it up, for Wealthy Ann Brooks's gossip is too
+much for a Christian woman to stand."
+
+
+
+
+XIV. Housebreaking
+
+
+Where was the pale Rose, the faded Rose, that crept noiselessly down
+from her room, wanting neither to speak nor to be spoken to? Nobody ever
+knew. She vanished forever, and in her place a thing of sparkles and
+dimples flashed up the stairway and closed the door softly. There was
+a streak of moon-shine lying across the bare floor, and a merry ghost,
+with dressing-gown held prettily away from bare feet, danced a gay
+fandango among the yellow moonbeams. There were breathless flights to
+the open window, and kisses thrown in the direction of the River Farm.
+There were impressive declamations at the looking-glass, where a radiant
+creature pointed to her reflection and whispered, "Worthless little pig,
+he loves you, after all!"
+
+Then, when quiet joy had taken the place of mad delight, there was a
+swoop down upon the floor, an impetuous hiding of brimming eyes in the
+white counterpane, and a dozen impassioned promises to herself and to
+something higher than herself, to be a better girl.
+
+The mood lasted, and deepened, and still Rose did not move. Her heart
+was on its knees before Stephen's faithful love, his chivalry, his
+strength. Her troubled spirit, like a frail boat tossed about in the
+rapids, seemed entering a quiet harbor, where there were protecting
+shores and a still, still evening star. Her sails were all torn
+and drooping, but the harbor was in sight, and the poor little
+weather-beaten craft could rest in peace.
+
+A period of grave reflection now ensued, under the bedclothes, where one
+could think better. Suddenly an inspiration seized her, an inspiration
+so original, so delicious, and above all so humble and praiseworthy,
+that it brought her head from her pillow, and she sat bolt upright,
+clapping her hands like a child.
+
+"The very thing!" she whispered to herself gleefully. "It will take
+courage, but I'm sure of my ground after what he said before them all,
+and I'll do it. Grandma in Biddeford buying church carpets, Stephen in
+Portland--was ever such a chance?"
+
+The same glowing Rose came downstairs, two steps at a time, next
+morning, bade her grandmother goodbye with suspicious pleasure, and sent
+her grandfather away on an errand which, with attendant conversation,
+would consume half the day. Then bundles after bundles and baskets after
+baskets were packed into the wagon,--behind the seat, beneath the seat,
+and finally under the lap-robe. She gave a dramatic flourish to the
+whip, drove across the bridge, went through Pleasant River village,
+and up the leafy road to the little house, stared the "To Let" sign
+scornfully in the eye, alighted, and ran like a deer through the aisles
+of waving corn, past the kitchen windows, to the back door.
+
+"If he has kept the big key in the old place under the stone, where
+we both used to find it, then he has n't forgotten me--or anything,"
+thought Rose.
+
+The key was there, and Rose lifted it with a sob of gratitude. It was
+but five minutes' work to carry all the bundles from the wagon to the
+back steps, and another five to lead old Tom across the road into the
+woods and tie him to a tree quite out of the sight of any passer-by.
+
+When, after running back, she turned the key in the lock, her heart
+gave a leap almost of terror, and she started at the sound of her own
+footfall. Through the open door the sunlight streamed into the dark
+room. She flew to tables and chairs, and gave a rapid sweep of the hand
+over their surfaces.
+
+"He has been dusting here,--and within a few days, too," she thought
+triumphantly.
+
+The kitchen was perfection, as she always knew it would be, with one
+door opening to the shaded road and the other looking on the river;
+windows, too, framing the apple-orchard and the elms. She had chosen
+the furniture, but how differently it looked now that it was actually
+in place! The tiny shed had piles of split wood, with great boxes of
+kindlings and shavings, all in readiness for the bride, who would do her
+own cooking. Who but Stephen would have made the very wood ready for a
+woman's home-coming; and why had he done so much in May, when they
+were not to be married until August? Then the door of the bedroom was
+stealthily opened, and here Rose sat down and cried for joy and shame
+and hope and fear. The very flowered paper she had refused as too
+expensive! How lovely it looked with the white chamber set! She brought
+in her simple wedding outfit of blankets, bed-linen, and counterpanes,
+and folded them softly in the closet; and then for the rest of the
+morning she went from room to room, doing all that could remain
+undiscovered, even to laying a fire in the new kitchen stove.
+
+This was the plan. Stephen must pass the house on his way from the River
+Farm to the bridge, where he was to join the river-drivers on Monday
+morning. She would be out of bed by the earliest peep of dawn, put on
+Stephen's favorite pink calico, leave a note for her grandmother, run
+like a hare down her side of the river and up Stephen's, steal into
+the house, open blinds and windows, light the fire, and set the kettle
+boiling. Then with a sharp knife she would cut down two rows of corn,
+and thus make a green pathway from the front kitchen steps to the road.
+Next, the false and insulting "To Let" sign would be forcibly tweaked
+from the tree and thrown into the grass. She would then lay the table
+in the kitchen, and make ready the nicest breakfast that two people ever
+sat down to. And oh, would two people sit down to it; or would one go
+off in a rage and the other die of grief and disappointment?
+
+Then, having done all, she would wait and palpitate, and palpitate and
+wait, until Stephen came. Surely no property-owner in the universe could
+drive along a road, observe his corn leveled to the earth, his sign
+removed, his house open, and smoke issuing from his chimney, without
+going in to surprise the rogue and villain who could be guilty of such
+vandalism.
+
+And when he came in?
+
+Oh, she had all day Sunday in which to forecast, with mingled dread and
+gladness and suspense, that all-important, all-decisive first moment!
+All day Sunday to frame and unframe penitent speeches. All day Sunday!
+Would it ever be Monday? If so, what would Tuesday bring? Would the sun
+rise happy on Mrs. Stephen Waterman of Pleasant River, or miserable Miss
+Rose Wiley of the Brier Neighborhood?
+
+
+
+
+XV. The Dream Room
+
+
+Long ago, when Stephen was a boy of fourteen or fifteen, he had gone
+with his father to a distant town to spend the night. After an early
+breakfast next morning his father had driven off for a business
+interview, and left the boy to walk about during his absence. He
+wandered aimlessly along a quiet side street, and threw himself down on
+the grass outside a pretty garden to amuse himself as best he could.
+
+After a few minutes he heard voices, and, turning, peeped through the
+bars of the gate in idle, boyish curiosity. It was a small brown house;
+the kitchen door was open, and a table spread with a white cloth was set
+in the middle of the room. There was a cradle in a far corner, and a man
+was seated at the table as though he might be waiting for his breakfast.
+
+There is a kind of sentiment about the kitchen in New England, a kind of
+sentiment not provoked by other rooms. Here the farmer drops in to spend
+a few minutes when he comes back from the barn or field on an errand.
+Here, in the great, clean, sweet, comfortable place, the busy housewife
+lives, sometimes rocking the cradle, sometimes opening and shutting
+the oven door, sometimes stirring the pot, darning stockings, paring
+vegetables, or mixing goodies in a yellow bowl. The children sit on
+the steps, stringing beans, shelling peas, or hulling berries; the cat
+sleeps on the floor near the wood-box; and the visitor feels exiled if
+he stays in sitting-room or parlor, for here, where the mother is always
+busy, is the heart of the farmhouse.
+
+There was an open back door to this kitchen, a door framed in
+morning-glories, and the woman (or was she only girl?) standing at the
+stove was pretty,--oh, so pretty in Stephen's eyes! His boyish heart
+went out to her on the instant. She poured a cup of coffee and
+walked with it to the table; then an unexpected, interesting thing
+happened--something the boy ought not to have seen, and never forgot.
+The man, putting out his hand to take the cup, looked up at the pretty
+woman with a smile, and she stooped and kissed him.
+
+Stephen was fifteen. As he looked, on the instant he became a man, with
+a man's hopes, desires, ambitions. He looked eagerly, hungrily, and the
+scene burned itself on the sensitive plate of his young heart, so that,
+as he grew older, he could take the picture out in the dark, from time
+to time, and look at it again. When he first met Rose, he did not know
+precisely what she was to mean to him; but before long, when he closed
+his eyes and the old familiar picture swam into his field of vision,
+behold, by some spiritual chemistry, the pretty woman's face had given
+place to that of Rose!
+
+All such teasing visions had been sternly banished during this sorrowful
+summer, and it was a thoughtful, sober Stephen who drove along the road
+on this mellow August morning. The dust was deep; the goldenrod waved
+its imperial plumes, making the humble waysides gorgeous; the river
+chattered and sparkled till it met the logs at the Brier Neighborhood,
+and then, lapsing into silence, flowed steadily under them till it found
+a vent for its spirits in the dashing and splashing of the falls.
+
+Haying was over; logging was to begin that day; then harvesting; then
+wood-cutting; then eternal successions of ploughing, sowing, reaping,
+haying, logging, harvesting, and so on, to the endless end of his days.
+Here and there a red or a yellow branch, painted only yesterday, caught
+his eye and made him shiver. He was not ready for winter; his heart
+still craved the summer it had missed.
+
+Hello! What was that? Corn-stalks prone on the earth? Sign torn down and
+lying flat in the grass? Blinds open, fire in the chimney?
+
+He leaped from the wagon, and, flinging the reins to Alcestis Crambry,
+said, "Stay right here out of sight, and don't you move till I call
+you!" And striding up the green pathway, he flung open the kitchen door.
+
+A forest of corn waving in the doorway at the back, morning-glories
+clambering round and round the window-frames, the table with shining
+white cloth, the kettle humming and steaming, something bubbling in a
+pan on the stove, the fire throwing out sweet little gleams of welcome
+through the open damper. All this was taken in with one incredulous,
+rapturous twinkle of an eye; but something else, too: Rose of all roses,
+Rose of the river, Rose of the world, standing behind a chair, with her
+hand pressed against her heart, her lips parted, her breath coming and
+going! She was glowing like a jewel--glowing with the extraordinary
+brilliancy that emotion gives to some women. She used to be happy in a
+gay, sparkling way, like the shallow part of the stream as it chatters
+over white pebbles and bright sands. Now it was a broad, steady, full
+happiness like the deeps of the river under the sun.
+
+"Don't speak, Stephen, till you hear what I have to say. It takes a good
+deal of courage for a girl to do as I am doing; but I want to show how
+sorry I am, and it's the only way." She was trembling, and the words
+came faster and faster. "I've been very wrong and foolish, and made you
+very unhappy, but I have n't done what you would have hated most. I have
+n't been engaged to Claude Merrill; he has n't so much as asked me. I am
+here to beg you to forgive me, to eat breakfast with me, to drive me to
+the minister's and marry me quickly, quickly, before anything happens
+to prevent us, and then to bring me home here to live all the days of my
+life. Oh, Stephen dear, honestly, honestly, you have n't lost anything
+in all this long, miserable summer. I've suffered, too, and I'm better
+worth loving than I was. Will you take me back?"
+
+Rose had a tremendous power of provoking and holding love, and Stephen
+of loving. His was too generous a nature for revilings and complaints
+and reproaches.
+
+The shores of his heart were strewn with the wreckage of the troubled
+summer, but if the tide of love is high enough, it washes such things
+out of remembrance. He just opened his arms and took Rose to his heart,
+faults and all, with joy and gratitude; and she was as happy as a child
+who has escaped the scolding it richly deserves, and who determines, for
+very thankfulness' sake, never to be naughty again.
+
+"You don't know what you've done for me, Stephen," she whispered, with
+her face hidden on his shoulder. "I was just a common little prickly
+rosebush when you came along like a good gardener and 'grafted in'
+something better; the something better was your love, Stephen dear, and
+it's made everything different. The silly Rose you were engaged to long
+ago has disappeared somewhere; I hope you won't be able to find her
+under the new leaves."
+
+"She was all I wanted," said Stephen.
+
+"You thought she was," the girl answered, "because you did n't see the
+prickles, but you'd have felt them some time. The old Rose was a selfish
+thing, not good enough for you; the new Rose is going to be your wife,
+and Rufus's sister, and your mother's daughter, all in one."
+
+Then such a breakfast was spread as Stephen, in his sorry years of
+bachelor existence, had forgotten could exist; but before he broke his
+fast he ran out to the wagon and served the astonished Alcestis with his
+wedding refreshments then and there, bidding him drive back to the
+River Farm and bring him a package that lay in the drawer of his
+shaving-stand,--a package placed there when hot youth and love and
+longing had inspired him to hurry on the marriage day.
+
+"There's an envelope, Alcestis," he cried, "a long envelope, way, way
+back in the corner, and a small box on top of it. Bring them both and my
+wallet too, and if you find them all and get them to me safely you shall
+be bridesmaid and groomsman and best man and usher and maid of honor at
+a wedding, in less than an hour! Off with you! Drive straight and use
+the whip on Dolly!"
+
+When he re-entered the kitchen, flushed with joy and excitement, Rose
+put the various good things on the table and he almost tremblingly took
+his seat, fearing that contact with the solid wood might wake him from
+this entrancing vision.
+
+"I'd like to put you in your chair like a queen and wait on you," he
+said with a soft boyish stammer; "but I am too dazed with happiness to
+be of any use."
+
+"It's my turn to wait upon you, and I--Oh! how I love to have you
+dazed," Rose answered. "I'll be at the table presently myself; but we
+have been housekeeping only three minutes, and we have nothing but the
+tin coffee-pot this morning, so I'll pour the coffee from the stove."
+
+She filled a cup with housewifely care and brought it to Stephen's side.
+As she set it down and was turning, she caught his look,--a look so full
+of longing that no loving woman, however busy, could have resisted it;
+then she stooped and kissed him fondly, fervently.
+
+Stephen put his arm about her, and, drawing her down to his knee, rested
+his head against her soft shoulder with a sigh of comfort, like that
+of a tired child. He had waited for it ten years, and at last the dream
+room had come true.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE OLD PEABODY PEW
+
+A Christmas Romance of a Country Church
+
+
+DEDICATION
+
+To a certain handful of dear New England women of names unknown to the
+world, dwelling in a certain quiet village, alike unknown:--
+
+We have worked together to make our little corner of the great universe
+a pleasanter place in which to live, and so we know, not only one
+another's names, but something of one another's joys and sorrows, cares
+and burdens, economies, hopes, and anxieties.
+
+We all remember the dusty uphill road that leads to the green church
+common. We remember the white spire pointing upward against a background
+of blue sky and feathery elms. We remember the sound of the bell
+that falls on the Sabbath morning stillness, calling us across the
+daisy-sprinkled meadows of June, the golden hayfields of July, or the
+dazzling whiteness and deep snowdrifts of December days. The little
+cabinet-organ that plays the Doxology, the hymn-books from which we sing
+"Praise God from whom all blessings flow," the sweet freshness of the
+old meeting-house, within and without,--how we have toiled to secure and
+preserve these humble mercies for ourselves and our children!
+
+There really is a Dorcas Society, as you and I well know, and one
+not unlike that in these pages; and you and I have lived through many
+discouraging, laughable, and beautiful experiences while we emulated the
+Bible Dorcas, that woman "full of good works and alms deeds."
+
+There never was a Peabody Pew in the Tory Hill Meeting-House, and
+Nancy's love story and Justin's never happened within its century-old
+walls, but I have imagined only one of the many romances that have had
+their birth under the shadow of that steeple, did we but realize it.
+
+As you have sat there on open-windowed Sundays, looking across purple
+clover-fields to blue distant mountains, watching the palm-leaf fans
+swaying to and fro in the warm stillness before sermon time, did not the
+place seem full of memories, for has not the life of two villages ebbed
+and flowed beneath that ancient roof? You heard the hum of droning
+bees and followed the airy wings of butterflies fluttering over
+the grave-stones in the old churchyard, and underneath almost every
+moss-grown tablet some humble romance lies buried and all but forgotten.
+
+If it had not been for you, I should never have written this story, so I
+give it back to you tied with a sprig from Ophelia's nosegay; a sprig of
+"rosemary, that's for remembrance."
+
+K. D. W.
+
+August, 1907
+
+
+
+
+I. The Old Peabody Pew
+
+Edgewood, like all the other villages along the banks of the Saco,
+is full of sunny slopes and leafy hollows. There are little, rounded,
+green-clad hillocks that might, like their scriptural sisters, "skip
+with joy"; and there are grand, rocky hills tufted with gaunt pine
+trees--these leading the eye to the splendid heights of a neighbor
+State, where snow-crowned peaks tower in the blue distance, sweeping the
+horizon in a long line of majesty.
+
+Tory Hill holds its own among the others for peaceful beauty and fair
+prospect, and on its broad, level summit sits the white-painted Orthodox
+Meeting-House. This faces a grassy common where six roads meet, as if
+the early settlers had determined that no one should lack salvation
+because of a difficulty in reaching its visible source.
+
+The old church has had a dignified and fruitful past, dating from that
+day in 1761 when young Paul Coffin received his call to preach at a
+stipend of fifty pounds sterling a year; answering "that never having
+heard of any Uneasiness among the people about his Doctrine or manner of
+life, he declared himself pleased to Settle as Soon as might be Judged
+Convenient."
+
+But that was a hundred and fifty years ago, and much has happened since
+those simple, strenuous old days. The chastening hand of time has been
+laid somewhat heavily on the town as well as on the church. Some of
+her sons have marched to the wars and died on the field of honor; some,
+seeking better fortunes, have gone westward; others, wearying of village
+life, the rocky soil, and rigors of farm-work, have become entangled
+in the noise and competition, the rush and strife, of cities. When the
+sexton rings the bell nowadays, on a Sunday morning, it seems to have
+lost some of its old-time militant strength, something of its hope and
+courage; but it still rings, and although the Davids and Solomons,
+the Matthews, Marks, and Pauls of former congregations have left few
+descendants to perpetuate their labors, it will go on ringing as long as
+there is a Tabitha, a Dorcas, a Lois, or a Eunice left in the community.
+
+This sentiment had been maintained for a quarter of a century, but it
+was now especially strong, as the old Tory Hill Meeting-House had been
+undergoing for several years more or less extensive repairs. In point
+of fact, the still stronger word, "improvements," might be used
+with impunity; though whenever the Dorcas Society, being female, and
+therefore possessed of notions regarding comfort and beauty, suggested
+any serious changes, the finance committees, which were inevitably
+male in their composition, generally disapproved of making any impious
+alterations in a tabernacle, chapel, temple, or any other building used
+for purposes of worship. The majority in these august bodies asserted
+that their ancestors had prayed and sung there for a century and a
+quarter, and what was good enough for their ancestors was entirely
+suitable for them. Besides, the community was becoming less and less
+prosperous, and church-going was growing more and more lamentably
+uncommon, so that even from a business standpoint, any sums expended
+upon decoration by a poor and struggling parish would be worse than
+wasted.
+
+In the particular year under discussion in this story, the valiant
+and progressive Mrs. Jeremiah Burbank was the president of the Dorcas
+Society, and she remarked privately and publicly that if her ancestors
+liked a smoky church, they had a perfect right to the enjoyment of it,
+but that she did n't intend to sit through meeting on winter Sundays,
+with her white ostrich feather turning gray and her eyes smarting and
+watering, for the rest of her natural life.
+
+Whereupon, this being in a business session, she then and there proposed
+to her already hypnotized constituents ways of earning enough money to
+build a new chimney on the other side of the church.
+
+An awe-stricken community witnessed this beneficent act of vandalism,
+and, finding that no thunderbolts of retribution descended from
+the skies, greatly relished the change. If one or two aged persons
+complained that they could not sleep as sweetly during sermon-time in
+the now clear atmosphere of the church, and that the parson's eye
+was keener than before, why, that was a mere detail, and could not
+be avoided; what was the loss of a little sleep compared with the
+discoloration of Mrs. Jere Burbank's white ostrich feather and the
+smarting of Mrs. Jere Burbank's eyes?
+
+A new furnace followed the new chimney, in due course, and as a sense of
+comfort grew, there was opportunity to notice the lack of beauty.
+Twice in sixty years had some well-to-do summer parishioner painted the
+interior of the church at his own expense; but although the roof had
+been many times reshingled, it had always persisted in leaking, so that
+the ceiling and walls were disfigured by unsightly spots and stains and
+streaks. The question of shingling was tacitly felt to be outside the
+feminine domain, but as there were five women to one man in the church
+membership, the feminine domain was frequently obliged to extend its
+limits into the hitherto unknown. Matters of tarring and waterproofing
+were discussed in and out of season, and the very school-children
+imbibed knowledge concerning lapping, over-lapping, and cross-lapping,
+and first and second quality of cedar shingles. Miss Lobelia Brewster,
+who had a rooted distrust of anything done by mere man, created strife
+by remarking that she could have stopped the leak in the belfry tower
+with her red flannel petticoat better than the Milltown man with his
+new-fangled rubber sheeting, and that the last shingling could have been
+more thoroughly done by a "female infant babe"; whereupon the person
+criticized retorted that he wished Miss Lobelia Brewster had a few
+infant babes to "put on the job he'd like to see 'em try." Meantime
+several male members of the congregation, who at one time or another had
+sat on the roof during the hottest of the dog-days to see that shingling
+operations were conscientiously and skillfully performed, were very
+pessimistic as to any satisfactory result ever being achieved.
+
+"The angle of the roof--what they call the 'pitch'--they say that that's
+always been wrong," announced the secretary of the Dorcas in a business
+session.
+
+"Is it that kind of pitch that the Bible says you can't touch without
+being defiled? If not, I vote that we unshingle the roof and alter the
+pitch!" This proposal came from a sister named Maria Sharp, who had
+valiantly offered the year before to move the smoky chimney with her own
+hands, if the "menfolks" would n't.
+
+But though the incendiary suggestion of altering the pitch was received
+with applause at the moment, subsequent study of the situation proved
+that such a proceeding was entirely beyond the modest means of the
+society. Then there arose an ingenious and militant carpenter in
+a neighboring village, who asserted that he would shingle the
+meeting-house roof for such and such a sum, and agree to drink every
+drop of water that would leak in afterward. This was felt by all parties
+to be a promise attended by extraordinary risks, but it was accepted
+nevertheless, Miss Lobelia Brewster remarking that the rash carpenter,
+being already married, could not marry a Dorcas anyway, and even if he
+died, he was not a resident of Edgewood, and therefore could be more
+easily spared, and that it would be rather exciting, just for a change,
+to see a man drink himself to death with rain-water. The expected
+tragedy never occurred, however, and the inspired shingler fulfilled
+his promise to the letter, so that before many months the Dorcas
+Society proceeded, with incredible exertion, to earn more money, and the
+interior of the church was neatly painted and made as fresh as a rose.
+With no smoke, no rain, no snow nor melting ice to defile it, the good
+old landmark that had been pointing its finger Heavenward for over a
+century would now be clean and fragrant for years to come, and the weary
+sisters leaned back in their respective rocking-chairs and drew deep
+breaths of satisfaction.
+
+These breaths continued to be drawn throughout an unusually arduous
+haying season; until, in fact, a visitor from a neighboring city was
+heard to remark that the Tory Hill Meeting-House would be one of the
+best preserved and pleasantest churches in the whole State of Maine, if
+only it were suitably carpeted.
+
+This thought had secretly occurred to many a Dorcas in her hours
+of pie-making, preserving, or cradle-rocking, but had been promptly
+extinguished as flagrantly extravagant and altogether impossible. Now
+that it had been openly mentioned, the contagion of the idea spread, and
+in a month every sort of honest machinery for the increase of funds had
+been set in motion: harvest suppers, pie sociables, old folks' concerts,
+apron sales, and, as a last resort, a subscription paper, for the
+church floor measured hundreds of square yards, and the carpet committee
+announced that a good ingrain could not be purchased, even with the
+church discount, for less than ninety-seven cents a yard.
