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.