Part 5

“It’s getting late, Eldress,” one of them said, and glanced at the clock.

“Then I’ll tell her she may come?” said Eldress Hannah, reluctantly.

“He can make the wrath of man to praise Him,” Brother Nathan encouraged her.

“Yee; but I never heard that He could make the foolishness of woman do it,” the old woman said, grimly.

As the brothers and sisters parted at the door of the sitting-room Brother Nathan plucked at the Eldress’s sleeve; “Is she very wretched--Lydia? Where is she now, Eldress? Poor Lydy! poor little Lydy!”

The fortnight of Athalia’s absence wore greatly upon her husband. Apprehension lurked in the back of his mind. In the mill, or out on the farm, or when he sat down among his shabby, old, calf-skin books, he was assailed by the memory of all her various fancies during their married life. Some of them were no more remarkable or unexpected than this interest in Shakerism. He began to be slowly frightened. Suppose she should take it into her head--?

When her fortnight was nearly up and he was already deciding whether, when he drove over to Depot Corners to meet her, he would take Ginny’s colt or the new mare, a letter came to say she was going to stay a week longer.

“I believe,” she wrote--her very pen, in the frantic down-hill slope of her lines, betraying the excitement of her thoughts--“I believe that for the first time in my life I have found my God!” The letter was full of dashes and underlining, and on the last page there was a blistered splash into which the ink had run a little on the edges.

Lewis Hall’s heart contracted with an almost physical pang. “I must go and get her right off,” he said; “this thing is serious!” And yet, after a wakeful night, he decided, with the extraordinary respect for her individuality so characteristic of the man--a respect that may be called foolish or divine, as you happen to look at it--he decided not to go. If he dragged her away from the Shakers against her will, what would be gained? “I must give her her head, and let her see for herself that it’s all moonshine,” he told himself, painfully, over and over; “my seeing it won’t accomplish anything.” But he counted the hours until she would come home.

When she came, as soon as he saw her walking along the platform looking for him while he stood with his hand on Ginny’s colt’s bridle, even before she had spoken a single word, even then he knew what had happened--the uplifted radiance of her face announced it.

But she did not tell him at once. On the drive home, in the dark December afternoon, he was tense with apprehension; once or twice he ventured some questions about the Shakers, but she put them aside with a curious gentleness, her voice a little distant and monotonous; her words seemed to come only from the surface of her mind. When he lifted her out of the sleigh at their own door he felt a subtle resistance in her whole body; and when, in the hall, he put his arms about her and tried to kiss her, she drew back sharply and said:

“No!--PLEASE!” Then, as they stood there in the chilly entry, she burst into a passionate explanation: she had been convicted and converted! She had found her Saviour! She--

“There, there, little Tay,” he broke in, sadly; “supper is ready, dear.” He heard a smothered exclamation--that it was smothered showed how completely she was immersed in a new experience, one of the details of which was the practice of self-control.

But, of course, that night they had it out.... When they came into the sitting-room after supper she flung the news into his pale face: she wished to join the Shakers. But she must have his consent, she added, impatiently, because otherwise the Shakers would not let her come.

“That’s the only thing I don’t agree with them about,” she said, candidly; “I don’t think they ought to make anything so solemn contingent upon the ‘consent’ of any other human being. But, of course, Lewis, it’s only a form. I have left you in spirit, and that is what counts. So I told them I knew you would consent.”

She looked at him with those blue, ecstatic eyes, so oblivious to his pain that for a moment a sort of impersonal amazement at such self-centredness held him silent. But after the first shock he spoke with a slow fluency that pierced Athalia’s egotism and stirred an answering astonishment in her. His weeks of vague misgiving, deepening into keen apprehension, had given him protests and arguments which, although they never convinced her, silenced her temporarily. She had never known her husband in this character. Of course, she had been prepared for objections and entreaties, but sound arguments and stern disapproval confused and annoyed her. She had supposed he would tell her she would break his heart; instead, he said, calmly, that she hadn’t the head for Shakerism.

“You’ve got to be very reasonable, ‘Thalia, to stand a community life, or else you’ve got to be an awful fool. You are neither one nor the other.”

“I believe their doctrines,” she declared, “and I would die for a religious belief. But I don’t suppose you ever felt that you could die for a thing!”

“I think I have--after a fashion,” he said, mildly; “but dying for a thing is easy; it’s living for it that’s hard. You couldn’t keep it up, Athalia; you couldn’t live for it.”

Well, of course, that night was only the beginning. The days and weeks that followed were full of argument, of entreaty, of determination. Perhaps if he had laughed at her.... But it is dangerous to laugh at unhumorous people, for if they get angry all is lost. So he never laughed, nor in all their talks did he ever reproach her for not loving him. Once only his plea was personal--and even then it was only indirectly so.

“Athalia,” he said, “there’s only one kind of pain in this world that never gets cured. It’s the pain that comes when you remember that you’ve made somebody who loved you unhappy--not for a principle, but for your own pleasure. I know that pain, and I know how it lasts. Once I did something, just to please myself, that hurt mother’s feelings. I’d give my right hand if I hadn’t done it. It’s twenty-two years ago, and I wasn’t more than a boy, and she forgave me and forgot all about it. I have never forgotten it. I wish to God I could! ‘Thalia, I don’t want you to suffer that kind of pain.”

She saw the implication rather than the warning, and she burst out, angrily, that she wasn’t doing this for “pleasure”; she was doing it for principle! It was for the salvation of her soul!

“Athalia,” he said, solemnly, “the salvation of our souls depends on doing our duty.”

“Ah!” she broke in, triumphantly, “out of your own lips:--isn’t it my duty to do what seems to me right?”

He considered a minute. “Well, yes; I suppose the most valuable example any one can set is to do what he or she believes to be right. It may be wrong, but that is not the point. We must do what we conceive to be our duty. Only, we’ve got to be sure, Tay, in deciding upon duty, in deciding what is right,--we’ve got to be sure that self-interest is eliminated. I don’t believe anybody can decide absolutely on what is right without eliminating self.”

She frowned at this impatiently; its perfect fairness meant nothing to her.

“You promised to be my wife,” he went on with a curious sternness; “it is obviously ‘right,’ and so it is your first duty to keep your promise--at least, so long as my conduct does not absolve you from it.” Then he added, hastily, with careful justice: “Of course, I’m not talking about promises to love; they are nonsense. Nobody can promise to love. Promises to do our duty are all that count.”

That was the only reproach he made--if it was a reproach--for his betrayed love. It was just as well. Discussion on this subject between husbands and wives is always futile. Nothing was ever accomplished by it; and yet, in spite of the verdict of time and experience that nothing is gained, over and over the jealous man, and still more frequently the jealous woman, protests against a lost love with a bitterness that kills pity and turns remorse into antagonism. But Lewis Hall made no reproaches. Perhaps Athalia missed them; perhaps, under her spiritual passion, she was piqued that earthly passion was so readily silenced. But, if she was, she did not know it. She was entirely sincere and intensely happy in a new experience. It was a long winter of argument;--and then suddenly, in early April, the break came....