+
+The Dorcases took out their pencils, and when they multiplied the
+surface of the floor by the price of the carpet per yard, each Dorcas
+attaining a result entirely different from all the others, there was a
+shriek of dismay, especially from the secretary, who had included in her
+mathematical operation certain figures in her possession representing
+the cubical contents of the church and the offending pitch of the roof,
+thereby obtaining a product that would have dismayed a Croesus. Time
+sped and efforts increased, but the Dorcases were at length obliged to
+clip the wings of their desire and content themselves with carpeting
+the pulpit and pulpit steps, the choir, and the two aisles, leaving the
+floor in the pews until some future year.
+
+How the women cut and contrived and matched that hardly-bought red
+ingrain carpet, in the short December afternoons that ensued after its
+purchase; so that, having failed to be ready for Thanksgiving, it could
+be finished for the Christmas festivities!
+
+They were sewing in the church, and as the last stitches were being
+taken, Maria Sharp suddenly ejaculated in her impulsive fashion:--
+
+"Would n't it have been just perfect if we could have had the pews
+repainted before we laid the new carpet!"
+
+"It would, indeed," the president answered; "but it will take us all
+winter to pay for the present improvements, without any thought of fresh
+paint. If only we had a few more men-folks to help along!"
+
+"Or else none at all!" was Lobelia Brewster's suggestion. "It's havin'
+so few that keeps us all stirred up. If there wa'n't any anywheres,
+we'd have women deacons and carpenters and painters, and get along first
+rate; for somehow the supply o' women always holds out, same as it does
+with caterpillars an' flies an' grasshoppers!"
+
+Everybody laughed, although Maria Sharp asserted that she for one was
+not willing to be called a caterpillar simply because there were too
+many women in the universe.
+
+"I never noticed before how shabby and scarred and dirty the pews are,"
+said the minister's wife, as she looked at them reflectively.
+
+"I've been thinking all the afternoon of the story about the poor old
+woman and the lily," and Nancy Wentworth's clear voice broke into the
+discussion. "Do you remember some one gave her a stalk of Easter lilies
+and she set them in a glass pitcher on the kitchen table? After looking
+at them for a few minutes, she got up from her chair and washed the
+pitcher until the glass shone. Sitting down again, she glanced at
+the little window. It would never do; she had forgotten how dusty and
+blurred it was, and she took her cloth and burnished the panes. Then she
+scoured the table, then the floor, then blackened the stove before she
+sat down to her knitting. And of course the lily had done it all, just
+by showing, in its whiteness, how grimy everything else was."
+
+The minister's wife, who had been in Edgewood only a few months, looked
+admiringly at Nancy's bright face, wondering that five-and-thirty years
+of life, including ten of school-teaching, had done so little to mar its
+serenity.
+
+"The lily story is as true as the gospel!" she exclaimed, "and I can see
+how one thing has led you to another in making the church comfortable.
+But my husband says that two coats of paint on the pews would cost a
+considerable sum."
+
+"How about cleaning them? I don't believe they've had a good hard
+washing since the flood." The suggestion came from Deacon Miller's wife
+to the president.
+
+"They can't even be scrubbed for less than fifteen or twenty dollars,
+for I thought of that and asked Mrs. Simpson yesterday, and she said
+twenty cents a pew was the cheapest she could do it for."
+
+"We've done everything else," said Nancy Wentworth, with a twitch of her
+thread; "why don't we scrub the pews? There's nothing in the Orthodox
+creed to forbid, is there?"
+
+"Speakin' o' creeds," and here old Mrs. Sargent paused in her work,
+"Elder Ransom from Acreville stopped with us last night, an' he tells
+me they recite the Euthanasian Creed every few Sundays in the Episcopal
+Church. I did n't want him to know how ignorant I was, but I looked up
+the word in the dictionary. It means easy death, and I can't see any
+sense in that, though it's a terrible long creed, the Elder says, an'
+if it's any longer 'n ourn, I should think anybody _might_ easy die
+learnin' it!"
+
+"I think the word is Athanasian," ventured the minister's wife.
+
+"Elder Ransom's always plumb full o' doctrine," asserted Miss Brewster,
+pursuing the subject. "For my part, I'm glad he preferred Acreville to
+our place. He was so busy bein' a minister, he never got round to bein'
+a human creeter. When he used to come to sociables and picnics, always
+lookin' kind o' like the potato blight, I used to think how complete
+he'd be if he had a foldin' pulpit under his coat-tails; they make
+foldin' beds nowadays, an' I s'pose they could make foldin' pulpits, if
+there was a call."
+
+"Land sakes, I hope there won't be!" exclaimed Mrs. Sargent. "An'
+the Elder never said much of anything either, though he was always
+preachin'! Now your husband, Mis' Baxter, always has plenty to say after
+you think he's all through. There's water in his well when the others is
+all dry!"
+
+"But how about the pews?" interrupted Mrs. Burbank. "I think Nancy's
+idea is splendid, and I want to see it carried out. We might make it a
+picnic, bring our luncheons, and work all together; let every woman in
+the congregation come and scrub her own pew."
+
+"Some are too old, others live at too great a distance," and the
+minister's wife sighed a little; "indeed, most of those who once owned
+the pews or sat in them seem to be dead, or gone away to live in busier
+places."
+
+"I've no patience with 'em, gallivantin' over the earth," and here
+Lobelia rose and shook the carpet threads from her lap. "I should n't
+want to live in a livelier place than Edgewood, seem's though! We wash
+and hang out Mondays, iron Tuesdays, cook Wednesdays, clean house and
+mend Thursdays and Fridays, bake Saturdays, and go to meetin' Sundays. I
+don't hardly see how they can do any more'n that in Chicago!"
+
+"Never mind if we have lost members!" said the indomitable Mrs. Burbank.
+"The members we still have left must work all the harder. We'll each
+clean our own pew, then take a few of our neighbors', and then hire Mrs.
+Simpson to do the wainscoting and floor. Can we scrub Friday and lay the
+carpet Saturday? My husband and Deacon Miller can help us at the end of
+the week. All in favor manifest it by the usual sign. Contrary-minded?
+It is a vote."
+
+There never were any contrary-minded when Mrs. Jere Burbank was in the
+chair. Public sentiment in Edgewood was swayed by the Dorcas Society,
+but Mrs. Burbank swayed the Dorcases themselves as the wind sways the
+wheat.
+
+
+
+
+II. The old meeting-house wore an animated aspect when the eventful
+Friday came, a cold, brilliant, sparkling December day, with good
+sleighing, and with energy in every breath that swept over the dazzling
+snowfields. The sexton had built a fire in the furnace on the way to
+his morning work--a fire so economically contrived that it would last
+exactly the four or five necessary hours, and not a second more. At
+eleven o'clock all the pillars of the society had assembled, having
+finished their own household work and laid out on their respective
+kitchen tables comfortable luncheons for the men of the family, if they
+were fortunate enough to number any among their luxuries. Water was
+heated upon oil-stoves set about here and there, and there was a brave
+array of scrubbing-brushes, cloths, soap, and even sand and soda, for it
+had been decided and manifested-by-the-usual-sign-and-no-contrary-
+minded-and-it-was--a-vote that the dirt was to come off, whether the
+paint came with it or not. Each of the fifteen women present selected a
+block of seats, preferably one in which her own was situated, and all
+fell busily to work.
+
+"There is nobody here to clean the right-wing pews," said Nancy
+Wentworth, "so I will take those for my share."
+
+"You're not making a very wise choice, Nancy," and the minister's wife
+smiled as she spoke. "The infant class of the Sunday-School sits there,
+you know, and I expect the paint has had extra wear and tear. Families
+don't seem to occupy those pews regularly nowadays."
+
+"I can remember when every seat in the whole church was filled,
+wings an' all," mused Mrs. Sargent, wringing out her washcloth in a
+reminiscent mood. "The one in front o' you, Nancy, was always called the
+'deef pew' in the old times, and all the folks that was hard o' hearin'
+used to congregate there."
+
+"The next pew has n't been occupied since I came here," said the
+minister's wife.
+
+"No," answered Mrs. Sargent, glad of any opportunity to retail
+neighborhood news. "'Squire Bean's folks have moved to Portland to
+be with the married daughter. Somebody has to stay with her, and her
+husband won't. The 'Squire ain't a strong man, and he's most too old to
+go to meetin' now. The youngest son just died in New York, so I hear."
+
+"What ailed him?" inquired Maria Sharp.
+
+"I guess he was completely wore out takin' care of his health," returned
+Mrs. Sargent. "He had a splendid constitution from a boy, but he was
+always afraid it would n't last him. The seat back o' 'Squire Bean's
+is the old Peabody pew--ain't that the Peabody pew you're scrubbin',
+Nancy?"
+
+"I believe so," Nancy answered, never pausing in her labors. "It's so
+long since anybody sat there, it's hard to remember."
+
+"It is the Peabodys', I know it, because the aisle runs right up facin'
+it. I can see old Deacon Peabody settin' in this end same as if 't was
+yesterday."
+
+"He had died before Jere and I came back here to live," said Mrs.
+Burbank. "The first I remember, Justin Peabody sat in the end seat;
+the sister that died, next, and in the corner, against the wall, Mrs.
+Peabody, with a crape shawl and a palmleaf fan. They were a handsome
+family. You used to sit with them sometimes, Nancy; Esther was great
+friends with you."
+
+"Yes, she was," Nancy replied, lifting the tattered cushion from its
+place and brushing it; "and I with her. What is the use of scrubbing and
+carpeting, when there are only twenty pew-cushions and six hassocks in
+the whole church, and most of them ragged? How can I ever mend this?"
+
+"I should n't trouble myself to darn other people's cushions!" This
+unchristian sentiment came in Mrs. Miller's ringing tones from the rear
+of the church.
+
+"I don't know why," argued Maria Sharp. "I'm going to mend my Aunt
+Achsa's cushion, and we haven't spoken for years; but hers is the next
+pew to mine, and I'm going to have my part of the church look decent,
+even if she is too stingy to do her share. Besides, there are n't
+any Peabodys left to do their own darning, and Nancy was friends with
+Esther."
+
+"Yes, it's nothing more than right," Nancy replied, with a note of
+relief in her voice, "considering Esther."
+
+"Though he don't belong to the scrubbin' sex, there is one Peabody
+alive, as you know, if you stop to think, Maria; for Justin's alive, and
+livin' out West somewheres. At least, he's as much alive as ever he was;
+he was as good as dead when he was twenty-one, but his mother was always
+too soft-hearted to bury him."
+
+There was considerable laughter over this sally of the outspoken Mrs.
+Sargent, whose keen wit was the delight of the neighborhood.
+
+"I know he's alive and doing business in Detroit, for I got his address
+a week or ten days ago, and wrote, asking him if he'd like to give a
+couple of dollars toward repairing the old church."
+
+Everybody looked at Mrs. Burbank with interest.
+
+"Has n't he answered?" asked Maria Sharp. Nancy Wentworth held her
+breath, turned her face to the wall, and silently wiped the paint of the
+wainscoting. The blood that had rushed into her cheeks at Mrs. Sargent's
+jeering reference to Justin Peabody still lingered there for any one who
+ran to read, but fortunately nobody ran; they were too busy scrubbing.
+
+"Not yet. Folks don't hurry about answering when you ask them for a
+contribution," replied the president, with a cynicism common to persons
+who collect funds for charitable purposes. "George Wickham sent me
+twenty-five cents from Denver. When I wrote him a receipt, I said thank
+you same as Aunt Polly did when the neighbors brought her a piece of
+beef: 'Ever so much obleeged, but don't forget me when you come to kill
+a pig.'--Now, Mrs. Baxter, you shan't clean James Bruce's pew, or what
+was his before he turned Second Advent. I'll do that myself, for he used
+to be in my Sunday-School class."
+
+"He's the backbone o' that congregation now," asserted Mrs. Sargent,
+"and they say he's goin' to marry Mrs. Sam Peters, who sings in their
+choir, as soon as his year is up. They make a perfect fool of him in
+that church."
+
+"You can't make a fool of a man that nature ain't begun with," argued
+Miss Brewster. "Jim Bruce never was very strong-minded, but I declare it
+seems to me that when men lose their wives, they lose their wits! I
+was sure Jim would marry Hannah Thompson that keeps house for him. I
+suspected she was lookin' out for a life job when she hired out with
+him."
+
+"Hannah Thompson may keep Jim's house, but she'll never keep Jim, that's
+certain!" affirmed the president; "and I can't see that Mrs. Peters will
+better herself much."
+
+"I don't blame her, for one!" came in no uncertain tones from the
+left-wing pews, and the Widow Buzzell rose from her knees and approached
+the group by the pulpit. "If there's anything duller than cookin' three
+meals a day for yourself, and settin' down and eatin' 'em by yourself,
+and then gettin' up and clearin' 'em away after yourself, I'd like to
+know it! I should n't want any good-lookin', pleasant-spoken man to
+offer himself to me without he expected to be snapped up, that's all!
+But if you've made out to get one husband in York County, you can thank
+the Lord and not expect any more favors. I used to think Tom was poor
+comp'ny and complain I could n't have any conversation with him, but
+land, I could talk at him, and there's considerable comfort in that.
+And I could pick up after him! Now every room in my house is clean, and
+every closet and bureau drawer, too; I can't start drawin' in another
+rug, for I've got all the rugs I can step foot on. I dried so many
+apples last year I shan't need to cut up any this season. My jelly and
+preserves ain't out, and there I am; and there most of us are, in this
+village, without a man to take steps for and trot 'round after! There's
+just three husbands among the fifteen women scrubbin' here now, and the
+rest of us is all old maids and widders. No wonder the men-folks die, or
+move away, like Justin Peabody; a place with such a mess o' women-folks
+ain't healthy to live in, whatever Lobelia Brewster may say."
+
+
+
+
+III. Justin Peabody had once faithfully struggled with the practical
+difficulties of life in Edgewood, or so he had thought, in those old
+days of which Nancy Wentworth was thinking when she wiped the paint
+of the Peabody pew. Work in the mills did not attract him; he had no
+capital to invest in a stock of goods for store-keeping; school-teaching
+offered him only a pittance; there remained then only the farm, if he
+were to stay at home and keep his mother company.
+
+"Justin don't seem to take no holt of things," said the neighbors.
+
+"Good Heavens!" It seemed to him that there were no things to take hold
+of! That was his first thought; later he grew to think that the trouble
+all lay in himself, and both thoughts bred weakness.
+
+The farm had somehow supported the family in the old Deacon's time, but
+Justin seemed unable to coax a competence from the soil. He could, and
+did, rise early and work late; till the earth, sow crops; but he could
+not make the rain fall nor the sun shine at the times he needed them,
+and the elements, however much they might seem to favor his neighbors,
+seldom smiled on his enterprises. The crows liked Justin's corn better
+than any other in Edgewood. It had a richness peculiar to itself, a
+quality that appealed to the most jaded palate, so that it was really
+worth while to fly over a mile of intervening fields and pay it the
+delicate compliment of preference.
+
+Justin could explain the attitude of caterpillars, worms, grasshoppers,
+and potato-bugs toward him only by assuming that he attracted them as
+the magnet in the toy boxes attracts the miniature fishes.
+
+"Land o' liberty! look at 'em congregate!" ejaculated Jabe Slocum, when
+he was called in for consultation. "Now if you'd gone in for breedin'
+insecks, you could be as proud as Cuffy an' exhibit 'em at the County
+Fair! They'd give yer prizes for size an' numbers an' speed, I guess!
+Why, say, they're real crowded for room--the plants ain't give 'em
+enough leaves to roost on! Have you tried 'Bug Death'?"
+
+"It acts like a tonic on them," said Justin gloomily.
+
+"Sho! you don't say so! Now mine can't abide the sight nor smell of it.
+What 'bout Paris green?"
+
+"They thrive on it; it's as good as an appetizer."
+
+"Well," said Jabe Slocum, revolving the quid of tobacco in his mouth
+reflectively, "the bug that ain't got no objection to p'ison is a bug
+that's got ways o' thinkin' an' feelin' an' reasonin' that I ain't able
+to cope with! P'r'aps it's all a leadin' o' Providence. Mebbe it shows
+you'd ought to quit farmin' crops an' take to raisin' live stock!"
+
+Justin did just that, as a matter of fact, a year or two later; but
+stock that has within itself the power of being "live" has also rare
+qualification for being dead when occasion suits, and it generally
+did suit Justin's stock. It proved prone not only to all the general
+diseases that cattle-flesh is heir to, but was capable even of suicide.
+At least, it is true that two valuable Jersey calves, tied to stakes on
+the hillside, had flung themselves violently down the bank and strangled
+themselves with their own ropes in a manner which seemed to show that
+they found no pleasure in existence, at all events on the Peabody farm.
+
+These were some of the little tragedies that had sickened young Justin
+Peabody with life in Edgewood, and Nancy Wentworth, even then, realized
+some of them and sympathized without speaking, in a girl's poor,
+helpless way.
+
+Mrs. Simpson had washed the floor in the right wing of the church and
+Nancy had cleaned all the paint. Now she sat in the old Peabody pew
+darning the forlorn, faded cushion with gray carpet-thread; thread as
+gray as her own life.
+
+The scrubbing-party had moved to its labors in a far corner of the
+church, and two of the women were beginning preparations for the basket
+luncheons. Nancy's needle was no busier than her memory. Long years ago
+she had often sat in the Peabody pew, sometimes at first as a girl of
+sixteen when asked by Esther, and then, on coming home from school at
+eighteen, "finished," she had been invited now and again by Mrs. Peabody
+herself, on those Sundays when her own invalid mother had not attended
+service.
+
+Those were wonderful Sundays--Sundays of quiet, trembling peace and
+maiden joy.
+
+Justin sat beside her, and she had been sure then, but had long since
+grown to doubt the evidence of her senses, that he, too, vibrated with
+pleasure at the nearness. Was there not a summer morning when his hand
+touched her white lace mitt as they held the hymn-book together, and the
+lines of the
+
+  Rise, my soul, and stretch thy wings,
+    Thy better portion trace,
+
+became blurred on the page and melted into something indistinguishable
+for a full minute or two afterward? Were there not looks, and looks,
+and looks? Or had she some misleading trick of vision in those days?
+Justin's dark, handsome profile rose before her: the level brows and
+fine lashes; the well-cut nose and lovable mouth--the Peabody mouth and
+chin, somewhat too sweet and pliant for strength, perhaps. Then the eyes
+turned to hers in the old way, just for a fleeting glance, as they had
+so often done at prayer-meeting, or sociable, or Sunday service. Was
+it not a man's heart she had seen in them? And oh, if she could only be
+sure that her own woman's heart had not looked out from hers, drawn from
+its maiden shelter in spite of all her wish to keep it hidden!
+
+Then followed two dreary years of indecision and suspense, when Justin's
+eyes met hers less freely; when his looks were always gloomy and
+anxious; when affairs at the Peabody farm grew worse and worse; when his
+mother followed her husband, the old Deacon, and her daughter Esther to
+the burying-ground in the churchyard. Then the end of all things came,
+the end of the world for Nancy: Justin's departure for the West in a
+very frenzy of discouragement over the narrowness and limitation and
+injustice of his lot; over the rockiness and barrenness and unkindness
+of the New England soil; over the general bitterness of fate and the
+"bludgeonings of chance."
+
+He was a failure, born of a family of failures. If the world owed him a
+living, he had yet to find the method by which it could be earned. All
+this he thought and uttered, and much more of the same sort. In these
+days of humbled pride self was paramount, though it was a self he
+despised. There was no time for love. Who was he for a girl to lean
+upon?--he who could not stand erect himself!
+
+He bade a stiff goodbye to his neighbors, and to Nancy he vouchsafed
+little more. A handshake, with no thrill of love in it such as might
+have furnished her palm, at least, some memories to dwell upon; a few
+stilted words of leave-taking; a halting, meaningless sentence or
+two about his "botch" of life--then he walked away from the Wentworth
+doorstep. But halfway down the garden path, where the shriveled
+hollyhocks stood like sentinels, did a wave of something different sweep
+over him--a wave of the boyish, irresponsible past when his heart had
+wings and could fly without fear to its mate--a wave of the past
+that was rushing through Nancy's mind, wellnigh burying her in its
+bitter-sweet waters. For he lifted his head, and suddenly retracing his
+steps, he came toward her, and, taking her hand again, said forlornly:
+"You 'll see me back when my luck turns, Nancy."
+
+Nancy knew that the words might mean little or much, according to the
+manner in which they were uttered, but to her hurt pride and sore,
+shamed woman-instinct, they were a promise, simply because there was a
+choking sound in Justin's voice and tears in Justin's eyes. "You 'll see
+me back when my luck turns, Nancy"; this was the phrase upon which she
+had lived for more than ten years. Nancy had once heard the old parson
+say, ages ago, that the whole purpose of life was the growth of the
+soul; that we eat, sleep, clothe ourselves, work, love, all to give the
+soul another day, month, year, in which to develop. She used to wonder
+if her soul could be growing in the monotonous round of her dull duties
+and her duller pleasures. She did not confess it even to herself;
+nevertheless she knew that she worked, ate, slept, to live until
+Justin's luck turned. Her love had lain in her heart a bird without
+a song, year after year. Her mother had dwelt by her side and never
+guessed; her father, too; and both were dead. The neighbors also,
+lynx-eyed and curious, had never suspected. If she had suffered, no one
+in Edgewood was any the wiser, for the maiden heart is not commonly worn
+on the sleeve in New England. If she had been openly pledged to Justin
+Peabody, she could have waited twice ten years with a decent show of
+self-respect, for long engagements were viewed rather as a matter of
+course in that neighborhood. The endless months had gone on since that
+gray November day when Justin had said goodbye. It had been just before
+Thanksgiving, and she went to church with an aching and ungrateful
+heart. The parson read from the eighth chapter of St. Matthew, a most
+unexpected selection for that holiday. "If you can't find anything else
+to be thankful for," he cried, "go home and be thankful you are not a
+leper!"
+
+Nancy took the drastic counsel away from the church with her, and it
+was many a year before she could manage to add to this slender store
+anything to increase her gratitude for mercies given, though all the
+time she was outwardly busy, cheerful, and helpful.
+
+Justin had once come back to Edgewood, and it was the bitterest drop
+in her cup of bitterness that she was spending that winter in Berwick
+(where, so the neighbors told him, she was a great favorite in society,
+and was receiving much attention from gentlemen), so that she had never
+heard of his visit until the spring had come again. Parted friends
+did not keep up with one another's affairs by means of epistolary
+communication, in those days, in Edgewood; it was not the custom. Spoken
+words were difficult enough to Justin Peabody, and written words were
+quite impossible, especially if they were to be used to define his
+half-conscious desires and his fluctuations of will, or to recount his
+disappointments and discouragements and mistakes.
+
+
+
+
+IV. It was Saturday afternoon, the 24th of December, and the weary
+sisters of the Dorcas band rose from their bruised knees and removed
+their little stores of carpet-tacks from their mouths. This was a
+feminine custom of long standing, and as no village dressmaker had
+ever died of pins in the digestive organs, so were no symptoms of
+carpet-tacks ever discovered in any Dorcas, living or dead. Men wondered
+at the habit and reviled it, but stood confounded in the presence of its
+indubitable harmlessness.
+
+The red ingrain carpet was indeed very warm, beautiful, and comforting
+to the eye, and the sisters were suitably grateful to Providence, and
+devoutly thankful to themselves, that they had been enabled to buy,
+sew, and lay so many yards of it. But as they stood looking at their
+completed task, it was cruelly true that there was much left to do.
+
+The aisles had been painted dark brown on each side of the red strips
+leading from the doors to the pulpit, but the rest of the church floor
+was "a thing of shreds and patches." Each member of the carpet committee
+had paid (as a matter of pride, however ill she could afford it) three
+dollars and sixty-seven cents for sufficient carpet to lay in her own
+pew; but these brilliant spots of conscientious effort only made the
+stretches of bare, unpainted floor more evident. And that was not all.
+Traces of former spasmodic and individual efforts desecrated the
+present ideals. The doctor's pew had a pink-and-blue Brussels on it; the
+lawyer's, striped stair-carpeting; the Browns from Deerwander sported
+straw matting and were not abashed; while the Greens, the Whites, the
+Blacks, and the Grays displayed floor coverings as dissimilar as their
+names.
+
+"I never noticed it before!" exclaimed Maria Sharp, "but it ain't
+Christian, that floor! it's heathenish and ungodly!"
+
+"For mercy's sake, don't swear, Maria," said Mrs. Miller nervously.
+"We've done our best, and let's hope that folks will look up and not
+down. It is n't as if they were going to set in the chandelier; they'll
+have something else to think about when Nancy gets her hemlock branches
+and white carnations in the pulpit vases. This morning my Abner picked
+off two pinks from a plant I've been nursing in my dining-room for
+weeks, trying to make it bloom for Christmas. I slapped his hands good,
+and it's been haunting me ever since to think I had to correct him the
+day before Christmas.--Come, Lobelia, we must be hurrying!"
+
+"One thing comforts me," exclaimed the Widow Buzzell, as she took her
+hammer and tacks preparatory to leaving; "and that is that the Methodist
+meetin'-house ain't got any carpet at all."
+
+"Mrs. Buzzell, Mrs. Buzzell!" interrupted the minister's wife, with a
+smile that took the sting from her speech. "It will be like punishing
+little Abner Miller; if we think those thoughts on Christmas Eve, we
+shall surely be haunted afterward."
+
+"And anyway," interjected Maria Sharp, who always saved the situation,
+"you just wait and see if the Methodists don't say they'd rather have
+no carpet at all than have one that don't go all over the floor. I know
+'em!" and she put on her hood and blanket-shawl as she gave one last
+fond look at the improvements.
+
+"I'm going home to get my supper, and come back afterward to lay the
+carpet in my pew; my beans and brown bread will be just right by now,
+and perhaps it will rest me a little; besides, I must feed 'Zekiel."
+
+As Nancy Wentworth spoke, she sat in a corner of her own modest rear
+seat, looking a little pale and tired. Her waving dark hair had
+loosened and fallen over her cheeks, and her eyes gleamed from under it
+wistfully. Nowadays Nancy's eyes never had the sparkle of gazing into
+the future, but always the liquid softness that comes from looking
+backward.
+
+"The church will be real cold by then, Nancy," objected Mrs.
+Burbank.--"Good-night, Mrs. Baxter."
+
+"Oh, no! I shall be back by half-past six, and I shall not work long.
+Do you know what I believe I'll do, Mrs. Burbank, just through the
+holidays? Christmas and New Year's both coming on Sunday this year,
+there'll be a great many out to church, not counting the strangers
+that'll come to the special service tomorrow. Instead of putting down my
+own pew carpet that'll never be noticed here in the back, I'll lay it
+in the old Peabody pew, for the red aisle-strip leads straight up to it;
+the ministers always go up that side, and it does look forlorn."
+
+"That's so! And all the more because my pew, that's exactly opposite in
+the left wing, is new carpeted and cushioned," replied the president.
+"I think it's real generous of you, Nancy, because the Riverboro folks,
+knowing that you're a member of the carpet committee, will be sure to
+notice, and think it's queer you have n't made an effort to carpet your
+own pew."
+
+"Never mind!" smiled Nancy wearily. "Riverboro folks never go to bed on
+Saturday nights without wondering what Edgewood is thinking about them!"
+
+The minister's wife stood at her window watching Nancy as she passed the
+parsonage.
+
+"How wasted! How wasted!" she sighed. "Going home to eat her lonely
+supper and feed 'Zekiel.... I can bear it for the others, but not for
+Nancy.... Now she has lighted her lamp,... now she has put fresh pine
+on the fire, for new smoke comes from the chimney. Why should I sit down
+and serve my dear husband, and Nancy feed 'Zekiel?"
+
+There was some truth in Mrs. Baxter's feeling. Mrs. Buzzell, for
+instance, had three sons; Maria Sharp was absorbed in her lame father
+and her Sunday-School work; and Lobelia Brewster would not have
+considered matrimony a blessing, even under the most favorable
+conditions. But Nancy was framed and planned for other things, and
+'Zekiel was an insufficient channel for her soft, womanly sympathy and
+her bright activity of mind and body.
+
+'Zekiel had lost his tail in a mowing-machine; 'Zekiel had the asthma,
+and the immersion of his nose in milk made him sneeze, so he was wont
+to slip his paw in and out of the dish and lick it patiently for five
+minutes together. Nancy often watched him pityingly, giving him kind
+and gentle words to sustain his fainting spirit, but tonight she paid no
+heed to him, although he sneezed violently to attract her attention.
+
+She had put her supper on the lighted table by the kitchen window and
+was pouring out her cup of tea, when a boy rapped at the door. "Here's
+a paper and a letter, Miss Wentworth," he said. "It's the second this
+week, and they think over to the store that that Berwick widower must be
+settin' up and takin' notice!"
+
+She had indeed received a letter the day before, an unsigned
+communication, consisting only of the words,--
+
+   Second Epistle of John. Verse x2.
+
+She had taken her Bible to look out the reference and found it to be:--
+
+     Having many tilings to write unto you, I would not write
+     with paper and ink: but I trust to come unto you, and speak
+     face to face, that our joy may be full.
+
+The envelope was postmarked New York, and she smiled, thinking that Mrs.
+Emerson, a charming lady who had spent the summer in Edgewood, and
+had sung with her in the village choir, was coming back, as she had
+promised, to have a sleigh ride and see Edgewood in its winter dress.
+Nancy had almost forgotten the first letter in the excitements of her
+busy day, and now here was another, from Boston this time. She opened
+the envelope and found again only a simple sentence, printed, not
+written. (Lest she should guess the hand, she wondered?)
+
+  Second Epistle of John. Verse 5.--
+     And now I beseech thee, lady, not as though I wrote a new commandment
+ unto thee, but that which we had from the beginning, that we love one
+ another.
+
+Was it Mrs. Emerson? Could it be--any one else? Was it? No, it might
+have been, years ago; but not now; not now!--And yet; he was always so
+different from other people; and once, in church, he had handed her the
+hymn-book with his finger pointing to a certain verse.
+
+She always fancied that her secret fidelity of heart rose from the
+fact that Justin Peabody was "different." From the hour of their first
+acquaintance, she was ever comparing him with his companions, and always
+to his advantage. So long as a woman finds all men very much alike (as
+Lobelia Brewster did, save that she allowed some to be worse!), she is
+in no danger. But the moment in which she perceives and discriminates
+subtle differences, marveling that there can be two opinions about a
+man's superiority, that moment the miracle has happened.
+
+     And now I beseech thee, lady, not as though I wrote a new commandment
+ unto thee, but that which we had from the beginning, that we love one
+ another.
+
+No, it could not be from Justin. She drank her tea, played with her
+beans abstractedly, and nibbled her slice of steaming brown bread.
+
+     Not as though I wrote a new commandment unto thee.
+
+No, not a new one; twelve, fifteen years old, that commandment!
+
+     That we love one another.
+
+Who was speaking? Who had written these words? The first letter sounded
+just like Mrs. Emerson, who had said she was a very poor correspondent,
+but that she should just "drop down" on Nancy one of these days; but
+this second letter never came from Mrs. Emerson.--Well, there would be
+an explanation some time; a pleasant one; one to smile over, and tell
+'Zekiel and repeat to the neighbors; but not an unexpected, sacred,
+beautiful explanation, such a one as the heart of a woman could imagine,
+if she were young enough and happy enough to hope. She washed her cup
+and plate; replaced the uneaten beans in the brown pot, and put them
+away with the round loaf, folded the cloth (Lobelia Brewster said
+Nancy always "set out her meals as if she was entertainin' company from
+Portland"), closed the stove dampers, carried the lighted lamp to a
+safe corner shelf, and lifted 'Zekiel to his cushion on the high-backed
+rocker, doing all with the nice precision of long habit. Then she
+wrapped herself warmly, and locking the lonely little house behind her,
+set out to finish her work in the church.
+
+
+
+
+V. At this precise moment Justin Peabody was eating his own beans
+and brown bread (articles of diet of which his Detroit landlady was
+lamentably ignorant) at the new tavern, not far from the meeting-house.
+
+It would not be fair to him to say that Mrs. Burbank's letter had
+brought him back to Edgewood, but it had certainly accelerated his
+steps.
+
+For the first six years after Justin Peabody left home, he had drifted
+about from place to place, saving every possible dollar of his uncertain
+earnings in the conscious hope that he could go back to New England
+and ask Nancy Wentworth to marry him. The West was prosperous and
+progressive, but how he yearned, in idle moments, for the grimmer and
+more sterile soil that had given him birth!
+
+Then came what seemed to him a brilliant chance for a lucky turn of his
+savings, and he invested them in an enterprise which, wonderfully as
+it promised, failed within six months and left him penniless. At that
+moment he definitely gave up all hope, and for the next few years he put
+Nancy as far as possible out of his mind, in the full belief that he was
+acting an honorable part in refusing to drag her into his tangled and
+fruitless way of life. If she ever did care for him,--and he could not
+be sure, she was always so shy,--she must have outgrown the feeling long
+since, and be living happily, or at least contentedly, in her own
+way. He was glad in spite of himself when he heard that she had never
+married; but at least he had n't it on his conscience that _he_ had kept
+her single!
+
+On the 17th of December, Justin, his business day over, was walking
+toward the dreary house in which he ate and slept. As he turned the
+corner, he heard one woman say to another, as they watched a man
+stumbling sorrowfully down the street: "Going home will be the worst of
+all for him--to find nobody there!" That was what going home had meant
+for him these ten years, but he afterward felt it strange that this
+thought should have struck him so forcibly on that particular day.
+Entering the boarding-house, he found Mrs. Burbank's letter with its
+Edgewood postmark on the hall table, and took it up to his room. He
+kindled a little fire in the air-tight stove, watching the flame creep
+from shavings to kindlings, from kindlings to small pine, and from small
+pine to the round, hardwood sticks; then when the result seemed certain,
+he closed the stove door and sat down to read the letter. Whereupon all
+manner of strange things happened in his head and heart and flesh and
+spirit as he sat there alone, his hands in his pockets, his feet braced
+against the legs of the stove.
+
+It was a cold winter night, and the snow and sleet beat against the
+windows. He looked about the ugly room: at the washstand with its square
+of oilcloth in front and its detestable bowl and pitcher; at the rigors
+of his white iron bedstead, with the valley in the middle of the
+lumpy mattress and the darns in the rumpled pillowcases; at the dull
+photographs of the landlady's hideous husband and children enshrined on
+the mantelshelf; looked at the abomination of desolation surrounding him
+until his soul sickened and cried out like a child's for something more
+like home. It was as if a spring thaw had melted his ice-bound heart,
+and on the crest of a wave it was drifting out into the milder waters of
+some unknown sea. He could have laid his head in the kind lap of a woman
+and cried: "Comfort me! Give me companionship or I die!"
+
+The wind howled in the chimney and rattled the loose window-sashes; the
+snow, freezing as it fell, dashed against the glass with hard, cutting
+little blows; at least, that is the way in which the wind and snow
+flattered themselves they were making existence disagreeable to Justin
+Peabody when he read the letter; but never were elements more mistaken.
+
+It was a June Sunday in the boarding-house bedroom; and for that matter
+it was not the boarding-house bedroom at all: it was the old Orthodox
+church on Tory Hill in Edgewood. The windows were wide open, and the
+smell of the purple clover and the humming of the bees were drifting
+into the sweet, wide spaces within. Justin was sitting in the end of the
+Peabody pew, and Nancy Wentworth was beside him; Nancy, cool and restful
+in her white dress; dark-haired Nancy under the shadow of her shirred
+muslin hat.
+
+   Rise, my soul, and stretch thy wings,
+    Thy better portion trace.
+
+The melodeon gave the tune, and Nancy and he stood to sing, taking the
+book between them. His hand touched hers, and as the music of the hymn
+rose and fell, the future unrolled itself before his eyes: a future in
+which Nancy was his wedded wife; and the happy years stretched on and
+on in front of them until there was a row of little heads in the old
+Peabody pew, and mother and father could look proudly along the line at
+the young things they were bringing into the house of the Lord.
+
+The recalling of that vision worked like magic in Justin's blood.
+His soul rose and stretched its wings and "traced its better portion"
+vividly, as he sprang to his feet and walked up and down the bedroom
+floor. He would get a few days' leave and go back to Edgewood for
+Christmas, to join, with all the old neighbors, in the service at the
+meetinghouse; and in pursuance of this resolve, he shook his fist in
+the face of the landlady's husband on the mantelpiece and dared him to
+prevent.
+
+He had a salary of fifty dollars a month, with some very slight prospect
+of an increase after January. He did not see how two persons could eat,
+and drink, and lodge, and dress on it in Detroit, but he proposed
+to give Nancy Wentworth the refusal of that magnificent future, that
+brilliant and tempting offer. He had exactly one hundred dollars in
+the bank, and sixty or seventy of them would be spent in the journeys,
+counting two happy, blessed fares back from Edgewood to Detroit; and if
+he paid only his own fare back, he would throw the price of the other
+into the pond behind the Wentworth house. He would drop another ten
+dollars into the plate on Christmas Day toward the repairs on the
+church; if he starved, he would do that. He was a failure. Everything
+his hand touched turned to naught. He looked himself full in the face,
+recognizing his weakness, and in this supremest moment of recognition
+he was a stronger man than he had been an hour before. His drooping
+shoulders had straightened; the restless look had gone from his eyes;
+his somber face had something of repose in it, the repose of a settled
+purpose. He was a failure, but perhaps if he took the risks (and
+if Nancy would take them--but that was the trouble, women were so
+unselfish, they were always willing to take risks, and one ought not to
+let them!), perhaps he might do better in trying to make a living for
+two than he had in working for himself alone. He would go home, tell
+Nancy that he was an unlucky good-for-naught, and ask her if she would
+try her hand at making him over.
+
+
+
+
+VI. These were the reasons that had brought Justin Peabody to Edgewood
+on the Saturday afternoon before Christmas, and had taken him to the new
+tavern on Tory Hill, near the meeting-house.
+
+Nobody recognized him at the station or noticed him at the tavern, and
+after his supper he put on his overcoat and started out for a walk,
+aimlessly hoping that he might meet a friend, or failing that, intending
+to call on some of his old neighbors, with the view of hearing the
+village news and securing some information which might help him to
+decide when he had better lay himself and his misfortunes at Nancy
+Wentworth's feet. They were pretty feet! He remembered that fact well
+enough under the magical influence of familiar sights and sounds and
+odors. He was restless, miserable, anxious, homesick--not for Detroit,
+but for some heretofore unimagined good; yet, like Bunyan's shepherd boy
+in the Valley of humiliation, he carried "the herb called Heartsease in
+his bosom," for he was at last loving consciously.
+
+How white the old church looked, and how green the blinds! It must
+have been painted very lately: that meant that the parish was fairly
+prosperous. There were new shutters in the belfry tower, too; he
+remembered the former open space and the rusty bell, and he liked the
+change. Did the chimney use to be in that corner? No; but his father had
+always said it would have drawn better if it had been put there in the
+beginning. New shingles within a year: that was evident to a practiced
+eye. He wondered if anything had been done to the inside of the
+building, but he must wait until the morrow to see, for, of course, the
+doors would be locked. No; the one at the right side was ajar. He opened
+it softly and stepped into the tiny square entry that he recalled so
+well--the one through which the Sunday-School children ran out to the
+steps from their catechism, apparently enjoying the sunshine after a
+spell of orthodoxy; the little entry where the village girls congregated
+while waiting for the last bell to ring--they made a soft blur of pink
+and blue and buff, a little flutter of curls and braids and fans and
+sun-shades, in his mind's eye, as he closed the outer door behind him
+and gently opened the inner one. The church was flooded with moon-light
+and snowlight, and there was one lamp burning at the back of the pulpit;
+a candle, too, on the pulpit steps. There was the tip-tap-tip of a
+tack-hammer going on in a distant corner. Was somebody hanging Christmas
+garlands? The new red carpet attracted his notice, and as he grew
+accustomed to the dim light, it carried his eye along the aisle he had
+trod so many years of Sundays, to the old familiar pew. The sound of the
+hammer ceased, and a woman rose from her knees. A stranger was doing for
+the family honor what he ought himself to have done. The woman turned
+to shake her skirt, and it was Nancy Wentworth. He might have known it.
+Women were always faithful; they always remembered old land-marks, old
+days, old friends, old duties. His father and mother and Esther were all
+gone; who but dear Nancy would have made the old Peabody pew right and
+tidy for the Christmas festival? Bless her kind, womanly heart!
+
+She looked just the same to him as when he last saw her. Mercifully
+he seemed to have held in remembrance all these years not so much
+her youthful bloom as her general qualities of mind and heart: her
+cheeriness, her spirit, her unflagging zeal, her bright womanliness. Her
+gray dress was turned up in front over a crimson moreen petticoat. She
+had on a cozy jacket, a fur turban of some sort with a red breast in it,
+and her cheeks were flushed from exertion. "Sweet records, and promises
+as sweet," had always met in Nancy's face, and either he had forgotten
+how pretty she was, or else she had absolutely grown prettier during his
+absence.
+
+Nancy would have chosen the supreme moment of meeting very differently,
+but she might well have chosen worse. She unpinned her skirt and brushed
+the threads off, smoothed the pew cushions carefully, and took a
+last stitch in the ragged hassock. She then lifted the Bible and the
+hymn-book from the rack, and putting down a bit of flannel on the pulpit
+steps, took a flatiron from an oil-stove, and opening the ancient books,
+pressed out the well-thumbed leaves one by one with infinite care. After
+replacing the volumes in their accustomed place, she first extinguished
+the flame of her stove, which she tucked out of sight, and then blew out
+the lamp and the candle. The church was still light enough for objects
+to be seen in a shadowy way, like the objects in a dream, and Justin did
+not realize that he was a man in the flesh, looking at a woman; spying,
+it might be, upon her privacy. He was one part of a dream and she
+another, and he stood as if waiting, and fearing, to be awakened.
+
+Nancy, having done all, came out of the pew, and standing in the aisle,
+looked back at the scene of her labors with pride and content. And as
+she looked, some desire to stay a little longer in the dear old place
+must have come over her, or some dread of going back to her lonely
+cottage, for she sat down in Justin's corner of the pew with folded
+hands, her eyes fixed dreamily on the pulpit and her ears hearing:--
+
+      Not as though I wrote a new commandment unto thee, but that
+      which we had from the beginning.
+
+Justin's grasp on the latch tightened as he prepared to close the door
+and leave the place, but his instinct did not warn him quickly enough,
+after all, for, obeying some uncontrollable impulse, Nancy suddenly fell
+on her knees in the pew and buried her face in the cushions. The dream
+broke, and in an instant Justin was a man--worse than that, he was
+an eavesdropper, ashamed of his unsuspected presence. He felt himself
+standing, with covered head and feet shod, in the holy temple of a
+woman's heart.
+
+But his involuntary irreverence brought abundant grace with it.
+The glimpse and the revelation wrought their miracles silently and
+irresistibly, not by the slow processes of growth which Nature demands
+for her enterprises, but with the sudden swiftness of the spirit. In
+an instant changes had taken place in Justin's soul which his so-called
+"experiencing religion" twenty-five years back had been powerless to
+effect. He had indeed been baptized then, but the recording angel could
+have borne witness that this second baptism fructified the first, and
+became the real herald of the new birth and the new creature.
+
+
+
+
+VII. Justin Peabody silently closed the inner door, and stood in the
+entry with his head bent and his heart in a whirl until he should hear
+Nancy rise to her feet. He must take this Heaven-sent chance of telling
+her all, but how do it without alarming her?
+
+A moment, and her step sounded in the stillness of the empty church.
+
+Obeying the first impulse, he passed through the outer door, and
+standing on the step, knocked once, twice, three times; then, opening
+it a little and speaking through the chink, he called, "Is Miss Nancy
+Wentworth here?"
+
+"I'm here!" in a moment came Nancy's answer; and then, with a little
+wondering tremor in her voice, as if a hint of the truth had already
+dawned: "What's wanted?"
+
+"You're wanted, Nancy, wanted badly, by Justin Peabody, come back from
+the West."
+
+The door opened wide, and Justin faced Nancy standing halfway down
+the aisle, her eyes brilliant, her lips parted. A week ago Justin's
+apparition confronting her in the empty meeting-house after nightfall,
+even had she been prepared for it as now, by his voice, would have
+terrified her beyond measure. Now it seemed almost natural and
+inevitable. She had spent these last days in the church where both of
+them had been young and happy together; the two letters had brought him
+vividly to mind, and her labor in the old Peabody pew had been one
+long excursion into the past in which he was the most prominent and the
+best-loved figure.
+
+"I said I'd come back to you when my luck turned, Nancy."
+
+These were so precisely the words she expected him to say, should she
+ever see him again face to face, that for an additional moment they but
+heightened her sense of unreality.
+
+"Well, the luck hasn't turned, after all, but I could n't wait any
+longer. Have you given a thought to me all these years, Nancy?"
+
+"More than one, Justin." For the very look upon his face, the tenderness
+of his voice, the attitude of his body, outran his words and told her
+what he had come home to say, told her that her years of waiting were
+over at last.
+
+"You ought to despise me for coming back again with only myself and my
+empty hands to offer you."
+
+How easy it was to speak his heart out in this dim and quiet place! How
+tongue-tied he would have been, sitting on the black hair-cloth sofa in
+the Wentworth parlor and gazing at the open soapstone stove!
+
+"Oh, men are such fools!" cried Nancy, smiles and tears struggling
+together in her speech, as she sat down suddenly in her own pew and put
+her hands over her face.
+
+"They are," agreed Justin humbly; "but I've never stopped loving you,
+whenever I've had time for thinking or loving. And I was n't sure that
+you really cared anything about me; and how could I have asked you when
+I had n't a dollar in the world?"
+
+"There are other things to give a woman besides dollars, Justin."
+
+"Are there? Well, you shall have them all, every one of them, Nancy, if
+you can make up your mind to do without the dollars; for dollars seem to
+be just what I can't manage."
+
+Her hand was in his by this time, and they were sitting side by side,
+in the cushionless, carpetless Wentworth pew. The door stood open; the
+winter moon shone in upon them. That it was beginning to grow cold in
+the church passed unnoticed. The grasp of the woman's hand seemed
+to give the man new hope and courage, and Justin's warm, confiding,
+pleading pressure brought balm to Nancy, balm and healing for the wounds
+her pride had suffered; joy, too, half-conscious still, that her life
+need not be lived to the end in unfruitful solitude. She had waited,
+"as some gray lake lies, full and smooth, awaiting the star below the
+twilight."
+
+Justin Peabody might have been no other woman's star, but he was
+Nancy's! "Just you sitting beside me here makes me feel as if I'd been
+asleep or dead all these years, and just born over again," said
+Justin. "I've led a respectable, hard-working, honest life, Nancy," he
+continued, "and I don't owe any man a cent; the trouble is that no man
+owes me one. I've got enough money to pay two fares back to Detroit on
+Monday, although I was terribly afraid you would n't let me do it. It'll
+need a good deal of thinking and planning, Nancy, for we shall be very
+poor."
+
+Nancy had been storing up fidelity and affection deep, deep in the hive
+of her heart all these years, and now the honey of her helpfulness stood
+ready to be gathered.
+
+"Could I keep hens in Detroit?" she asked. "I can always make them pay."
+
+"Hens--in three rooms, Nancy?"
+
+Her face fell. "And no yard?"
+
+"No yard."
+
+A moment's pause, and then the smile came. "Oh, well, I've had yards and
+hens for thirty-five years. Doing without them will be a change. I can
+take in sewing."
+
+"No, you can't, Nancy. I need your backbone and wits and pluck and
+ingenuity, but if I can't ask you to sit with your hands folded for the
+rest of your life, as I'd like to, you shan't use them for other people.
+You're marrying me to make a man of me, but I'm not marrying you to make
+you a drudge."
+
+His voice rang clear and true in the silence, and Nancy's heart vibrated
+at the sound.
+
+"O Justin, Justin! there's something wrong somewhere," she whispered,
+"but we'll find it out together, you and I, and make it right. You're
+not like a failure. You don't even look poor, Justin; there is n't a man
+in Edgewood to compare with you, or I should be washing his dishes and
+darning his stockings this minute. And I am not a pauper! There'll be
+the rent of my little house and a carload of my furniture, so you can
+put the three-room idea out of your mind, and your firm will offer you a
+larger salary when you tell them you have a wife to take care of. Oh, I
+see it all, and it is as easy and bright and happy as can be!"
+
+Justin put his arm around her and drew her close, with such a throb of
+gratitude for her belief and trust that it moved him almost to tears.
+There was a long pause; then he said:--
+
+"Now I shall call for you tomorrow morning after the last bell has
+stopped ringing, and we will walk up the aisle together and sit in the
+old Peabody pew. We shall be a nine days' wonder anyway, but this will
+be equal to an announcement, especially if you take my arm. We don't
+either of us like to be stared at, but this will show without a word
+what we think of each other and what we've promised to be to each other,
+and it's the only thing that will make me feel sure of you and settled
+in my mind after all these mistaken years. Have you got the courage,
+Nancy?"
+
+"I should n't wonder! I guess if I've had courage enough to wait for
+you, I've got courage enough to walk up the aisle with you and marry
+you besides!" said Nancy.--"Now it is too late for us to stay here any
+longer, and you must see me only as far as my gate, for perhaps you have
+n't forgotten yet how interested the Brewsters are in their neighbors."
+
+They stood at the little Wentworth gate for a moment, hand close clasped
+in hand. The night was clear, the air was cold and sparkling, but with
+nothing of bitterness in it, the sky was steely blue, and the evening
+star glowed and burned like a tiny sun. Nancy remembered the shepherd's
+song she had taught the Sunday-School children, and repeated softly:--
+
+ For I my sheep was watching
+  Beneath the silent skies,
+ When sudden, far to eastward,
+  I saw a star arise;
+ Then all the peaceful heavens
+  With sweetest music rang,
+ And glory, glory, glory!
+  The happy angels sang.
+
+ So I this night am joyful,
+  Though I can scarce tell why,
+ It seemeth me that glory
+  Hath met us very nigh;
+ And we, though poor and humble,
+  Have part in heavenly plan,
+ For, born tonight, the Prince of Peace
+  Shall rule the heart of man.
+
+Justin's heart melted within him like wax to the woman's vision and the
+woman's touch.
+
+"Oh, Nancy, Nancy!" he whispered. "If I had brought my bad luck to you
+long, long ago, would you have taken me then, and have I lost years of
+such happiness as this?"
+
+"There are some things it is not best for a man to be certain about,"
+said Nancy, with a wise smile and a last goodnight.
+
+
+
+VIII. Ring out, sweet bells
+
+
+ Ring out, sweet bells,
+ O'er woods and dells
+  Your lovely strains repeat,
+ While happy throngs
+ With joyous songs
+  Each accent gladly greet.
+
+Christmas morning in the old Tory Hill Meeting-House was felt by all
+of the persons who were present in that particular year to be a most
+exciting and memorable occasion.
+
+The old sexton quite outdid himself, for although he had rung the bell
+for more than thirty years, he had never felt greater pride or joy in
+his task. Was not his son John home for Christmas, and John's wife,
+and a grand-child newly named Nathaniel for himself? Were there not
+spareribs and turkeys and cranberries and mince pies on the pantry
+shelves, and barrels of rosy Baldwins in the cellar and bottles of
+mother's root beer just waiting to give a holiday pop? The bell itself
+forgot its age and the suspicion of a crack that dulled its voice on
+a damp day, and, inspired by the bright, frosty air, the sexton's
+inspiring pull, and the Christmas spirit, gave out nothing but joyous
+tones.
+
+_Ding-dong_! _Ding-dong_! It fired the ambitions of star scholars about
+to recite hymns and sing solos. It thrilled little girls expecting dolls
+before night. It excited beyond bearing dozens of little boys being
+buttoned into refractory overcoats. _Ding-dong_! _Ding-dong_! Mothers'
+fingers trembled when they heard it, and mothers' voices cried: "If that
+is the second bell, the children will never be ready in time! Where
+are the overshoes? Where are the mittens? Hurry, Jack! Hurry, Jennie!"
+_Ding-dong_! _Ding-dong_! "Where's Sally's muff? Where's father's fur
+cap? Is the sleigh at the door? Are the hot soapstones in? Have all of
+you your money for the contribution box?" _Ding-dong_! _Ding-dong_! It
+was a blithe bell, a sweet, true bell, a holy bell, and to Justin pacing
+his tavern room, as to Nancy trembling in her maiden chamber, it rang a
+Christmas message:--
+
+ Awake, glad heart! Arise and sing;
+ It is the birthday of thy King!
+
+The congregation filled every seat in the old meeting-house. As Maria
+Sharp had prophesied, there was one ill-natured spinster from a rival
+village who declared that the church floor looked like Joseph's coat
+laid out smooth; but in the general chorus of admiration, approval, and
+goodwill, this envious speech, though repeated from mouth to mouth, left
+no sting.
+
+Another item of interest long recalled was the fact that on that august
+and unapproachable day the pulpit vases stood erect and empty, though
+Nancy Wentworth had filled them every Sunday since any one could
+remember. This instance, though felt at the time to be of mysterious
+significance if the cause were ever revealed, paled into nothingness
+when, after the ringing of the last bell, Nancy Wentworth walked up the
+aisle on Justin Peabody's arm, and they took their seats side by side in
+the old family pew.
+
+("And consid'able close, too, though there was plenty o' room!")
+
+("And no one that I ever heard of so much as suspicioned that they had
+ever kept company!")
+
+("And do you s'pose she knew Justin was expected back when she scrubbed
+his pew a-Friday? ")
+
+("And this explains the empty pulpit vases! ")
+
+("And I always said that Nancy would make a real handsome couple if she
+ever got anybody to couple with!")
+
+During the unexpected and solemn procession of the two up the aisle
+the soprano of the village choir stopped short in the middle of the
+Doxology, and the three other voices carried it to the end without any
+treble. Also, among those present there were some who could not remember
+afterward the precise petitions wafted upward in the opening prayer.
+
+And could it be explained otherwise than by cheerfully acknowledging the
+bounty of an overruling Providence that Nancy Wentworth should have had
+a new winter dress for the first time in five years--a winter dress of
+dark brown cloth to match her beaver muff and victorine? The existence
+of this toilette had been known and discussed in Edgewood for a month
+past, and it was thought to be nothing more than a proper token
+of respect from a member of the carpet committee to the general
+magnificence of the church on the occasion of its reopening after
+repairs. Indeed, you could have identified every member of the Dorcas
+Society that Sunday morning by the freshness of her apparel. The brown
+dress, then, was generally expected; but why the white cashmere waist
+with collar and cuffs of point lace, devised only and suitable only for
+the minister's wedding, where it first saw the light?
+
+"The white waist can only be explained as showing distinct hope!"
+whispered the minister's wife during the reading of the church notices.
+
+"To me it shows more than hope; I am very sure that Nancy would never
+take any wear out of that lace for hope; it means certainty!" answered
+Maria, who was always strong in the prophetic line.
+
+Justin's identity had dawned upon most of the congregation by sermon
+time. A stranger to all but one or two at first, his presence in the
+Peabody pew brought his face and figure back, little by little, to the
+minds of the old parishioners.
+
+When the contribution plate was passed, the sexton always began at the
+right-wing pews, as all the sextons before him had done for a hundred
+years. Every eye in the church was already turned upon Justin and
+Nancy, and it was with almost a gasp that those in the vicinity saw a
+ten-dollar bill fall in the plate. The sexton reeled, or, if that is too
+intemperate a word for a pillar of the church, the good man tottered,
+but caught hold of the pew rail with one hand, and, putting the thumb
+of his other over the bill, proceeded quickly to the next pew, lest
+the stranger should think better of his gift, or demand change, as had
+occasionally been done in the olden time.
+
+Nancy never fluttered an eyelash, but sat quietly by Justin's side with
+her bosom rising and falling under the beaver fur and her cold
+hands clasped tight in the little brown muff. Far from grudging this
+appreciable part of their slender resources, she thrilled with pride to
+see Justin's offering fall in the plate.
+
+Justin was too absorbed in his own thoughts to notice anything, but
+his munificent contribution had a most unexpected effect upon his
+reputation, after all; for on that day, and on many another later one,
+when his sudden marriage and departure with Nancy Wentworth were under
+discussion, the neighbors said to one another:--"Justin must be making
+money fast out West! He put ten dollars in the contribution plate
+a-Sunday, and paid the minister ten more next day for marryin' him to
+Nancy; so the Peabody luck has turned at last!"--which as a matter of
+fact, it had.
+
+"And all the time," said the chairman of the carpet committee to the
+treasurer of the Dorcas Society--"all the time, little as she realized
+it, Nancy was laying the carpet in her own pew. Now she's married to
+Justin, she'll be the makin' of him, or I miss my guess. You can't do a
+thing with men-folks without they're right alongside where you can keep
+your eye and hand on 'em. Justin's handsome and good and stiddy; all he
+needs is some nice woman to put starch into him. The Edgewood Peabodys
+never had a mite o' stiffenin' in 'em,--limp as dishrags, every blessed
+one! Nancy Wentworth fairly rustles with starch. Justin had n't been
+engaged to her but a few hours when they walked up the aisle together,
+but did you notice the way he carried his head? I declare I thought 't
+would fall off behind! I should n't wonder a mite but they prospered and
+come back every summer to set in the Old Peabody Pew."
+
+
+
+
+
+SUSANNA AND SUE
+
+
+
+
+I. Mother Ann's Children
+
+
+It was the end of May, when "spring goeth all in white." The apple trees
+were scattering their delicate petals on the ground, dropping them
+over the stone walls to the roadsides, where in the moist places of the
+shadows they fell on beds of snowy innocence. Here and there a single
+tree was tinged with pink, but so faintly, it was as if the white were
+blushing. Now and then a tiny white butterfly danced in the sun and
+pearly clouds strayed across the sky in fleecy flocks.
+
+Everywhere the grass was of ethereal greenness, a greenness drenched
+with the pale yellow of spring sunshine. Looking from earth to sky
+and from blossom to blossom, the little world of the apple orchards,
+shedding its falling petals like fair-weather snow, seemed made of
+alabaster and porcelain, ivory and mother-of-pearl, all shimmering on a
+background of tender green.
+
+After you pass Albion village, with its streets shaded by elms and
+maples and its outskirts embowered in blossoming orchards, you wind
+along a hilly country road that runs between grassy fields. Here the
+whiteweed is already budding, and there are pleasant pastures dotted
+with rocks and fringed with spruce and fir; stretches of woodland,
+too, where the road is lined with giant pines and you lift your face
+gratefully to catch the cool balsam breath of the forest. Coming from
+out this splendid shade, this silence too deep to be disturbed by light
+breezes or vagrant winds, you find yourself on the brow of a descending
+hill. The first thing that strikes the eye is a lake that might be a
+great blue sapphire dropped into the verdant hollow where it lies. When
+the eye reluctantly leaves the lake on the left, it turns to rest
+upon the little Shaker Settlement on the right--a dozen or so large
+comfortable white barns, sheds, and houses, standing in the wide orderly
+spaces of their own spreading acres of farm and timber land. There
+again the spring goeth all in white, for there is no spot to fleck the
+dazzling quality of Shaker paint, and their apple, plum, and pear trees
+are so well cared for that the snowy blossoms are fairly hiding the
+branches.
+
+The place is very still, although there are signs of labor in all
+directions. From a window of the girls' building a quaint little
+gray-clad figure is beating a braided rug; a boy in homespun, with his
+hair slightly long in the back and cut in a straight line across the
+forehead, is carrying milk-cans from the dairy to one of the Sisters'
+Houses. Men in broad-brimmed hats, with clean-shaven, ascetic faces, are
+ploughing or harrowing here and there in the fields, while a group of
+Sisters is busy setting out plants and vines in some beds near a cluster
+of noble trees. That cluster of trees, did the eye of the stranger
+realize it, was the very starting-point of this Shaker Community, for
+in the year 1785, the valiant Father James Whittaker, one of Mother Ann
+Lee's earliest English converts, stopped near the village of Albion
+on his first visit to Maine. As he and his Elders alighted from their
+horses, they stuck into the ground the willow withes they had used as
+whips, and now, a hundred years later, the trees that had grown from
+these slender branches were nearly three feet in diameter.
+
+From whatever angle you look upon the Settlement, the first and
+strongest impression is of quiet order, harmony, and a kind of austere
+plenty. Nowhere is the purity of the spring so apparent. Nothing is
+out of place; nowhere is any confusion, or appearance of loose ends, or
+neglected tasks. As you come nearer, you feel the more surely that here
+there has never been undue haste nor waste; no shirking, no putting off
+till the morrow what should have been done today. Whenever a shingle or
+a clapboard was needed it was put on, where paint was required it was
+used,--that is evident; and a look at the great barns stored with hay
+shows how the fields have been conscientiously educated into giving a
+full crop.
+
+To such a spot as this might any tired or sinful heart come for
+rest; hoping somehow, in the midst of such frugality and thrift, such
+self-denying labor, such temperate use of God's good gifts, such shining
+cleanliness of outward things, to regain and wear "the white flower of
+a blameless life." The very air of the place breathed peace, so thought
+Susanna Hathaway; and little Sue, who skipped by her side, thought
+nothing at all save that she was with mother in the country; that it had
+been rather a sad journey, with mother so quiet and pale, and that she
+would be very glad to see supper, should it rise like a fairy banquet in
+the midst of these strange surroundings.
+
+It was only a mile and a half from the railway station to the Shaker
+Settlement, and Susanna knew the road well, for she had driven over it
+more than once as child and girl. A boy would bring the little trunk
+that contained their simple necessities later on in the evening, so
+she and Sue would knock at the door of the house where visitors were
+admitted, and be undisturbed by any gossiping company while they were
+pleading their case.
+
+"Are we most there, Mardie?" asked Sue for the twentieth time. "Look at
+me! I'm being a butterfly, or perhaps a white pigeon. No, I'd rather be
+a butterfly, and then I can skim along faster and move my wings!"
+
+The airy little figure, all lightness and brightness, danced along the
+road, the white cotton dress rising and falling, the white-stockinged
+legs much in evidence, the arms outstretched as if in flight, straw hat
+falling off yellow hair, and a little wisp of swansdown scarf floating
+out behind like the drapery of a baby Mercury.
+
+"We are almost there," her mother answered. "You can see the buildings
+now, if you will stop being a butterfly. Don't you like them?"
+
+"Yes, I 'specially like them all so white. Is it a town, Mardie?"
+
+"It is a village, but not quite like other villages. I have told you
+often about the Shaker Settlement, where your grandmother brought me
+once when I was just your age. There was a thunder-storm; they kept
+us all night, and were so kind that I never forgot them. Then your
+grandmother and I stopped off once when we were going to Boston. I was
+ten then, and I remember more about it. The same sweet Eldress was there
+both times."
+
+"What is an El-der-ess, Mardie?"
+
+"A kind of everybody's mother, she seemed to be," Susanna responded,
+with a catch in her breath.
+
+"I'd 'specially like her; will she be there now, Mardie?"
+
+"I'm hoping so, but it is eighteen years ago. I was ten and she was
+about forty, I should think."
+
+"Then o' course she'll be dead," said Sue, cheerfully, "or either she'll
+have no teeth or hair."
+
+"People don't always die before they are sixty, Sue."
+
+"Do they die when they want to, or when they must?"
+
+"Always when they must; never, never when they want to," answered Sue's
+mother.
+
+"But o' course they would n't ever want to if they had any little girls
+to be togedder with, like you and me, Mardie?" And Sue looked up with
+eyes that were always like two interrogation points, eager by turns and
+by turns wistful, but never satisfied.
+
+"No," Susanna replied brokenly, "of course they would n't, unless
+sometimes they were wicked for a minute or two and forgot."
+
+"Do the Shakers shake all the time, Mardie, or just once in a while? And
+shall I see them do it?"
+
+"Sue, dear, I can't explain everything in the world to you while you are
+so little; you really must wait until you're more grown up. The Shakers
+don't shake and the Quakers don't quake, and when you're older, I'll
+try to make you understand why they were called so and why they kept the
+name."
+
+"Maybe the El-der-ess can make me understand right off now; I'd
+'specially like it." And Sue ran breathlessly along to the gate where
+the North Family House stood in its stately, white-and-green austerity.
+
+Susanna followed, and as she caught up with the impetuous Sue, the front
+door of the house opened and a figure appeared on the threshold. Mother
+and child quickened their pace and went up the steps, Susanna with
+a hopeless burden of fear and embarrassment clogging her tongue and
+dragging at her feet; Sue so expectant of new disclosures and fresh
+experiences that her face beamed like a full moon.
+
+Eldress Abby (for it was Eldress Abby) had indeed survived the heavy
+weight of her fifty-five or sixty summers, and looked as if she might
+reach a yet greater age. She wore the simple Shaker afternoon dress of
+drab alpaca; an irreproachable muslin surplice encircled her straight,
+spare shoulders, while her hair was almost entirely concealed by the
+stiffly wired, transparent white-net cap that served as a frame to the
+tranquil face. The face itself was a network of delicate, fine wrinkles;
+but every wrinkle must have been as lovely in God's sight as it was in
+poor unhappy Susanna Hathaway's. Some of them were graven by self-denial
+and hard work; others perhaps meant the giving up of home, of parents
+and brothers or sisters; perhaps some worldly love, the love that Father
+Adam bequeathed to the human family, had been slain in Abby's youth, and
+the scars still remained to show the body's suffering and the spirit's
+triumph. At all events, whatever foes had menaced her purity or her
+tranquillity had been conquered, and she exhaled serenity as the rose
+sheds fragrance.
+
+"Do you remember the little Nelson girl and her mother that stayed here
+all night, years ago?" asked Susanna, putting out her hand timidly.
+
+"Why, seems to me I do," assented Eldress Abby, genially. "So many
+comes and goes it's hard to remember all. Did n't you come once in a
+thunder-storm?"
+
+"Yes, one of your barns was struck by lightning and we sat up all
+night." "Yee, yee.(1) I remember well! Your mother was a beautiful
+spirit. I could n't forget her."
+
+     (1)"Yea" is always thus pronounced by the Shakers.
+
+"And we came once again, mother and I, and spent the afternoon with you,
+and went strawberrying in the pasture."
+
+"Yee, yee, so we did; I hope your mother continues in health."
+
+"She died the very next year," Susanna answered in a trembling voice,
+for the time of explanation was near at hand and her heart failed her.
+
+"Won't you come into the sittingroom and rest a while? You must be tired
+walking from the deepot."
+
+"No, thank you, not just yet. I'll step into the front entry a
+minute.--Sue, run and sit in that rocking-chair on the porch and watch
+the cows going into the big barn.--Do you remember, Eldress Abby, the
+second time I came, how you sat me down in the kitchen with a bowl of
+wild strawberries to hull for supper? They were very small and ripe; I
+did my best, for I never meant to be careless, but the bowl slipped and
+fell, my legs were too short to reach the floor, and I could n't make a
+lap, so in trying to pick up the berries I spilled juice on nay dress,
+and on the white apron you had tied on for me. Then my fingers were
+stained and wet and the hulls kept falling in with the soft berries,
+and when you came in and saw me you held up your hands and said, 'Dear,
+dear! you _have_ made a mess of your work!' Oh, Eldress Abby, they've
+come back to me all day, those words. I've tried hard to be good, but
+somehow I've made just such a mess of my life as I made of hulling the
+berries. The bowl is broken, I have n't much fruit to show, and I am
+all stained and draggled. I should n't have come to Albion on the five
+o'clock train--that was an accident; I meant to come at noon, when you
+could turn me away if you wanted to."
+
+"Nay, that is not the Shaker habit," remonstrated Abby. "You and the
+child can sleep in one of the spare chambers at the Office Building and
+be welcome."
+
+"But I want much more than that," said Susanna, tearfully. "I want to
+come and live here, where there is no marrying nor giving in marriage.
+I am so tired with my disappointments and discouragements and failures
+that it is no use to try any longer. I am Mrs. Hathaway, and Sue is my
+child, but I have left my husband for good and all, and I only want
+to spend the rest of my days here in peace and bring up Sue to a more
+tranquil life than I have ever had. I have a little money, so that I
+shall not be a burden to you, and I will work from morning to night at
+any task you set me."
+
+"I will talk to the Family," said Eldress Abby gravely; "but there are a
+good many things to settle before we can say yee to all you ask."
+
+"Let me confess everything freely and fully," pleaded Susanna, "and if
+you think I'm to blame, I will go away at once."
+
+"Nay, this is no time for that. It is our duty to receive all and try
+all; then if you should be gathered in, you would unburden your heart to
+God through the Sister appointed to receive your confession."
+
+"Will Sue have to sleep in the children's building away from me?"
+
+"Nay, not now; you are company, not a Shaker, and anyway you could keep
+the child with you till she is a little older; that's not forbidden
+at first, though there comes a time when the ties of the flesh must be
+broken! All you've got to do now's to be 'pure and peaceable, gentle,
+easy to be entreated, and without hypocrisy.' That's about all there is
+to the Shaker creed, and that's enough to keep us all busy."
+
+Sue ran in from the porch excitedly and caught her mother's hand.
+
+"The cows have all gone into the barn," she chattered; "and the Shaker
+gentlemen are milking them, and not one of them is shaking the least
+bit, for I 'specially noticed; and I looked in through the porch window,
+and there is nice supper on a table--bread and butter and milk and dried
+apple sauce and gingerbread and cottage cheese. Is it for us, Mardie?"
+
+Susanna's lip was trembling and her face was pale. She lifted her
+swimming eyes to the Sister's and asked, "Is it for us, Eldress Abby?"
+
+"Yee, it's for you," she answered; "there's always a Shaker supper on
+the table for all who want to leave the husks and share the feast. Come
+right in and help yourselves. I will sit down with you."
+
+
+Supper was over, and Susanna and Sue were lying in a little upper
+chamber under the stars. It was the very one that Susanna had slept in
+as a child, or that she had been put to bed in, for there was little
+sleep that night for any one. She had leaned on the windowsill with her
+mother and watched the pillar of flame and smoke ascend from the burning
+barn; and once in the early morning she had stolen out of bed, and,
+kneeling by the open window, had watched the two silent Shaker brothers
+who were guarding the smouldering ruins, fearful lest the wind should
+rise and bear any spark to the roofs of the precious buildings they had
+labored so hard to save.
+
+The chamber was spotless and devoid of ornament. The paint was robin's
+egg blue and of a satin gloss. The shining floor was of the same color,
+and neat braided rugs covered exposed places near the bureau, washstand,
+and bed. Various useful articles of Shaker manufacture interested Sue
+greatly: the exquisite straw-work that covered the whisk-broom; the
+mending-basket, pincushion, needle-book, spool- and watch-cases,
+hair-receivers, pin-trays, might all have been put together by fairy
+fingers.
+
+Sue's prayers had been fervent, but a trifle disjointed, covering all
+subjects from Jack and Fardie, to Grandma in heaven and Aunt Louisa
+at the farm, with special references to El-der-ess Abby and the Shaker
+cows, and petitions that the next day be fair so that she could see them
+milked. Excitement at her strange, unaccustomed surroundings had put the
+child's mind in a very whirl, and she had astonished her mother with a
+very new and disturbing version of the Lord's Prayer, ending: "God give
+us our debts and help us to forget our debtors and theirs shall be the
+glory, Amen." Now she lay quietly on the wall side of the clean, narrow
+bed, while her mother listened to hear the regular breathing that would
+mean that she was off for the land of dreams. The child's sleep would
+leave the mother free to slip out of bed and look at the stars; free to
+pray and long and wonder and suffer and repent, not wholly, but in part,
+for she was really at peace in all but the innermost citadel of her
+conscience. She had left her husband, and for the moment, at all events,
+she was fiercely glad; but she had left her boy, and Jack was only ten.
+Jack was not the helpless, clinging sort; he was a little piece of his
+father, and his favorite. Aunt Louisa would surely take him, and Jack
+would scarcely feel the difference, for he had never shown any special
+affection for anybody. Still he was her child, nobody could possibly
+get around that fact, and it was a stumbling-block in the way of
+forgetfulness or ease of mind. Oh, but for that, what unspeakable
+content she could feel in this quiet haven, this self-respecting
+solitude! To have her thoughts, her emotions, her words, her self,
+to herself once more, as she had had them before she was married at
+seventeen. To go to sleep in peace, without listening for a step she had
+once heard with gladness, but that now sometimes stumbled unsteadily on
+the stair; or to dream as happy women dreamed, without being roused by
+the voice of the present John, a voice so different from that of the
+past John that it made the heart ache to listen to it.
+
+Sue's voice broke the stillness: "How long are we going to stay here,
+Mardie?"
+
+"I don't know, Sue; I think perhaps as long as they'll let us."
+
+"Will Fardie come and see us?"
+
+"I don't expect him."
+
+"Who'll take care of Jack, Mardie?"
+
+"Your Aunt Louisa."
+
+"She'll scold him awfully, but he never cries; he just says, 'Pooh! what
+do I care?' Oh, I forgot to pray for that very nicest Shaker gentleman
+that said he'd let me help him feed the calves! Had n't I better get out
+of bed and do it? I'd 'specially like to."
+
+"Very well, Sue; and then go to sleep."
+
+Safely in bed again, there was a long pause, and then the eager little
+voice began, "Who'll take care of Fardie now?"
+
+"He's a big man; he does n't need anybody."
+
+"What if he's sick?"
+
+"We must go back to him, I suppose."
+
+"Tomorrow 's Sunday; what if he needs us tomorrow, Mardie?"
+
+"I don't know, I don't know! Oh, Sue, Sue, don't ask your wretched
+mother any more questions, for she cannot bear them tonight. Cuddle
+up close to her; love her and forgive her and help her to know what's
+right."
+
+
+
+
+II. A Son of Adam
+
+When Susanna Nelson at seventeen married John Hathaway, she had the
+usual cogent reasons for so doing, with some rather more unusual ones
+added thereto. She was alone in the world, and her life with an uncle,
+her mother's only relative, was an unhappy one. No assistance in the
+household tasks that she had ever been able to render made her a welcome
+member of the family or kept her from feeling a burden, and she belonged
+no more to the little circle at seventeen than she did when she became a
+part of it at twelve. The hope of being independent and earning her own
+living had sustained her through the last year; but it was a very timid,
+self-distrustful, love-starved little heart that John Hathaway stormed
+and carried by assault. Her girl's life in a country school and her
+uncle's very rigid and orthodox home had been devoid of emotion or
+experience; still, her mother had early sown seeds in her mind and
+spirit that even in the most arid soil were certain to flower into
+beauty when the time for flowering came; and intellectually Susanna was
+the clever daughter of clever parents. She was very immature, because,
+after early childhood, her environment had not been favorable to her
+development. At seventeen she began to dream of a future as bright
+as the past had been dreary and uneventful. Visions of happiness, of
+goodness, and of service haunted her, and sometimes, gleaming through
+the mists of dawning womanhood, the figure, all luminous, of The Man!
+
+When John Hathaway appeared on the horizon, she promptly clothed him in
+all the beautiful garments of her dreams; they were a grotesque misfit,
+but when we intimate that women have confused the dream and the reality
+before, and may even do so again, we make the only possible excuse for
+poor little Susanna Nelson.
+
+John Hathaway was the very image of the outer world that lay beyond
+Susanna's village. He was a fairly prosperous, genial, handsome young
+merchant, who looked upon life as a place furnished by Providence in
+which to have "a good time." His parents had frequently told him that
+it was expedient for him to "settle down," and he supposed that he might
+finally do so, if he should ever find a girl who would tempt him to
+relinquish his liberty. (The line that divides liberty and license was
+a little vague to John Hathaway!) It is curious that he should not
+have chosen for his life-partner some thoughtless, rosy, romping young
+person, whose highest conception of connubial happiness would have been
+to drive twenty miles to the seashore on a Sunday, and having partaken
+of all the season's delicacies, solid and liquid, to come home hilarious
+by moonlight. That, however, is not the way the little love-imps do
+their work in the world; or is it possible that they are not imps at all
+who provoke and stimulate and arrange these strange marriages not imps,
+but honest, chastening little character-builders? In any event, the
+moment that John Hathaway first beheld Susanna Nelson was the moment
+of his surrender; yet the wooing was as incomprehensible as that of a
+fragile, dainty little hummingbird by a pompous, greedy, big-breasted
+robin.
+
+Susanna was like a New England anemone. Her face was oval in shape and
+as smooth and pale as a pearl. Her hair was dark, not very heavy, and as
+soft as a child's. Her lips were delicate and sensitive, her eyes a cool
+gray,--clear, steady, and shaded by darker lashes. When John Hathaway
+met her shy, maidenly glance and heard her pretty, dovelike voice, it
+is strange he did not see that there was a bit too much saint in her to
+make her a willing comrade of his gay, roistering life. But as a matter
+of fact, John Hathaway saw nothing at all; nothing but that Susanna
+Nelson was a lovely girl and he wanted her for his own. The type was
+one he had never met before, one that allured him by its mysteries and
+piqued him by its shy aloofness.
+
+John had "a way with him," a way that speedily won Susanna; and after
+all there was a best to him as well as a worst. He had a twinkling
+eye, an infectious laugh, a sweet disposition, and while he was
+over-susceptible to the charm of a pretty face, he had a chivalrous
+admiration for all women, coupled, it must be confessed, with a decided
+lack of discrimination in values. His boyish lightheartedness had a
+charm for everybody, including Susanna; a charm that lasted until she
+discovered that his heart was light not only when it ought to be light,
+but when it ought to be heavy. He was very much in love with her,
+but there was nothing particularly exclusive, unique, individual, or
+interesting about his passion at that time. It was of the everyday sort
+which carries a well-meaning man to the altar, and sometimes, in cases
+of exceptional fervor and duration, even a little farther. Stock sizes
+of this article are common and inexpensive, and John Hathaway's love
+when he married Susanna was, judged by the highest standards, about
+as trivial an affair as Cupid ever put upon the market or a man ever
+offered to a woman. Susanna on the same day offered John, or the wooden
+idol she was worshiping as John, her whole self--mind, body, heart,
+and spirit. So the couple were united, and smilingly signed the
+marriage-register, a rite by which their love for each other was
+supposed to be made eternal.
+
+  "Will you love me?" said he.
+  "Will you love me?" said she.
+  Then they answered together:
+  "Through foul and fair weather,
+  From sunrise to moonrise,
+  From moonrise to sunrise,
+  By heath and by harbour,
+  In orchard or arbour,
+  In the time of the rose,
+  In the time of the snows,
+  Through smoke and through smother
+  We'll love one another!"
+
+Cinderella, when the lover-prince discovers her and fits the crystal
+slipper to her foot, makes short work of flinging away her rags; and
+in some such pretty, airy, unthinking way did Susanna fling aside the
+dullness, inhospitality, and ugliness of her uncle's home and depart in
+a cloud of glory on her wedding journey. She had been lonely, now she
+would have companionship. She had been of no consequence, now she would
+be queen of her own small domain. She had been last with everybody, now
+she would be first with one, at least. She had worked hard and received
+neither compensation nor gratitude; henceforward her service would be
+gladly rendered at an altar where votive offerings would not be taken
+as a matter of course. She was only a slip of a girl now; marriage and
+housewifely cares would make her a woman. Some time perhaps the last
+great experience of life would come to her, and then what a crown of
+joys would be hers,--love, husband, home, children! What a vision it
+was, and how soon the chief glory of it faded!
+
+Never were two beings more hopelessly unlike than John Hathaway
+single and John Hathaway married, but the bliss lasted a few years,
+nevertheless: partly because Susanna's charm was deep and penetrating,
+the sort to hold a false man for a time and a true man forever; partly
+because she tried, as a girl or woman has seldom tried before, to do her
+duty and to keep her own ideal unshattered.
+
+John had always been convivial, but Susanna at seventeen had been at
+once too innocent and too ignorant to judge a man's tendencies truly,
+or to rate his character at its real worth. As time went on, his earlier
+leanings grew more definite; he spent on pleasure far more than he could
+afford, and his conduct became a byword in the neighborhood. His boy
+he loved. He felt on a level with Jack, could understand him, play
+with him, punish him, and make friends with him; but little Sue was
+different. She always seemed to him the concentrated essence of her
+mother's soul, and when unhappy days came, he never looked in her
+radiant, searching eyes without a consciousness of inferiority. The
+little creature had loved her jolly, handsome, careless father at first,
+even though she feared him; but of late she had grown shy, silent, and
+timid, for his indifference chilled her and she flung herself upon
+her mother's love with an almost unchildlike intensity. This unhappy
+relation between the child and the father gave Susanna's heart new
+pangs. She still loved her husband, not dearly, but a good deal; and
+over and above that remnant of the old love which still endured she gave
+him unstinted care and hopeful maternal tenderness.
+
+The crash came in course of time. John transcended the bounds of his
+wife's patience more and more. She made her last protests; then she took
+one passionate day to make up her mind, a day when John and the boy
+were away together; a day of complete revolt against everything she was
+facing in the present, and, so far as she could see, everything that she
+had to face in the future. Prayer for light left her in darkness, and
+she had no human creature to advise her. Conscience was overthrown; she
+could see no duty save to her own outraged personality. Often and often
+during the year just past she had thought of the peace, the grateful
+solitude and shelter of that Shaker Settlement hidden among New England
+orchards; that quiet haven where there was neither marrying nor giving
+in marriage. Now her bruised heart longed for such a life of nunlike
+simplicity and consecration, where men and women met only as brothers
+and sisters, where they worked side by side with no thought of personal
+passion or personal gain, but only for the common good of the community.
+
+Albion village was less than three hours distant by train. She hastily
+gathered her plainest clothes and Sue's, packed them in a small
+trunk, took her mother's watch, her own little store of money and the
+twenty-dollar gold piece John's senior partner had given Sue on her last
+birthday, wrote a letter of goodbye to John, and went out of her cottage
+gate in a storm of feeling so tumultuous that there was no room for
+reflection. Besides, she had reflected, and reflected, for months
+and months, so she would have said, and the time had come for action.
+Susanna was not unlettered, but she certainly had never read Meredith or
+she would have learned that "love is an affair of two, and only for two
+that can be as quick, as constant in intercommunication as are sun and
+earth, through the cloud, or face to face. They take their breath of
+life from each other in signs of affection, proofs of faithfulness,
+incentives to admiration. But a solitary soul dragging a log must make
+the log a God to rejoice in the burden." The demigod that poor, blind
+Susanna married had vanished, and she could drag the log no longer, but
+she made one mistake in judging her husband, in that she regarded him,
+at thirty-two, as a finished product, a man who was finally this and
+that, and behaved thus and so, and would never be any different.
+
+The "age of discretion" is a movable feast of extraordinary uncertainty,
+and John Hathaway was a little behindhand in overtaking it. As a matter
+of fact, he had never for an instant looked life squarely in the face.
+He took a casual glance at it now and then, after he was married, but it
+presented no very distinguishable features, nothing to make him stop
+and think, nothing to arouse in him any special sense of responsibility.
+Boys have a way of "growing up," however, sooner or later, at least
+most of them have, and that possibility was not sufficiently in the
+foreground of Susanna's mind when she finished what she considered an
+exhaustive study of her husband's character.
+
+I am leaving you, John [she wrote], to see if I can keep the little love
+I have left for you as the father of my children. I seem to have lost
+all the rest of it living with you. I am not perfectly sure that I
+am right in going, for everybody seems to think that women, mothers
+especially, should bear anything rather than desert the home. I could
+not take Jack away, for you love him and he will be a comfort to you. A
+comfort to you, yes, but what will you be to him now that he is growing
+older? That is the thought that troubles me, yet I dare not take him
+with me when he is half yours. You will not miss me, nor will the loss
+of Sue make any difference. Oh, John! how can you help loving that
+blessed little creature, so much better and so much more gifted than
+either of us that we can only wonder how we came to be her father and
+mother? Your sin against her is greater than that against me, for at
+least you are not responsible for bringing me into the world. I know
+Louisa will take care of Jack, and she lives so near that you can see
+him as often as you wish. I shall let her know my address, which I have
+asked her to keep to herself. She will write to me if you or Jack should
+be seriously ill, but not for any other reason.
+
+As for you, there is nothing more that I can say except to confess
+freely that I was not the right wife for you and that mine was not the
+only mistake. I have tried my very best to meet you in everything that
+was not absolutely wrong, and I have used all the arguments I could
+think of, but it only made matters worse. I thought I knew you, John,
+in the old days. How comes it that we have traveled so far apart, we
+who began together? It seems to me that some time you must come to your
+senses and take up your life seriously, for this is not life, the sorry
+thing you have lived lately, but I cannot wait any longer! I am tired,
+tired, tired of waiting and hoping, too tired to do anything but drag
+myself away from the sight of your folly. You have wasted our children's
+substance, indulged your appetites until you have lost the respect of
+your best friends, and you have made me--who was your choice, your wife,
+the head of your house, the woman who brought your children into the
+world--you have made me an object of pity; a poor, neglected thing who
+could not meet her neighbors' eyes without blushing.
+
+When Jack and his father returned from their outing at eight o'clock in
+the evening, having had supper at a wayside hotel, the boy went to bed
+philosophically, lighting his lamp for himself, the conclusion being
+that the two other members of the household were a little late, but
+would be in presently.
+
+The next morning was bright and fair. Jack waked at cockcrow, and after
+calling to his mother and Sue, jumped out of bed, ran into their rooms
+to find them empty, then bounced down the stairs two at a time, going
+through the sitting-room on his way to find Ellen in the kitchen. His
+father was sitting at the table with the still-lighted student lamp on
+it; the table where lessons had been learned, books read, stories told,
+mending done, checkers and dominoes played; the big, round walnut table
+that was the focus of the family life--but mother's table, not father's.
+
+John Hathaway had never left his chair nor taken off his hat. His cane
+leaned against his knee, his gloves were in his left hand, while the
+right held Susanna's letter.
+
+He was asleep, although his lips twitched and he stirred uneasily. His
+face was haggard, and behind his closed lids, somewhere in the center
+of thought and memory, a train of fiery words burned in an ever-widening
+circle, round and round and round, ploughing, searing their way through
+some obscure part of him that had heretofore been without feeling, but
+was now all quick and alive with sensation.
+
+You have made me--who was your choice, your wife, the head of your
+house, the woman who brought your children into the world--you have made
+me an object of pity; a poor, neglected thing who could not meet her
+neighbors' eyes without blushing.
+
+Any one who wished to pierce John Hathaway's armor at that period of his
+life would have had to use a very sharp and pointed arrow, for he was
+well wadded with the belief that a man has a right to do what he likes.
+Susanna's shaft was tipped with truth and dipped in the blood of her
+outraged heart. The stored-up force of silent years went into the
+speeding of it. She had never shot an arrow before, and her skill was
+instinctive rather than scientific, but the powers were on her side and
+she aimed better than she knew--those who took note of John Hathaway's
+behavior that summer would have testified willingly to that. It was the
+summer in which his boyish irresponsibility slipped away from him
+once and for all; a summer in which the face of life ceased to be an
+indistinguishable mass of meaningless events and disclosed an order,
+a reason, a purpose hitherto unseen and undefined. The boy "grew up,"
+rather tardily it must be confessed. His soul had not added a cubit to
+its stature in sunshine, gayety, and prosperity; it took the shock of
+grief, hurt pride, solitude, and remorse to make a man of John Hathaway.
+
+
+
+
+III. Divers Doctrines
+
+
+It was a radiant July morning in Albion village, and when Sue first
+beheld it from the bedroom window at the Shaker Settlement, she had
+wished ardently that it might never, never grow dark, and that Jack and
+Fardie might be having the very same sunshine in Farnham. It was not
+noon yet, but experience had in some way tempered the completeness of
+her joy, for the marks of tears were on her pretty little face. She had
+neither been scolded nor punished, but she had been dragged away from
+a delicious play without any adequate reason. She had disappeared after
+breakfast, while Susanna was helping Sister Tabitha with the beds and
+the dishes, but as she was the most docile of children, her mother never
+thought of anxiety. At nine o'clock Eldress Abby took Susanna to the
+laundry house, and there under a spreading maple were Sue and the two
+youngest little Shakeresses, children of seven and eight respectively.
+Sue was directing the plays: chattering, planning, ordering, and
+suggesting expedients to her slower-minded and less experienced
+companions. They had dragged a large box from one of the sheds and set
+it up under the tree. The interior had been quickly converted into
+a commodious residence, one not in the least of a Shaker type. Small
+bluing-boxes served for bedstead and dining-table, bits of broken
+china for the dishes, while tiny flat stones were the seats, and four
+clothes-pins, tastefully clad in handkerchiefs, surrounded the table.
+
+"Do they kneel in prayer before they eat, as all Believers do?" asked
+Shaker Mary.
+
+"I don't believe Adam and Eve was Believers, 'cause who would have
+taught them to be?" replied Sue; "still we might let them pray, anyway,
+though clothespins don't kneel nicely."
+
+"I've got another one all dressed," said little Shaker Jane.
+
+"We can't have any more; Adam and Eve did n't have only two children in
+my Sunday-School lesson, Cain and Abel," objected Sue.
+
+"Can't this one be a company?" pleaded Mary, anxious not to waste the
+clothespin.
+
+"But where could comp'ny come from?" queried Sue. "There was n't any
+more people anywheres but just Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel. Put the
+clothespin in your apron-pocket, Jane, and bimeby we'll let Eve have a
+little new baby, and I'll get Mardie to name it right out of the Bible.
+Now let's begin. Adam is awfully tired this morning; he says, 'Eve, I've
+been workin' all night and I can't eat my breakfuss.' Now, Mary, you be
+Cain, he's a little boy, and you must say, 'Fardie, play a little with
+me, please!' and Fardie will say, 'Child'en should n't talk at the--'"
+
+What subjects of conversation would have been aired at the Adamic family
+board before breakfast was finished will never be known, for Eldress
+Abby, with a firm but not unkind grasp, took Shaker Jane and Mary by
+their little hands and said, "Morning's not the time for play; run over
+to Sister Martha and help her shell the peas; then there'll be your
+seams to oversew."
+
+Sue watched the disappearing children and saw the fabric of her dream
+fade into thin air; but she was a person of considerable individuality
+for her years. Her lip quivered, tears rushed to her eyes and flowed
+silently down her cheeks, but without a glance at Eldress Abby or a word
+of comment she walked slowly away from the laundry, her chin high.
+
+"Sue meant all right, she was only playing the plays of the world," said
+Eldress Abby, "but you can well understand, Susanna, that we can't let
+our Shaker children play that way and get wrong ideas into their heads
+at the beginning. We don't condemn an honest, orderly marriage as a
+worldly institution, but we claim it has no place in Christ's kingdom;
+therefore we leave it to the world, where it belongs. The world's people
+live on the lower plane of Adam; the Shakers try to live on the Christ
+plane, in virgin purity, longsuffering, meekness, and patience."
+
+"I see, I know," Susanna answered slowly, with a little glance at
+injured Sue walking toward the house, "but we need n't leave the
+children unhappy this morning, for I can think of a play that will
+comfort them and please you. Come back, Sue! Wait a minute, Mary and
+Jane, before you go to Sister Martha! We will play the story that Sister
+Tabitha told us last week. Do you remember about Mother Ann Lee in the
+English prison? The soapbox will be her cell, for it was so small she
+could not lie down in it. Take some of the shingles, Jane, and close
+up the open side of the box. Do you see the large brown spot in one of
+them, Mary? Push that very hard with a clothespin and there 'll be a
+hole through the shingle; that's right! Now, Sister Tabitha said that
+Mother Ann was kept for days without food, for people thought she was a
+wicked, dangerous woman, and they would have been willing to let her
+die of starvation. But there was a great keyhole in the door, and James
+Whittaker, a boy of nineteen, who loved Mother Ann and believed in her,
+put the stem of a clay pipe in the hole and poured a mixture of wine and
+milk through it. He managed to do this day after day, so that when the
+jailer opened the cell door, expecting to find Mother Ann dying for lack
+of food, she walked out looking almost as strong and well as when she
+entered. You can play it all out, and afterwards you can make the ship
+that brought Mother Ann and the other Shakers from Liverpool to New
+York. The clothes-pins can be who will they be, Jane?"
+
+"William Lee, Nancy Lee, James Whittaker, and I forget the others,"
+recited Jane, like an obedient parrot.
+
+"And it will be splendid to have James Whittaker, for he really came to
+Albion," said Mary.
+
+"Perhaps he stood on this very spot more than once," mused Abby. "It was
+Mother Ann's vision that brought them to this land, a vision of a large
+tree with outstretching branches, every leaf of which shone with the
+brightness of a burning torch! Oh! if the vision would only come true!
+If Believers would only come to us as many as the leaves on the tree,"
+she sighed, as she and Susanna moved away from the group of chattering
+children, all as eager to play the history of Shakerism as they had been
+to dramatize the family life of Adam and Eve.
+
+"There must be so many men and women without ties, living useless lives,
+with no aim or object in them," Susanna said, "I wonder that more of
+them do not find their way here. The peace and goodness and helpfulness
+of the life sink straight into my heart. The Brothers and Sisters are so
+friendly and cheery with one another; there is neither gossip nor hard
+words; there is pleasant work, and your thoughts seem to be all so
+concentrated upon right living that it is like heaven below, only I feel
+that the cross is there, bravely as you all bear it."
+
+ "There are roses on my cross most beautiful to see,
+ As I turn from all the dross from which it sets me free,"
+
+quoted Eldress Abby, devoutly.
+
+"It is easy enough for me," continued Susanna, "for it was no cross
+for me to give up my husband at the time; but oh, if a woman had a
+considerate, loving man to live with, one who would strengthen her and
+help her to be good, one who would protect and cherish her, one who
+would be an example to his children and bring them up in the fear of the
+Lord--that would be heaven below, too; and how could she bear to give
+it all up when it seems so good, so true, so right? Might n't two people
+walk together to God if both chose the same path?"
+
+"It's my belief that one can find the road better alone than when
+somebody else is going alongside to distract them. Not that the Lord
+is going to turn anybody away, not even when they bring Him a lot of
+burned-out trash for a gift," said Eldress Abby, bluntly. "But don't you
+believe He sees the difference between a person that comes to Him when
+there is nowhere else to turn--a person that's tried all and found it
+wanting--and one that gives up freely pleasure, and gain, and husband,
+and home, to follow the Christ life?"
+
+"Yes, He must, He must," Susanna answered faintly. "But the children,
+Eldress Abby! If you had n't any, you could perhaps keep yourself from
+wanting them; but if you had, how could you give them up? Jesus was the
+great Saviour of mankind, but next to Him it seems as if the children
+had been the little saviours, from the time the first one was born until
+this very day!"
+
+"Yee, I've no doubt they keep the worst of the world's people, those
+that are living in carnal marriage without a thought of godliness, I've
+no doubt children keep that sort from going to the lowest perdition,"
+allowed Eldress Abby; "and those we bring up in the Community make the
+best converts; but to a Shaker, the greater the sacrifice, the greater
+the glory. I wish you was gathered in, Susanna, for your hands and feet
+are quick to serve, your face is turned toward the truth, and your heart
+is all ready to receive the revelation."
+
+"I wish I need n't turn my back on one set of duties to take up
+another," murmured Susanna, timidly.
+
+"Yee; no doubt you do. Your business is to find out which are the higher
+duties, and then do those. Just make up your mind whether you'd rather
+replenish earth, as you've been doing, or replenish heaven, as we're
+trying to do. But I must go to my work; ten o'clock in the morning's
+a poor time to be discussing doctrine! You're for weeding, Susanna, I
+suppose?"
+
+Brother Ansel was seated at a grindstone under the apple trees, teaching
+(intermittently) a couple of boys to grind a scythe, when Susanna came
+to her work in the herb-garden, Sue walking discreetly at her heels.
+
+Ansel was a slow-moving, humorously-inclined, easygoing Brother, who was
+drifting into the kingdom of heaven without any special effort on his
+part.
+
+"I'd 'bout as lives be a Shaker as anything else," had been his rather
+dubious statement of faith when he requested admittance into the band
+of Believers. "No more crosses, accordin' to my notion, an' consid'able
+more chance o' crowns!"
+
+His experience of life "on the Adamic plane," the holy estate of
+matrimony, being the chief sin of this way of thought, had disposed
+him to regard woman as an apparently necessary, but not especially
+desirable, being. The theory of holding property in common had no
+terrors for him. He was generous, unambitious, frugal-minded, somewhat
+lacking in energy, and just as actively interested in his brother's
+welfare as in his own, which is perhaps not saying much. Shakerism was
+to him not a craving of the spirit, not a longing of the soul, but a
+simple, prudent theory of existence, lessening the various risks that
+man is exposed to in his journey through this vale of tears.
+
+"Womenfolks makes splendid Shakers," he was wont to say. "They're all
+right as Sisters, 'cause their belief makes 'em safe. It kind o' shears
+'em o' their strength; tames their sperits; takes the sting out of 'em
+an' keeps 'em from bein' sassy an' domineerin'. Jest as long as they
+think marriage is right, they'll marry ye spite of anything ye can do or
+say--four of 'em married my father one after another, though he fit 'em
+off as hard as he knew how. But if ye can once get the faith o' Mother
+Ann into 'em, they're as good afterwards as they was wicked afore.
+There's no stoppin' women-folks once ye get 'em started; they don't keer
+whether it's heaven or the other place, so long as they get where they
+want to go!"
+
+Elder Daniel Gray had heard Brother Ansel state his religious theories
+more than once when he was first "gathered in," and secretly lamented
+the lack of spirituality in the new convert. The Elder was an instrument
+more finely attuned; sober, humble, pure-minded, zealous, consecrated to
+the truth as he saw it, he labored in and out of season for the faith
+he held so dear; yet as the years went on, he noted that Ansel,
+notwithstanding his eccentric views, lived an honest, temperate,
+Godfearing life, talking no scandal, dwelling in unity with his brethren
+and sisters, and upholding the banner of Shakerism in his own peculiar
+way.
+
+As Susanna approached him, Ansel called out, "The yairbs are all ready
+for ye, Susanna; the weeds have been on the rampage sence yesterday's
+rain. Seems like the more uselesser a thing is, the more it flourishes.
+The yairbs grow; oh, yes, they make out to _grow_; but you don't see 'em
+come leapin' an' tearin' out o' the airth like weeds. Then there's the
+birds! I've jest been stoppin' my grindin' to look at 'em carry on.
+Take 'em all in all, there ain't nothin' so lazy an' aimless an'
+busy 'bout nothin' as birds. They go kitin' 'roun' from tree to tree,
+hoppin' an' chirpin', flyin' here an' there 'thout no airthly objeck
+'ceptin' to fly back ag'in. There's a heap o' useless critters in
+the univarse, but I guess birds are 'bout the uselessest, 'less it's
+grasshoppers, mebbe."
+
+"I don't care what you say about the grasshoppers, Ansel, but you shan't
+abuse the birds," said Susanna, stooping over the beds of tansy and
+sage, thyme and summer savory. "Weeds or no weeds, we're going to have a
+great crop of herbs this year, Ansel!"
+
+"Yee, so we be! We sowed more'n usual so's to keep the two jiners at
+work long's we could.--Take that scythe over to the barn, Jacob, an'
+fetch me another, an' step spry."
+
+"What's a 'jiner,' Ansel?"
+
+"Winter Shakers, I call 'em. They're reg'lar constitooshanal
+dyed-in-the-wool jiners, jinin' most anything an' hookin' on most
+anywheres. They jine when it comes on too cold to sleep outdoors, an'
+they onjine when it comes on spring. Elder Gray's always hopin' to
+gather in new souls, so he gives the best of 'em a few months' trial.
+How are ye, Hannah?" he called to a Sister passing through the orchard
+to search for any possible green apples under the trees. "Make us a good
+old-fashioned deep-dish pandowdy an' we'll all do our best to eat it!"
+
+"I suppose the 'jiners' get discouraged and fear they can't keep up to
+the standard. Not everybody is good enough to lead a self-denying Shaker
+life," said Susanna, pushing back the close sunbonnet from her warm
+face, which had grown younger, smoother, and sweeter in the last few
+weeks.
+
+"Nay, I s'pose likely; 'less they're same as me, a born Shaker," Ansel
+replied. "I don't hanker after strong drink; don't like tobaccer
+(always could keep my temper 'thout smokin'), ain't partic'lar 'bout
+meat-eatin', don't keer 'bout heapin' up riches, can't 'stand the ways
+o' worldly women-folks, jest as lives confess my sins to the Elder as
+not, 'cause I hain't sinned any to amount to anything sence I made my
+first confession; there I be, a natural follerer o' Mother Ann Lee."
+
+Susanna drew her Shaker bonnet forward over her eyes and turned her
+back to Brother Ansel under the pretense of reaching over to the rows of
+sweet marjoram. She had never supposed it possible that she could laugh
+again, and indeed she seldom felt like it, but Ansel's interpretations
+of Shaker doctrine were almost too much for her latent sense of humor.
+
+"What are you smiling at, and me so sad, Mardie?" quavered Sue,
+piteously, from the little plot of easy weeding her mother had given her
+to do. "I keep remembering my game! It was such a _Christian_ game,
+too. Lots nicer than Mother Ann in prison; for Jane said her mother
+and father was both Believers, and nobody was good enough to pour milk
+through the keyhole but her. I wanted to give the clothes-pins story
+names, like Hilda and Percy, but I called them Adam and Eve and Cain and
+Abel just because I thought the Shakers would 'specially like a Bible
+play. I love Elderess Abby, but she does stop my happiness, Mardie.
+That's the second time today, for she took Moses away from me when I was
+kissing him because he pinched his thumb in the window."
+
+"Why did you do that, Sue?" remonstrated her mother softly, remembering
+Ansel's proximity. "You never used to kiss strange little boys at home
+in Farnham."
+
+"Moses is n't a boy; he's only six, and that's a baby; besides, I like
+him better than any little boys at home, and that's the reason I kissed
+him; there's no harm in boy-kissing, is there, Mardie?"
+
+"You don't know anybody here very well yet; not well enough to
+kiss them," Susanna answered, rather hopeless as to the best way of
+inculcating the undesirability of the Adamic plane of thought at this
+early age. "While we stay here, Sue, we ought both to be very careful to
+do exactly as the Shakers do."
+
+By this time mother and child had reached the orchard end of a row,
+and Brother Ansel was thirstily waiting to deliver a little more of the
+information with which his mind was always teeming.
+
+"Them Boston people that come over to our public meetin' last Sunday,"
+he began, "they was dretful scairt 'bout what would become o' the human
+race if it should all turn Shakers. 'I guess you need n't worry,' I
+says; 'it'll take consid'able of a spell to convert all you city folks,'
+I says, 'an' after all, what if the world should come to an end?' I
+says. 'If half we hear is true 'bout the way folks carry on in New York
+and Chicago, it's 'bout time it stopped,' I says, 'an' I guess the
+Lord could do a consid'able better job on a second one,' I says, 'after
+findin' out the weak places in this.' They can't stand givin' up their
+possessions, the world's folks; that's the principal trouble with 'em!
+If you don't have nothin' to give up, like some o' the tramps that
+happen along here and convince the Elder they're jest bustin' with the
+fear o' God, why, o' course 't ain't no trick at all to be a Believer."
+
+"Did you have much to give up, Brother Ansel?" Susanna asked. "'Bout's
+much as any sinner ever had that jined this Community," replied Ansel,
+complacently. "The list o' what I consecrated to this Society when I was
+gathered in was: One horse, one wagon, one two-year-old heifer, one axe,
+one saddle, one padlock, one bed and bedding, four turkeys, eleven hens,
+one pair o' plough-irons, two chains, and eleven dollars in cash. Can
+you beat that?"
+
+"Oh, yes, things," said Susanna, absent-mindedly. "I was thinking of
+family and friends, pleasures and memories and ambitions and hopes."
+
+"I guess it don't pinch you any worse to give up a hope than it would a
+good two-year-old heifer," retorted Ansel; "but there, you can't never
+tell what folks'll hang on to the hardest! The man that drove them
+Boston folks over here last Sunday, did you notice him? the one that had
+the sister with a bright red dress an' hat on?--Land! I could think just
+how hell must look whenever my eye lighted on that girl's gitup!--Well,
+I done my best to exhort that driver, bein' as how we had a good chance
+to talk while we was hitchin' an' unhitchin' the team; an' Elder Gray
+always says I ain't earnest enough in preachin' the faith;--but he did
+n't learn anything from the meetin'. Kep' his eye on the Shaker bunnits,
+an' took notice o' the marchin' an' dancin', but he did n't care nothin'
+'bout doctrine.
+
+"'I draw the line at bein' a cerebrate,' he says. 'I'm willin' to sell
+all my goods an' divide with the poor,' he says, 'but I ain't goin'
+to lie no cerebrate. If I don't have no other luxuries, I will have a
+wife,' he says. 'I've hed three, an' if this one don't last me out, I'll
+get another, if it's only to start the kitchen fire in the mornin' an'
+put the cat in the shed nights!'"
+
+
+
+
+IV. Louisa's Mind
+
+
+Louisa, otherwise Mrs. Adlai Banks, the elder sister of Susanna s
+husband, was a rock-ribbed widow of forty-five summers,--forty-five
+winters would seem a better phrase in which to assert her age,--who
+resided on a small farm twenty miles from the manufacturing town of
+Farnham.
+
+When the Fates were bestowing qualities of mind and heart upon the
+Hathaway babies, they gave the more graceful, genial, likable ones to
+John, not realizing, perhaps, what bad use he would make of them,--and
+endowed Louisa with great deposits of honesty, sincerity, energy,
+piety, and frugality, all so mysteriously compounded that they turned to
+granite in her hands. If she had been consulted, it would have been all
+the same. She would never have accepted John's charm of personality at
+the expense of being saddled with his weaknesses, and he would not have
+taken her cast-iron virtues at any price whatsoever.
+
+She was sweeping her porch on that day in May when Susanna and Sue
+had wakened in the bare upper chamber at the Shaker Settlement--Sue
+clear-eyed, jubilant, expectant, unafraid; Susanna pale from her fitful
+sleep, weary with the burden of her heart.
+
+Looking down the road, Mrs. Banks espied the form of her brother John
+walking in her direction and leading Jack by the hand.
+
+This was a most unusual sight, for John's calls had been uncommonly few
+of late years, since a man rarely visits a lady relative for the mere
+purpose of hearing "a piece of her mind." This piece, large, solid,
+highly flavored with pepper, and as acid as mental vinegar could make
+it, was Louisa Banks's only contribution to conversation when she met
+her brother. She could not stop for any airy persiflage about weather,
+crops, or politics when her one desire was to tell him what she thought
+of him.
+
+"Good-morning, Louisa. Shake hands with your aunt, Jack."
+
+"He can't till I'm through sweeping. Good-morning, John; what brings you
+here?"
+
+John sat down on the steps, and Jack flew to the barn, where there
+was generally an amiable hired man and a cheerful cow, both infinitely
+better company than his highly respected and wealthy aunt.
+
+"I came because I had to bring the boy to the only relation I've got in
+the world," John answered tersely. "My wife's left me."
+
+"Well, she's been a great while doing it," remarked Louisa, digging
+her broom into the cracks of the piazza floor and making no pause for
+reflection. "If she had n't had the patience of Job and the meekness of
+Moses, she'd have gone long before. Where'd she go?"
+
+"I don't know; she did n't say."
+
+"Did you take the trouble to look through the house for her? I ain't
+certain you fairly know her by sight nowadays, do you?"
+
+John flushed crimson, but bit his lip in an attempt to keep his temper.
+"She left a letter," he said, "and she took Sue with her."
+
+"That was all right; Sue's a nervous little thing and needs at least
+one parent; she has n't been used to more, so she won't miss anything.
+Jack's like most of the Hathaways; he'll grow up his own way, without
+anybody's help or hindrance. What are you going to do with him?"
+
+"Leave him with you, of course. What else could I do?" "Very well, I'll
+take him, and while I'm about it I'd like to give you a piece of my
+mind."
+
+John was fighting for selfcontrol, but he was too wretched and
+remorseful for rage to have any real sway over him.
+
+"Is it the same old piece, or a different one?" he asked, setting his
+teeth grimly. "I should n't think you'd have any mind left, you've given
+so many pieces of it to me already."
+
+"I have some left, and plenty, too," answered Louisa, dashing into the
+house, banging the broom into a corner, coming out again like a breeze,
+and slamming the door behind her. "You can leave the boy here and
+welcome; I'll take good care of him, and if you don't send me twenty
+dollars a month for his food and clothes, I'll turn him outdoors. The
+more responsibility other folks rid you of, the more you'll let 'em,
+and I won't take a feather's weight off you for fear you'll sink into
+everlasting perdition."
+
+"I did n't expect any sympathy from you," said John, drearily, pulling
+himself up from the steps and leaning against the honeysuckle trellis.
+"Susanna's just the same. Women are all as hard as the nether millstone.
+They're hard if they're angels, and hard if they're devils; it does n't
+make much difference."
+
+"I guess you've found a few soft ones, if report says true," returned
+Louisa, bluntly. "You'd better go and get some of their sympathy, the
+kind you can buy and pay for. The way you've ruined your life turns
+me fairly sick. You had a good father and mother, good education and
+advantages, enough money to start you in business, the best of wives,
+and two children any man could be proud of, one of 'em especially.
+You've thrown 'em all away, and what for? Horses and cards and gay
+company, late suppers, with wine, and for aught I know, whiskey, you
+the son of a man who did n't know the taste of ginger beer! You've spent
+your days and nights with a pack of carousing men and women that would
+take your last cent and not leave you enough for honest burial."
+
+"It's a pity we did n't make a traveling preacher of you!" exclaimed
+John, bitterly. "Lord Almighty, I wonder how such women as you can live
+in the world, you know so little about it, and so little about men."
+
+"I know all I want to about 'em," retorted Louisa, "and precious
+little that's good. They 're a gluttonous, self-indulgent, extravagant,
+reckless, pleasure-loving lot! My husband was one of the best of 'em,
+and he would n't have amounted to a hill of beans if I had n't devoted
+fifteen years to disciplining, uplifting, and strengthening him!"
+
+"You managed to strengthen him so that he died before he was fifty!"
+
+"It don't matter when a man dies," said the remorseless Mrs. Banks, "if
+he's succeeded in living a decent, Godfearing life. As for you, John
+Hathaway, I'll tell you the truth if you are my brother, for Susanna's
+too much of a saint to speak out."
+
+"Don't be afraid; Susanna's spoken out at last, plainly enough to please
+even you!"
+
+"I'm glad of it, for I did n't suppose she had spunk enough to resent
+anything. I shall be sorry tomorrow, 's likely as not, for freeing
+my mind as much as I have, but my temper's up and I'm going to be the
+humble instrument of Providence and try to turn you from the error of
+your ways. You've defaced and degraded the temple the Lord built for
+you, and if He should come this minute and try to turn out the crowd of
+evildoers you've kept in it, I doubt if He could!"
+
+"I hope He'll approve of the way you've used your 'temple,'" said John,
+with stinging emphasis. "I should n't want to live in such a noisy one
+myself; I'd rather be a bat in a belfry. Goodbye; I've had a pleasant
+call, as usual, and you've been a real sister to me in my trouble.
+You shall have the twenty dollars a month. Jack's clothes are in that
+valise, and there'll be a trunk tomorrow. Susanna said she'd write and
+let you know her whereabouts."
+
+So saying, John Hathaway strode down the path, closed the gate behind
+him, and walked rapidly along the road that led to the station. It was
+a quiet road and he met few persons. He had neither dressed nor shaved
+since the day before; his face was haggard, his heart was like a lump of
+lead in his breast. Of what use to go to the empty house in Farnham when
+he could stifle his misery by a night with his friends?
+
+No, he could not do that, either! The very thought of them brought a
+sense of satiety and disgust; the craving for what they would give him
+would come again in time, no doubt, but for the moment he was sick
+to the very soul of all they stood for. The feeling of complete
+helplessness, of desertion, of being alone in mid-ocean without a sail
+or a star in sight, mounted and swept over him. Susanna had been his
+sail, his star, although he had never fully realized it, and he had
+cut himself adrift from her pure, steadfast love, blinding himself with
+cheap and vulgar charms.
+
+The next train to Farnham was not due for an hour. His steps faltered;
+he turned into a clump of trees by the wayside and flung himself on the
+ground to cry like a child, he who had not shed a tear since he was a
+boy of ten. If Susanna could have seen that often longed-for burst of
+despair and remorse, that sudden recognition of his sins against himself
+and her, that gush of penitent tears, her heart might have softened
+once again; a flicker of flame might have lighted the ashes of her dying
+love; she might have taken his head on her shoulder, and said, "Never
+mind, John! Let's forget, and begin all over again!"
+
+
+Matters did not look any brighter for John the next week, for his senior
+partner, Joel Atterbury, requested him to withdraw from the firm as soon
+as matters could be legally arranged. He was told that he had not been
+doing, nor earning, his share; that his way of living during the
+year just past had not been any credit to "the concern," and that he,
+Atterbury, sympathized too heartily with Mrs. John Hathaway to take any
+pleasure in doing business with Mr. John.
+
+John's remnant of pride, completely humbled by this last withdrawal of
+confidence, would not suffer him to tell Atterbury that he had come
+to his senses and bidden farewell to the old life, or so he hoped and
+believed. To lose a wife and child in a way infinitely worse than
+death; to hear the unwelcome truth that as a husband you have grown so
+offensive as to be beyond endurance; to have your own sister tell you
+that you richly deserve such treatment; to be virtually dismissed from a
+valuable business connection, all this is enough to sober any man above
+the grade of a moral idiot, and John was not that; he was simply a
+self-indulgent, pleasure-loving, thoughtless, willful fellow, without
+any great amount of principle. He took his medicine, however, said
+nothing, and did his share of the business from day to day doggedly,
+keeping away from his partner as much as possible.
+
+Ellen, the faithful maid of all work, stayed on with him at the old
+home; Jack wrote to him every week, and often came to spend Sunday with
+him.
+
+"Aunt Louisa's real good to me," he told his father, "but she's not like
+mother. Seems to me mother's kind of selfish staying away from us so
+long. When do you expect her back?"
+
+"I don't know; not before winter, I'm afraid; and don't call her
+selfish, I won't have it! Your mother never knew she had a self."
+
+"If she'd only left Sue behind, we could have had more good times, we
+three together!"
+
+"No, our family is four, Jack, and we can never have any good times,
+one, two, or three of us, because we're four! When one's away, whichever
+it is, it's wrong, but it's the worst when it's mother. Does your Aunt
+Louisa write to her?"
+
+"Yes, sometimes, but she never lets me post the letters."
+
+"Do you write to your mother? You ought to, you know, even if you don't
+have time for me. You could ask your aunt to enclose your letters in
+hers."
+
+"Do you write to her, father?"
+
+"Yes, I write twice a week," John answered, thinking drearily of the
+semi-weekly notes posted in Susanna's empty worktable upstairs. Would
+she ever read them? He doubted it, unless he died, and she came back to
+settle his affairs; but of course he would n't die, no such good luck.
+Would a man die who breakfasted at eight, dined at one, supped at six,
+and went to bed at ten? Would a man die who worked in the garden an
+hour every afternoon, with half a day Saturday; that being the task most
+disagreeable to him and most appropriate therefore for penance?
+
+Susanna loved flowers and had always wanted a garden, but John had been
+too much occupied with his own concerns to give her the needed help or
+money so that she could carry out her plans. The last year she had lost
+heart in many ways, so that little or nothing had been accomplished
+of all she had dreamed. It would have been laughable, had it not been
+pathetic, to see John Hathaway dig, delve, grub, sow, water, weed,
+transplant, generally at the wrong moment, in that dream-garden
+of Susanna's. He asked no advice and read no books. With feverish
+intensity, with complete ignorance of Nature's laws and small sympathy
+with their intricacies, he dug, hoed, raked, fertilized, and planted
+during that lonely summer. His absentmindedness caused some expensive
+failures, as when the wide expanse of Susanna's drying ground, which
+was to be velvety lawn, "came up" curly lettuce; but he rooted out his
+frequent mistakes and patiently planted seeds or roots or bulbs over and
+over and over and over, until something sprouted in his beds, whether
+it was what he intended or not. While he weeded the brilliant orange
+nasturtiums, growing beside the magenta portulacca in a friendly
+proximity that certainly would never have existed had the mistress of
+the house been the head-gardener, he thought of nothing but his wife. He
+knew her pride, her reserve, her sensitive spirit; he knew her love of
+truth and honor and purity, the standards of life and conduct she had
+tried to hold him to so valiantly, and which he had so dragged in the
+dust during the blindness and the insanity of the last two years.
+
+He, John Hathaway, was a deserted husband; Susanna had crept away all
+wounded and resentful. Where was she living and how supporting herself
+and Sue, when she could not have had a hundred dollars in the world?
+Probably Louisa was the source of income; conscientious, infernally
+disagreeable Louisa!
+
+Would yet the rumor of his changed habit of life reach her by some means
+in her place of hiding, sooner or later? Would she not yearn for a sight
+of Jack? Would she not finally give him a chance to ask forgiveness, or
+had she lost every trace of affection for him, as her letter seemed to
+imply? He walked the garden paths, with these and other unanswerable
+questions, and when he went to his lonely room at night, he held the
+lamp up to a bit of poetry that he had cut from a magazine and pinned to
+the looking-glass. If John Hathaway could be brought to the reading
+of poetry, he might even glance at the Bible in course of time, Louisa
+would have said. It was in May that Susanna had gone, and the first line
+of verse held his attention.
+
+  May comes, day comes,
+  One who was away comes;
+  All the earth is glad again,
+  Kind and fair to me.
+
+  May comes, day comes,
+  One who was away comes;
+  Set her place at hearth and board
+  As it used to be.
+
+  May comes, day comes,
+  One who was away comes;
+  Higher are the hills of home,
+  Bluer is the sea.
+
+The Hathaway house was in the suburbs, on a rise of ground, and as John
+turned to the window he saw the full moon hanging yellow in the sky.
+It shone on the verdant slopes and low wooded hills that surrounded the
+town, and cast a glittering pathway on the ocean that bathed the beaches
+of the nearby shore.
+
+"How long shall I have to wait," he wondered, "before my hills of home
+look higher, and my sea bluer, because Susanna has come back to 'hearth
+and board'!"
+
+
+
+
+V. The Little Quail Bird
+
+
+Susanna had helped at various household tasks ever since her arrival at
+the Settlement, for there was no room for drones in the Shaker hive; but
+after a few weeks in the kitchen with Martha, the herb-garden had been
+assigned to her as her particular province, the Sisters thinking her
+better fitted for it than for the preserving and pickling of fruit, or
+the basket-weaving that needed special apprenticeship.
+
+The Shakers were the first people to raise, put up, and sell garden
+seeds in our present-day fashion, and it was they, too, who began the
+preparation of botanical medicines, raising, gathering, drying, and
+preparing herbs and roots for market; and this industry, driven from
+the field by modern machinery, was still a valuable source of income in
+Susanna's day. Plants had always grown for Susanna, and she loved
+them like friends, humoring their weakness, nourishing their strength,
+stimulating, coaxing, disciplining them, until they could do no less
+than flourish under her kind and hopeful hand.
+
+Oh, that sweet, honest, comforting little garden of herbs, with its
+wholesome fragrances! Healing lay in every root and stem, in every leaf
+and bud, and the strong aromatic odors stimulated her flagging spirit or
+her aching head, after the sleepless nights in which she tried to decide
+her future life and Sue's.
+
+The plants were set out in neat rows and clumps, and she soon learned to
+know the strange ones--chamomile, lobelia, bloodroot, wormwood, lovage,
+boneset, lemon and sweet balm, lavender and rue, as well as she knew
+the old acquaintances familiar to every country-bred child--pennyroyal,
+peppermint or spearmint, yellow dock, and thoroughwort.
+
+There was hoeing and weeding before the gathering and drying came; then
+Brother Calvin, who had charge of the great press, would moisten the
+dried herbs and press them into quarter- and half-pound cakes ready for
+Sister Martha, who would superintend the younger Shakeresses in papering
+and labeling them for the market. Last of all, when harvesting was over,
+Brother Ansel would mount the newly painted seed-cart and leave on his
+driving trip through the country. Ansel was a capital salesman, but
+Brother Issachar, who once took his place and sold almost nothing,
+brought home a lad on the seed-cart, who afterward became a shining
+light in the Community. ("Thus," said Elder Gray, "does God teach us the
+diversity of gifts, whereby all may be unashamed.")
+
+If the Albion Shakers were honest and ardent in faith, Susanna thought
+that their "works" would indeed bear the strictest examination. The
+Brothers made brooms, floor and dish-mops, tubs, pails, and churns, and
+indeed almost every trade was represented in the various New England
+Communities. Physicians there were, a few, but no lawyers, sheriffs,
+policemen, constables, or soldiers, just as there were no courts or
+saloons or jails. Where there was perfect equality of possession and no
+private source of gain, it amazed Susanna to see the cheery labor, often
+continued late at night from the sheer joy of it, and the earnest desire
+to make the Settlement prosperous. While the Brothers were hammering,
+nailing, planing, sawing, ploughing, and seeding, the Sisters were
+carding and spinning cotton, wool, and flax, making kerchiefs of linen,
+straw Shaker bonnets, and dozens of other useful marketable things, not
+forgetting their famous Shaker apple sauce.
+
+Was there ever such a busy summer, Susanna wondered; yet with all the
+early rising, constant labor, and simple fare, she was stronger and
+hardier than she had been for years. The Shaker palate was never tickled
+with delicacies, yet the food was well cooked and sufficiently varied.
+At first there had been the winter vegetables: squash, yellow turnips,
+beets, and parsnips, with once a week a special Shaker dinner of salt
+codfish, potatoes, onions, and milk gravy. Each Sister served her
+turn as cook, but all alike had a wonderful hand with flour, and the
+wholewheat bread, cookies, ginger cake, and milk puddings were marvels
+of lightness. Martha, in particular, could wean the novitiate Shaker
+from a too riotous devotion to meat-eating better than most people, for
+every dish she sent to the table was delicate, savory, and attractive.
+
+Dear, patient, devoted Martha! How Susanna learned to love her as
+they worked together in the big sunny, shining kitchen, where the
+cooking-stove as well as every tin plate and pan and spoon might have
+served as a mirror! Martha had joined the Society in her mother's arms,
+being given up to the Lord and placed in "the children's order" before
+she was one year old.
+
+"If you should unite with us, Susanna," she said one night after the
+early supper, when they were peeling apples together, "you'd be thankful
+you begun early with your little Sue, for she's got a natural attraction
+to the world, and for it. Not but that she's a tender, loving, obedient
+little soul; but when she's among the other young ones, there's a
+flyaway look about her that makes her seem more like a fairy than a
+child."
+
+"She's having rather a hard time learning Shaker ways, but she'll do
+better in time," sighed her mother. "She came to me of her own accord
+yesterday and asked: 'Bettent I have my curls cut off, Mardie?'"
+
+"I never put that idea into her head," Martha interrupted. "She's a
+visitor and can wear her hair as she's been brought up to wear it."
+
+"I know, but I fear Sue was moved by other than religious reasons. 'I
+get up so early, Mardie,' she said, 'and it takes so long to unsnarl and
+untangle me, and I get so hot when I'm helping in the hayfield, and then
+I have to be curled for dinner, and curled again for supper, and so it
+seems like wasting both our times!' Her hair would be all the stronger
+for cutting, I thought, as it's so long for her age; but I could n't
+put the shears to it when the time came, Martha. I had to take her to
+Eldress Abby. She sat up in front of the little looking-glass as still
+as a mouse, while the curls came off, but when the last one fell into
+Abby's apron, she suddenly put her hands over her face and cried:
+'Oh, Mardie, we shall never be the same togedder, you and I, after
+this!'--She seemed to see her 'little past,' her childhood, slipping
+away from her, all in an instant. I did n't let her know that I cried
+over the box of curls last night!"
+
+"You did wrong," rebuked Martha. "You should n't make an idol of your
+child or your child's beauty."
+
+"You don't think God might put beauty into the world just to give His
+children joy, Martha?"
+
+Martha was no controversialist. She had taken her opinions, ready-made,
+from those she considered her superiors, and although she was willing to
+make any sacrifice for her religion, she did not wish to be confused by
+too many opposing theories of God's intentions.
+
+"You know I never argue when I've got anything baking," she said; and
+taking the spill of a corn-broom from a table-drawer, she opened the
+oven door and delicately plunged it into the loaf. Then, gazing at the
+straw as she withdrew it, she said: "You must talk doctrine with Eldress
+Abby, Susanna, not with me; but I guess doctrine won't help you so much
+as thinking out your life for yourself.
+
+  "No one can sing my psalm for me,
+  Reward must come from labor,
+  I'll sow for peace, and reap in truth
+  God's mercy and his favor!"
+
+Martha was the chief musician of the Community, and had composed many
+hymns and tunes--some of them under circumstances that she believed
+might entitle them to be considered directly inspired. Her clear full
+voice filled the kitchen and floated out into the air after Susanna, as
+she called Sue and, darning-basket in hand, walked across the road to
+the great barn.
+
+The herb-garden was one place where she could think out her life,
+although no decision had as yet been born of those thoughtful mornings.
+
+Another spot for meditation was the great barn, relic of the wonderful
+earlier days, and pride of the present Settlement. A hundred and
+seventy-five feet long and three and a half stories high, it dominated
+the landscape. First, there was the cellar, where all the refuse fell,
+to do its duty later on in fertilizing the farm lands; then came the
+first floor, where the stalls for horses, oxen, and cows lined the walls
+on either side. Then came the second floor, where hay was kept, and to
+reach this a bridge forty feet long was built on stone piers ten feet
+in height, sloping up from the ground to the second story. Over the easy
+slope of this bridge the full haycarts were driven, to add their several
+burdens to the golden haymows. High at the top was an enormous grain
+room, where mounds of yellow corn-ears reached from floor to ceiling;
+and at the back was a great window opening on Massabesic Pond and
+Knights' Hill, with the White Mountains towering blue or snow-capped in
+the distance. There was an old-fashioned, list-bottomed, straight-backed
+Shaker chair in front of the open window, a chair as uncomfortable as
+Shaker doctrines to the daughter of Eve, and there Susanna often sat
+with her sewing or mending, Sue at her feet building castles out of
+corncobs, plaiting the husks into little mats, or taking out basting
+threads from her mother's work.
+
+"My head feels awfully undressed without my curls, Mardie," she said.
+"I'm most afraid Fardie won't like the looks of me; do you think we
+ought to have asked him before we shingled me?--He does _despise_
+unpretty things so!"
+
+"I think if we had asked him he would have said, 'Do as you think
+best.'"
+
+"He always says that when he does n't care what you do," observed Sue,
+with one of her startling bursts of intuition. "Sister Martha has a
+printed card on the wall in the children's diningroom, and I've got
+to learn all the poetry on it because I need it worse than any of the
+others:--
+
+  "What we deem good order, we're willing to state,
+  Eat hearty and decent, and clear out your plate;
+  Be thankful to heaven for what we receive,
+  And not make a mixture or compound to leave.
+
+  "We often find left on the same China dish,
+  Meat, apple sauce, pickle, brown bread and minced fish:
+  Another's replenished with butter and cheese,
+  With pie, cake, and toast, perhaps, added to these."
+
+"You say it very nicely," commended Susanna.
+
+"There's more:--
+
+  "Now if any virtue in this can be shown,
+  By peasant, by lawyer, or king on the throne;
+  We freely will forfeit whatever we've said,
+  And call it a virtue to waste meat and bread.
+
+"There's a great deal to learn when you're being a Shaker," sighed Sue,
+as she finished her rhyme.
+
+"There's a great deal to learn everywhere," her mother answered. "What
+verse did Eldress Abby give you today?"
+
+  "For little tripping maids may follow God
+  Along the ways that saintly feet have trod,"
+
+quoted the child. "Am I a tripping maid, Mardie?" she continued.
+
+"Yes, dear." "If I trip too much, might n't I fall?"
+
+"Yes, I suppose so."
+
+"Is tripping the same as skipping?"
+
+"About the same."
+
+"Is it polite to trip an' skip when you're following God?"
+
+"It could n't be impolite if you meant to be good. A tripping maid means
+just a young one."
+
+"What is a maid?"
+
+"A little girl."
+
+"When a maid grows up, what is she?"
+
+"Why she's a maiden, I suppose."
+
+"When a maiden grows up, what is she?"
+
+"Just a woman, Sue."
+
+"What is saintly feet?"
+
+"Feet like those of Eldress Abby or Elder Gray; feet of people who have
+always tried to do right."
+
+"Are Brother Ansel's feet saintly?"
+
+"He's a good, kind, hardworking man."
+
+"Is good, kind, hardworking, same as saintly?"
+
+"Well, it's not so very different, perhaps. Now, Sue, I've asked you
+before, don't let your mind grope, and your little tongue wag, every
+instant; it is n't good for you, and it certainly is n't good for me!"
+
+"All right; but 'less I gropeanwag sometimes, I don't see how I'll ever
+learn the things I 'specially want to know?" sighed Sue the insatiable.
+
+"Shall I tell you a Shaker story, one that Eldress Abby told me last
+evening?"
+
+"Oh, do, Mardie!" cried Sue, crossing her feet, folding her hands, and
+looking up into her mother's face expectantly.
+
+"Once there was a very good Shaker named Elder Calvin Green, and some
+one wrote him a letter asking him to come a long distance and found
+a Settlement in the western part of New York State. He and some other
+Elders and Eldresses traveled five days, and stopped at the house of
+a certain Joseph Pelham to spend Sunday and hold a meeting. On
+Monday morning, very tired, and wondering where to stay and begin his
+preaching, the Elder went out into the woods to pray for guidance. When
+he rose from his knees, feeling stronger and lighter-hearted, a young
+quail came up to him so close that he picked it up. It was not a bit
+afraid, neither did the old parent birds who were standing near by
+show any sign of fear, though they are very timid creatures. The Elder
+smoothed the young bird's feathers a little while and then let it go,
+but he thought an angel seemed to say to him, 'The quail is a sign; you
+will know before night what it means, and before tomorrow people will be
+coming to you to learn the way to God.'
+
+"Soon after, a flock of these shy little birds alighted on Joseph
+Pelham's house, and the Elders were glad, and thought it signified the
+flock of Believers that would gather in that place; for the Shakers see
+more in signs than other people. Just at night a young girl of twelve
+or thirteen knocked at the door and told Elder Calvin that she wanted to
+become a Shaker, and that her father and mother were willing.
+
+"'Here is the little quail!' cried the Elder, and indeed she was the
+first who flocked to the meetings and joined the new Community.
+
+"On their return to their old home across the state the Elders took
+the little quail girl with them. It was November then, and the canals
+through which they traveled were clogged with ice. One night, having
+been ferried across the Mohawk River, they took their baggage and walked
+for miles before they could find shelter. Finally, when they were within
+three miles of their home, Elder Calvin shortened the way by going
+across the open fields through the snow, up and down the hills and
+through the gullies and over fences, till they reached the house at
+midnight, safe and sound, the brave little quail girl having trudged
+beside them the whole distance, carrying her tin pail."
+
+Sue was transported with interest, her lips parted, her eyes shining,
+her hands clasped. "Oh, I wish I could be a brave little quail girl,
+Mardie! What became of her?"
+
+"Her name was Polly Reed, and when she grew up, she became a teacher of
+the Shaker school, then an Eldress, and even a preacher. I don't know
+what kind of a little quail girl you would make, Sue; do you think you
+could walk for miles through the ice and snow uncomplainingly?"
+
+"I don' know's I could," sighed Sue; "but," she added hopefully,
+"perhaps I could teach or preach, and then I could gropeanwag as much
+as ever I liked." Then, after a lengthy pause, in which her mind worked
+feverishly, she said, "Mardie, I was just groping a little bit, but I
+won't do it any more tonight. If the old quail birds in the woods where
+Elder Calvin prayed, if those old birds had been Shaker birds, there
+would n't have been any little quail birds, would there, because Shakers
+don't have children, and then perhaps there would n't have been any
+little Polly Reed."
+
+Susanna rose hurriedly from the list-bottomed chair and folded her work.
+"I'll go up and help you undress now," she said; "it's seven o'clock,
+and I must go to the family meeting."
+
+
+
+
+VI. Susanna Speaks in Meeting
+
+
+It was the Sabbath day and the Believers were gathered in the
+meetinghouse, Brethren and Sisters seated quietly on their separate
+benches, with the children by themselves in their own place. As the men
+entered the room they removed their hats and coats and hung them upon
+wooden pegs that lined the sides of the room, while the women took off
+their bonnets; then, after standing for a moment of perfect silence,
+they seated themselves.
+
+In Susanna's time the Sunday costume for the men included trousers of
+deep blue cloth with a white line and a vest of darker blue, exposing
+a full-bosomed shirt that had a wide turned-down collar fastened with
+three buttons. The Sisters were in pure white dresses, with neck and
+shoulders covered with snowy kerchiefs, their heads crowned with their
+white net caps, and a large white pocket handkerchief hung over the
+left arm. Their feet were shod with curious pointed-toed cloth shoes of
+ultramarine blue--a fashion long since gone by.
+
+Susanna had now become accustomed to the curious solemn march or dance
+in which of course none but the Believers ever joined, and found in
+her present exalted mood the songs and the exhortations strangely
+interesting and not unprofitable.
+
+Tabitha, the most aged of the group of Albion Sisters, confessed that
+she missed the old times when visions were common, when the Spirit
+manifested itself in extraordinary ways, and the gift of tongues
+descended. Sometimes, in the Western Settlement where she was gathered
+in, the whole North Family would march into the highway in the fresh
+morning hours, and while singing some sacred hymn, would pass on to the
+Center Family, and together in solemn yet glad procession they would
+mount the hillside to "Jehovah's Chosen Square," there to sing and dance
+before the Lord.
+
+"I wish we could do something like that now!" sighed Hetty Arnold,
+a pretty young creature who had moments of longing for the pomps and
+vanities. "If we have to give up all worldly pleasures, I think we might
+have more religious ones!"
+
+"We were a younger church in those old times of which Sister Tabitha
+speaks," said Eldress Abby. "You must remember, Hetty, that we were
+children in faith, and needed signs and manifestations, pictures and
+object-lessons. We've been trained to think and reason now, and we've
+put away some of our picture-books. There have been revelations to tell
+us we needed movements and exercises to quicken our spiritual powers,
+and to give energy and unity to our worship, and there have been
+revelations telling us to give them up; revelations bidding us to sing
+more, revelations telling us to use wordless songs. Then anthems were
+given us, and so it has gone on, for we have been led of the Spirit."
+
+"I'd like more picture-books," pouted Hetty under her breath.
+
+Today the service began with a solemn song, followed by speaking and
+prayer from a visiting elder. Then, after a long and profound silence,
+the company rose and joined in a rhythmic dance which signified the
+onward travel of the soul to full redemption; the opening and closing of
+the hands meaning the scattering and gathering of blessing. There was
+no accompaniment, and both the music and the words were the artless
+expression of fervent devotion.
+
+Susanna sat in her corner beside the aged Tabitha, who would never dance
+again before the Lord, though her quavering voice joined in the chorus.
+The spring floor rose and fell under the quick rhythmic tread of the
+worshipers, and with each revolution about the room the song gained in
+power and fervor.
+
+  I am never weary bringing my life unto God,
+  I am never weary singing His way is good.
+  With the voice of an angel with power from above,
+  I would publish the blessing of soul-saving love.
+
+The steps grew slower and more sedate, the voices died away, the arms
+sank slowly by the sides, and the hands ceased their movement.
+
+Susanna rose to her feet, she knew not how or why. Her cheeks were
+flushed, her head bent.
+
+"Dear friends," she said, "I have now been among you for nearly three
+months, sharing your life, your work, and your worship. You may well
+wish to know whether I have made up my mind to join this Community, and
+I can only say that although I have prayed for light, I cannot yet see
+my way clearly. I am happy here with you, and although I have been
+a church member for years, I have never before longed so ardently to
+present my body and soul as a sacrifice unto the Lord. I have tried not
+to be a burden to you. The small weekly sum that I put into the treasury
+I will not speak of, lest I seem to think that the 'gift of God may be
+purchased with money,' as the Scriptures say; but I have endeavored to
+be loyal to your rules and customs, your aims and ideals, and to the
+confidence you have reposed in me. Oh, my dear Sisters and Brothers,
+pray for me that I be enabled to see my duty more plainly. It is not
+the fleshpots that will call me back to the world; if I go, it will be
+because the duties I have left behind take such shape that they draw me
+out of his shelter in spite of myself. I thank you for the help you have
+given me these last weeks; God knows my gratitude can never be spoken in
+words."
+
+Elder Gray's voice broke the silence that followed Susanna's speech.
+"I only echo the sentiments of the Family when I say that our Sister
+Susanna shall have such time as she requires before deciding to unite
+with this body of Believers. No pressure shall be brought to bear upon
+her, and she will be, as she ever has been, a welcome guest under our
+roof. She has been an inspiration to the children, a comfort and aid to
+the Sisters, an intelligent comrade to the Brethren, and a sincere and
+earnest student of the truth. May the Spirit draw her into the Virgin
+Church of the New Creation!"
+
+"Yee and amen!" exclaimed Eldress Abby, devoutly: "'For thus saith the
+Lord of hosts: I will shake the heavens, and the earth, and the sea,
+and the dry land; and I will shake all nations, and the desire of all
+nations shall come: and I will fill this house with glory, saith the
+Lord of hosts.'"
+
+  "O Virgin Church, how great the light,
+     What cloud can dim thy way?"
+
+sang Martha from her place at the end of a bench; and all the voices
+took up the hymn softly as the company sat with bowed heads.
+
+Then Brother Issachar rose from his corner, saying: "Jesus called upon
+his disciples to give up everything: houses, lands, relationships, and
+even the selfishness of their own lives. They could not call their
+lives their own. 'Lo! we have left all and followed thee,' said Peter;
+'fathers, mothers, wives, children, houses, lands, and even our own
+lives also.' It is a great price to pay, but we buy Heaven with it!"
+
+"Yee, we do," said Brother Thomas Scattergood, devoutly. "To him that
+overcometh shall the great prize be given."
+
+"God 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 worshipers 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 worship.
+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 grass 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 attitude of Shaker friendship, a relation
+seemingly outside of and superior to sex, 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 relationship 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 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.
+
+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 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 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 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 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 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?"
+
+"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 basketwork.
+
+"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
+
+
+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,
+  Regenerating 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:--
+
+  "Resurrecting, Soul-Inspiring,
+  Regenerating Gospel Life,
+   It leadeth away 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
+did n'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.
+
+"'T is n't so long as 'regenerating' and more easier."
+
+"Regenerating means 'making over,' you know."
+
+"There'd ought to be children's words and grownup 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."
+
+"Does n't his feet take hold right, or why does he slip?"
+
+"Perhaps he can't manage his feet;--perhaps they just won't climb." 295
+
+"Yes, or p'raps he just does n'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 't would be nicer to be an angel."
+
+"Nicer, perhaps, but one has to be very good to be an angel."
+
+"Backsliders could n'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 should n'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 farmwork,
+and we'd all be so happy. I miss Fardie awfully! He did n'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?"
+
+"More'n tongue can tell!" cried Sue, throwing herself into her mother's
+arms. "Don't cry, darling Mardie! I won't talk any more, not for days
+and days! Let me wipe your poor eyes. Don't let Elder Gray see you
+crying, or he'll think I've been naughty. He's just going in downstairs
+to see Eldress Abby. Was it wrong what I said about backsliding, or
+what, Mardie? We'll help each udder climb, an' then we'll go home an'
+help poor lonesome Fardie; shall we?"
+
+
+"Abby!" called Elder Gray, stepping into the entry of the Office
+Building.
+
+"Yee, I'm coming," Eldress Abby answered from the stairway. "Go right
+out and sit down on the bench by the door, where I can catch a few
+minutes' more light for my darning; the days seem to be growing
+short all to once. Did Lemuel have a good sale of basket-work at the
+mountains? Rosetta has n't done so well for years at Old Orchard. We
+seem to be prospering in every material direction, Daniel, but my
+heart is heavy somehow, and I have to be instant in prayer to keep from
+discouragement."
+
+"It has n't been an altogether good year with us spiritually," confessed
+Daniel; "perhaps we needed chastening."
+
+"If we needed it, we've received it," Abby ejaculated, as she pushed her
+darning-ball into the foot of a stocking. "Nothing has happened since I
+came here thirty years ago that has troubled me like the running away of
+Nathan and Hetty. If they had been new converts, we should have thought
+the good seed had n't got fairly rooted, but those children were brought
+to us when Nathan was eleven and Hetty nine."
+
+"I well remember, for the boy's father and the girl's mother came on
+the same train; a most unusual occurrence to receive two children in one
+day."
+
+"I have cause to remember Hetty in her first month, for she was as wild
+as a young hawk. She laughed in meeting the first Sunclay, and when she
+came back, I told her to sit behind me in silence for half an hour while
+I was reading my Bible. 'Be still now, Hetty, and labor to repent,' I
+said. When the time was up, she said in a meek little mite of a
+voice, 'I think I'm least in the Kingdom now, Eldress Abby!' 'Then run
+outdoors,' I said. She kicked up her heels like a colt and was through
+the door in a second. Not long afterwards I put my hands behind me to
+tie my apron tighter, and if that child had n't taken my small scissors
+lying on the table and cut buttonholes all up and down my strings,
+hundreds of them, while she was 'laboring to repent.'"
+
+Elder Gray smiled reminiscently, though he had often heard the story
+before. "Neither of the children came from godly families," he said,
+"but at least the parents never interfered with us nor came here putting
+false ideas into their children's heads."
+
+"That's what I say," continued Abby; "and now, after ten years' training
+and discipline in the angelic life, Hetty being especially promising,
+to think of their going away together, and worse yet, being married in
+Albion village right at our very doors; I don't hardly dare to go to bed
+nights for fear of hearing in the morning that some of the other young
+folks have been led astray by this foolish performance of Hetty's; I
+know it was Hetty's fault; Nathan never had ingenuity enough to think
+and plan it all out."
+
+"Nay, nay, Abby, don't be too hard on the girl; I've watched Nathan
+closely, and he has been in a dangerous and unstable state, even as long
+ago as his last confession; but this piece of backsliding, grievous as
+it is, does n't cause me as much sorrow as the fall of Brother Ephraim.
+To all appearance he had conquered his appetite, and for five years he
+has led a sober life. I had even great hopes of him for the ministry,
+and suddenly, like a great cloud in the blue sky, has come this terrible
+visitation, this reappearance of the old Adam. 'Ephraim has returned to
+his idols.'"
+
+"How have you decided to deal with him, Daniel?"
+
+"It is his first offense since he cast in his lot with us; we must
+rebuke, chastise, and forgive."
+
+"Yee, yee, I agree to that; but how if he makes us the laughing-stock of
+the community and drags our sacred banner in the dust? We can't afford
+to have one of our order picked up in the streets by the world's
+people."
+
+"Have the world's people found an infallible way to keep those of their
+order out of the gutters?" asked Elder Gray. "Ephraim seems repentant;
+if he is willing to try again, we must be willing to do as much."
+
+"Yee, Daniel, you are right. Another matter that causes me anxiety is
+Susanna. I never yearned for a soul as I yearn for hers! She has had the
+advantage of more education and more reading than most of us have ever
+enjoyed; she's gifted in teaching and she wins the children. She's
+discreet and spiritually minded; her life in the world, even with
+the influence of her dissipated husband, has n't really stained, only
+humbled her; she would make such a Shaker, if she was once 'convinced,'
+as we have n't gathered in for years and years; but I fear she's
+slipping, slipping away, Daniel!"
+
+"What makes you feel so now, particularly?"
+
+"She's diff'rent as time goes on. She's had more letters from that place
+where her boy is; she cries nights, and though she does n't relax a mite
+with her work, she drags about sometimes like a bird with one wing."
+
+Elder Daniel took off his broadbrimmed hat to cool his forehead and
+hair, lifting his eyes to the first pale stars that were trembling in
+the sky, hesitating in silver and then quietly deepening into gold.
+
+Brother Ansel was a Believer because he had no particular love for the
+world and no great susceptibility to its temptations; but what had drawn
+Daniel Gray from the open sea into this quiet little backwater of a
+Shaker Settlement? After an adventurous early life, in which, as if
+youth-intoxicated, he had plunged from danger to danger, experience to
+experience, he suddenly found himself in a society of which he had never
+so much as heard, a company of celibate brothers and sisters holding all
+goods and possessions in common, and trying to live the "angelic life"
+on earth. Illness detained him for a month against his will, but at the
+end of that time he had joined the Community; and although it had been
+twenty-five years since his gathering in, he was still steadfast in the
+faith.
+
+His character was of puritanical sternness; he was a strict
+disciplinarian, and insisted upon obedience to the rules of Shaker life,
+"the sacred laws of Zion," as he was wont to term them. He magnified
+his office, yet he was of a kindly disposition easily approached by
+children, and not without a quaint old-time humor.
+
+There was a long pause while the two faithful leaders of the little
+flock were absorbed in thought; then the Elder said: "Susanna's all you
+say, and the child, well, if she could be purged of her dross, I never
+saw a creature better fitted to live the celestial life; but we must not
+harbor any divided hearts here. When the time comes, we must dismiss her
+with our blessing."
+
+"Yee, I suppose so," said Eldress Abby, loyally, but it was with a sigh.
+Had she and Tabitha been left to their own instincts, they would have
+gone out into the highways and hedges, proselyting with the fervor of
+Mother Ann's day and generation.
+
+"After all, Abby," said the Elder, rising to take his leave, still in
+a sort of mild trance, "after all, Abby, I suppose the Shakers don't
+own the whole of heaven. I'd like to think so, but I can't. It's a big
+place, and it belongs to God."
+
+
+
+
+IX. Love Manifold
+
+
+The woods on the shores of Massabesic Pond were stretches of tapestry,
+where every shade of green and gold, olive and brown, orange and
+scarlet, melted the one into the other. The somber pines made a
+deep-toned background; patches of sumach gave their flaming crimson;
+the goldenrod grew rank and tall in glorious profusion, and the maples
+outside the Office Building were balls of brilliant carmine. The air was
+like crystal, and the landscape might have been bathed in liquid amber,
+it was so saturated with October yellow.
+
+Susanna caught her breath as she threw her chamber window wider open in
+the early morning; for the greater part of the picture had been painted
+during the frosty night.
+
+"Throw your little cape round your shoulders and come quickly, Sue!" she
+exclaimed.
+
+The child ran to her side. "Oh, what a goldy, goldy morning!" she cried.
+
+One crimson leaf with a long heavy stem that acted as a sort of rudder,
+came down to the windowsill with a sidelong scooping flight, while two
+or three gayly painted ones, parted from the tree by the same breeze,
+floated airily along as if borne on unseen wings, finally alighting on
+Sue's head and shoulders like tropical birds.
+
+"You cried in the night, Mardie!" said Sue. "I heard you snifferling
+and getting up for your hank'chief; but I did n't speak 'cause it's so
+dreadful to be _catched_ crying."
+
+"Kneel down beside me and give me part of your cape," her mother
+answered. "I'm going to let my sad heart fly right out of the window
+into those beautiful trees."
+
+"And maybe a glad heart will fly right in!" the child suggested.
+
+"Maybe. Oh! we must cuddle close and be still; Elder Gray's going to sit
+down under the great maple; and do you see, all the Brothers seem to be
+up early this morning, just as we are?"
+
+"More love, Elder Gray!" called Issachar, on his way to the toolhouse.
+
+"More love, Brother Issachar!"
+
+"More love, Brother Ansel!"
+
+"More love, Brother Calvin!"
+
+"More love!.... More love!.... More love!" So the quaint but not
+uncommon Shaker greeting passed from Brother to Brother; and as Tabitha
+and Martha and Rosetta met on their way to dairy and laundry and
+seed-house, they, too, hearing the salutation, took up the refrain,
+and Susanna and Sue heard again from the women's voices that beautiful
+morning wish, "More love! More love!" speeding from heart to heart and
+lip to lip.
+
+Mother and child were very quiet.
+
+"More love, Sue!" said Susanna, clasping her closely.
+
+"More love, Mardie!" whispered the child, smiling and entering into the
+spirit of the salutation. "Let's turn our heads Farnham way! I'll take
+Jack and you take Fardie, and we'll say togedder, 'More love'; shall
+we?"
+
+"More love, John."
+
+"More love, Jack."
+
+The words floated out over the trees in the woman's trembling voice and
+the child's treble.
+
+"Elder Gray looks tired though he's just got up," Sue continued.
+
+"He is not strong," replied her mother, remembering Brother Ansel's
+statement that the Elder "wa'n't diseased anywheres, but did n't have no
+durability."
+
+"The Elder would have a lovely lap," Sue remarked presently.
+
+"_What_?"
+
+"A nice lap to sit in. Fardie has a nice lap, too, and Uncle Joel
+Atterbury, but not Aunt Louisa; she lets you slide right off; it's a
+bony, hard lap. I love Elder Gray, and I climbed on his lap one day. He
+put me right down, but I'm sure he likes children. I wish I could take
+right hold of his hand and walk all over the farm, but he would n't let
+me, I s'pose.-- _More love, Elder Gray_!" she cried suddenly, bobbing
+up above the windowsill and shaking her fairy hand at him.
+
+The Elder looked up at the sound of the glad voice. No human creature
+could have failed to smile back into the roguish face or have treated
+churlishly the sweet, confident little greeting. The heart of a real man
+must have an occasional throb of the father, and when Daniel Gray rose
+from his seat under the maple and called, "More love, child!" there was
+something strange and touching in his tone. He moved away from the
+tree to his morning labors with the consciousness of something new
+to conquer. Long, long ago he had risen victorious above many of the
+temptations that flesh is heir to. Women were his good friends, his
+comrades, his sisters; they no longer troubled the waters of his soul;
+but here was a child who stirred the depths; who awakened the potential
+father in him so suddenly and so strongly that he longed for the
+sweetness of a human tie that could bind him to her. But the current of
+the Elder's being was set towards sacrifice and holiness, and the common
+joys of human life he felt could never and must never be his; so he
+went to the daily round, the common task, only a little paler, a little
+soberer than was his wont.
+
+"More love, Martha!" said Susanna when she met Martha a little later in
+the day.
+
+"More love, Susanna!" Martha replied cheerily. "You heard our Shaker
+greeting, I see! It was the beautiful weather, the fine air and glorious
+colors, that brought the inspiration this morning, I guess! It took us
+all out of doors, and then it seemed to get into the blood. Besides,
+tomorrow's the Day of Sacrifice, and that takes us all on to the
+mountaintops of feeling. There have been times when I had to own up to a
+lack of love."
+
+"You, Martha, who have such wonderful influence over the children, such
+patience, such affection!"
+
+"It was n't always so. When I was first put in charge of the children, I
+did n't like the work. They did n't respond to me somehow, and when they
+were out of my sight they were ugly and disobedient. My natural mother,
+Maria Holmes, took care of the girls' clothing. One day she said to me,
+'Martha, do you love the girls?'
+
+"'Some of them are very unlovely,' I replied.
+
+"'I know that,' she said, 'but you can never help them unless you love
+them.'
+
+"I thought mother very critical, for I strove scrupulously to do my
+duty. A few days after this the Elder said to me: 'Martha, do you love
+the girls?' I responded, 'Not very much.'
+
+"'You cannot save them unless you love them,' he said. Then I answered,
+'I will labor for a gift of love.'
+
+"When the work of the day was over, and the girls were in bed, I would
+take off my shoes and spend several hours of the night walking the
+floor, kneeling in prayer that I might obtain the coveted gift. For five
+weeks I did this without avail, when suddenly one night when the moon
+was full and I was kneeling by the window, a glory seemed to overshadow
+the crest of a high mountain in the distance. I thought I heard a voice
+say: '_Martha, I baptize you into the spirit of love!_' I sat there
+trembling for more than an hour, and when I rose, I felt that I could
+love the meanest human being that ever walked the earth. I have never
+had any trouble with children since that night of the vision. They seem
+different to me, and I dare say I am different to them."
+
+"I wish I could see visions!" exclaimed Susanna. "Oh, for a glory
+that would speak to me and teach me truth and duty! Life is all mist,
+whichever way I turn. I'd like to be lifted on to a high place where I
+could see clearly."
+
+She leaned against the frame of the open kitchen door, her delicate
+face quivering with emotion and longing, her attitude simplicity and
+unconsciousness itself. The baldest of Shaker prose turned to purest
+poetry when Susanna dipped it in the alembic of her own imagination.
+
+"Labor for the gift of sight!" said Martha, who believed implicitly in
+spirits and visions. "Labor this very night."
+
+It must be said for Susanna that she had never ceased laboring in her
+own way for many days. The truth was that she felt herself turning from
+marriage. She had lived now so long in the society of men and women who
+regarded it as an institution not compatible with the highest spiritual
+development that unconsciously her point of view had changed; changed
+all the more because she had been so unhappy with the man she had
+chosen. Curiously enough, and unfortunately enough for Susanna
+Hathaway's peace of mind, the greater aversion she felt towards the
+burden of the old life, towards the irksomeness of guiding a weaker
+soul, towards the claims of husband on wife, the stronger those claims
+appeared. If they had never been assumed!--Ah, but they had; there was
+the rub! One sight of little Sue sleeping tranquilly beside her; one
+memory of rebellious, faulty Jack; one vision of John, either as needing
+or missing her, the rightful woman, or falling deeper in the wiles of
+the wrong one for very helplessness;--any of these changed Susanna the
+would-be saint, in an instant, into Susanna the wife and mother.
+
+"_Speak to me for Thy Compassion's sake_," she prayed from the little
+book of Confessions that her mother had given her. "_I will follow after
+Thy Voice!_"
+
+"Would you betray your trust?" asked conscience.
+
+"No, not intentionally."
+
+"Would you desert your post?"
+
+"Never, willingly."
+
+"You have divided the family; taken a little quail bird out of the
+home-nest and left sorrow behind you. Would God justify you in that?"
+
+For the first time Susanna's "No" rang clearly enough for her to hear it
+plainly; for the first time it was followed by no vague misgivings, no
+bewilderment, no unrest or indecision. "_I turn hither and hither; Thy
+purposes are hid from me, but I commend my soul to Thee_!"
+
+Then a sentence from the dear old book came into her memory: "_And thy
+dead things shall revive, and thy weak things shall be made whole_."
+
+She listened, laying hold of every word, till the nervous clenching
+of her hands subsided, her face relaxed into peace. Then she lay down
+beside Sue, creeping close to her for the warmth and comfort and healing
+of her innocent touch, and, closing her eyes serenely, knew no more till
+the morning broke, the Sabbath morning of Confession Day.
+
+
+
+
+
+X. Brother and Sister
+
+
+If Susanna's path had grown more difficult, more filled with anxieties,
+so had John Hathaway's. The protracted absence of his wife made the
+gossips conclude that the break was a final one. Jack was only half
+contented with his aunt, and would be fairly mutinous in the winter,
+while Louisa's general attitude was such as to show clearly that she
+only kept the boy for Susanna's sake.
+
+Now and then there was a terrifying hint of winter in the air, and the
+days of Susanna's absence seemed eternal to John Hathaway. Yet he was a
+man about whom there would have been but one opinion: that when deprived
+of a rather superior and high-minded wife and the steadying influence
+of home and children, he would go completely "to the dogs," whither he
+seemed to be hurrying when Susanna's wifely courage failed. That he had
+done precisely the opposite and the unexpected thing, shows us perhaps
+that men are not on the whole as capable of estimating the forces
+of their fellow men as is God the maker of men, who probably expects
+something of the worst of them up to the very last.
+
+It was at the end of a hopeless Sunday when John took his boy back to
+his aunt's towards night. He wondered drearily how a woman dealt with a
+ten-year-old boy who from sunrise to sunset had done every mortal thing
+he ought not to have done, and had left undone everything that he had
+been told to do; and, as if to carry out the very words of the church
+service, neither was there any health in him; for he had an inflamed
+throat and a whining, irritable, discontented temper that could be borne
+only by a mother, a father being wholly inadequate and apparently never
+destined for the purpose.
+
+It was a mild evening late in October, and Louisa sat on the porch with
+her pepper-and-salt shawl on and a black wool "rigolette" tied over her
+head. Jack, very sulky and unresigned, was dispatched to bed under the
+care of the one servant, who was provided with a cupful of vinegar,
+salt, and water, for a gargle. John had more than an hour to wait for
+a returning train to Farnham, and although ordinarily he would have
+preferred to spend the time in the silent and unreproachful cemetery
+rather than in the society of his sister Louisa, he was too tired and
+hopeless to do anything but sit on the steps and smoke fitfully in the
+semidarkness. Louisa was much as usual. She well knew--who better?--her
+brother's changed course of life, but neither encouragement nor
+compliment were in her line. Why should a man be praised for living a
+respectable life? That John had really turned a sort of moral somersault
+and come up a different creature, she did not realize in the least, nor
+the difficulties surmounted in such a feat; but she did give him credit
+secretly for turning about face and behaving far more decently than she
+could ever have believed possible. She had no conception of his mental
+torture at the time, but if he kept on doing well, she privately
+intended to inform Susanna and at least give her a chance of trying him
+again, if absence had diminished her sense of injury. One thing that
+she did not know was that John was on the eve of losing his partnership.
+When Jack had said that his father was not going back to the store
+the next week, she thought it meant simply a vacation. Divided hearts,
+broken vows, ruined lives she could bear the sight of these with
+considerable philosophy, but a lost income was a very different, a very
+tangible thing. She almost lost her breath when her brother knocked the
+ashes from his meerschaum and curtly told her of the proposed change in
+his business relations.
+
+"I don't know what I shall do yet," he said, "whether I shall set up for
+myself in a small way or take a position in another concern,--that is,
+if I can get one--my stock of popularity seems to be pretty low just now
+in Farnham. I'd move away tomorrow and cut the whole gossipy, deceitful,
+hypocritical lot of 'em if I was n't afraid of closing the house and so
+losing Susanna, if she should ever feel like coming back to us."
+
+These words and the thought back of them were too much for John's
+self-control. The darkness helped him and his need of comfort was
+abject. Suddenly he burst out, "Oh, Louisa, for heaven's sake, give me a
+little crumb of comfort, if you have any! How can you stand like a stone
+all these months and see a man suffering as I have suffered, without
+giving him a word?"
+
+"You brought it on yourself," said Louisa, in self-exculpation.
+
+"Does that make it any easier to bear?" cried John. "Don't you suppose
+I remember it every hour, and curse myself the more? You know perfectly
+well that I'm a different man today. I don't know what made me change;
+it was as if something had been injected into my blood that turned me
+against everything I had liked best before. I hate the sight of the men
+and the women I used to go with, not because they are any worse, but
+because they remind me of what I have lost. I have reached the point now
+where I have got to have news of Susanna or go and shoot myself."
+
+"That would be about the only piece of foolishness you have n't
+committed already!" replied Louisa, with a biting satire that would
+have made any man let go of the trigger in case he had gone so far as to
+begin pulling it.
+
+"Where is she?" John went on, without anger at her sarcasm. "Where is
+she, how is she, what is she living on, is she well, is she just as
+bitter as she was at first, does she ever speak of coming back? Tell me
+something, tell me anything. I will know something. I say I _will_!"
+
+Louisa's calm demeanor began to show a little agitation, for she was not
+used to the sight of emotion. "I can't tell you where Susanna is, for I
+made her a solemn promise I would n't unless you or Jack were in danger
+of some kind; but I don't mind telling you this much, that she's well
+and in the safest kind of a shelter, for she's been living from the
+first in a Shaker Settlement."
+
+"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 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 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 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 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 Saturday 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 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."
+
+"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 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 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."
+
+"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 ill a birchbark 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 that
+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 onjinin' him? They used to tie up
+married folks in the old times so't they could n't move an inch. When
+they read the constitution and bylaws 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
+onjinin' nowadays! Well, accordin' to my notions, if there is anything
+wuss 'n marriage, it's hevin' it hold till death, for then menfolks
+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 swap 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 menfolks, 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, menfolks 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! Goodbye, Ansel; you've made me smile when my heart was breaking. I
+shan't forget you!"
+
+
+
+
+XII. The Hills of Home
+
+
+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 worktable 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 must
+n'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 did
+n'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 would n'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."
+
+"Has n'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."
+
+"Aunt Louisa and father make me keep my best to put on for you, if you
+should come. I clean up and dress every afternoon at train time, only I
+forgot today and came fishing."
+
+"It's too cold to fish, sonny."
+
+"It ain't too cold to fish, but it's too cold for 'em to bite,"
+corrected Jack.
+
+"Why were you expecting us just now?" asked Susanna. "I did n't write
+because... because, I thought... perhaps... it would be better to
+surprise you."
+
+"Father's expecting you every day, not just this one," said Jack.
+
+Susanna sank down on a stone at the end of the bridge, and leaning her
+head against the railing, burst into tears. In that moment the worst of
+her fears rolled away from her heart like the stone from the mouth of a
+sepulcher. If her husband had looked for her return, he must have missed
+her, regretted her, needed her, just a little. His disposition was
+sweet, even if it were thoughtless, and he might not meet her with
+reproaches after all. There might not be the cold greeting she had often
+feared--"_Well, you've concluded to come back, have you_? _It was about
+time_!" If only John were a little penitent, a little anxious to meet
+her on some common ground, she felt her task would be an easier one.
+
+"Have you got a pain, Mardie?" cried Sue, anxiously bending over her
+mother.
+
+"No, dear," she answered, smiling through her tears and stretching a
+hand to both children to help her to her feet. "No, dear, I've lost
+one!"
+
+"I cry when anything aches, not when it stops," remarked Jack, as the
+three started again on their walk. "Say, Sukey, you look bigger and
+fatter than you did when you went away, and you've got short curls
+'stead of long ones. Do you see how I've grown? Two inches!"
+
+"I'm inches and inches bigger and taller," Sue boasted, standing on
+tiptoe and stretching herself proudly. "And I can knit, and pull maple
+candy, and say Yee, and sing 'O Virgin Church, how great thy light.'"
+
+"Pooh," said Jack, "I can sing 'A sailor's life's the life for me, Yo
+ho, yo ho!' Step along faster, mummy dear; it's 'most supper time. Aunt
+Louisa won't scold if you're with me. There's the house, see? Father 'll
+be working in the garden covering up the asters, so they won't freeze
+before you come."
+
+"There is no garden, Jack. What do you mean?" "Wait till you see if
+there's no garden! Hurrah! there's father at the window, side of Aunt
+Louisa. Won't he be pleased I met you halfway and brought you home!"
+
+
+Oh! it was beautiful, the autumn twilight, the smoke of her own
+hearth-side rising through the brick chimneys! She thought she had left
+the way of peace behind her, but no, the way of peace was here, where
+her duty was, and her husband and children.
+
+The sea was deep blue; the home hills rolled softly along the horizon;
+the little gate that Susanna had closed behind her in anger and misery
+stood wide open; shrubs, borders, young hedgerows, beds of late autumn
+flowers greeted her eyes and touched her heart. A foot sounded on the
+threshold; the home door opened and smiled a greeting; and then a voice
+choked with feeling, glad with welcome, called her name.
+
+Light-footed Sue ran with a cry of joy into her father's outstretched
+arms, and then leaping down darted to Ellen, chattering like a magpie.
+Husband and wife looked at each other for one quivering moment, and then
+clasped each other close.
+
+"Forgive! O Susanna, forgive!"
+
+John's eyes and lips and arms made mute appeals, and it was then Susanna
+said, "Never mind, John! Let's forget, and begin all over again!"
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Homespun Tales, by Kate Douglas Wiggin
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