Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  “Foolish about him!” Frances could not contain herself. “She would never feel foolish about a young man! And if she felt foolish about him he would feel foolish about her, too!”

  “Yee,” said Elihu. “They have been driving and walking together, — picking leaves and grapes and berries. He stops in the orchard in the afternoon, and talks with her by the hour.”

  “It’s while her father’s asleep,” explained Frances. “Whenever Friend Boynton’s awake, Edward talks with him. You wouldn’t want him waked up out of his sleep to talk, would you?”

  “Nay,” said Elihu, while the faintest smile moved his lips, in kindly derision of the inefficiency of Frances’ defense. “Friend Ford writes in the morning, and Friend Boynton sleeps in the afternoon.”

  “Elihu!” cried Frances, angrily.

  “Frances,” returned Elihu, with reestablished gravity, “will you tell me yourself that you have never thought they were foolish about each other, —— what they call being in love?”

  Frances wiped the tears from her eyes with her stout handkerchief, which she had knotted into a ball. “You are too bad, Elihu. You have no right to ask such a question. You hadn’t ought to put me on trial.”

  “You put yourself on trial, Frances,” said Elihu, affectionately. “You began to talk while I was speaking. But I withdraw the question. I never meant to hurt your feelings. I know you have always done for the best.”

  “I have often heard you say,” Frances quavered reproachfully, “that the worst thing about our young people, when they get to foolin’, is that they run away. You said that if they would only tell us honestly how they felt we would let them go and be married, and we would be friends with them afterwards. Now, when there are two young folks here that don’t think of runnin’ away, or hidin’ anything, you ‘re not satisfied. Do you want Egery and Edward to run away?”

  “Nay,” replied Elihu; “do you want them to be courting each other here, right under our noses?”

  “It isn’t under our noses!” cried Frances, resenting the phrase.

  “Well, our eyes, then,” said Elihu, patiently. “Do you think it is a good example to the rest of our young folks?”

  “They ‘re not of our family! They’ve never been gathered in!”

  “Nay, I know that,” admitted Elihu. “But does that help the matter, as far as the example goes? We all know by bitter experience how hard it is for the young to tread the path that leads to the angelic life; how cruelly it is beset with flints and shards, and how the flesh bleeds with the sting of its brambles. Do you want them mocked with the sight of flowers that tempt them to the earthly pastures? Egeria is a good girl” —

  “Oh, she is, she is!” sobbed Frances.

  “And I don’t believe she understands herself that she’s foolish about him” —

  “I know she doesn’t Î It would kill her!”

  “Nay, I’m not sure of that,” said Elihu, with another flicker of a smile. “But that makes the case easier to deal with. We need not speak to her at all. We can speak to the young man.”

  “Speak to the young man!” cried Frances. “Tell him that Egery is in love with him before he has ever asked her” — She stopped in horror.

  “We do not gloss this thing among ourselves,” said Elihu coldly, “and we need not care for the feints and pretenses used in the world outside. But we can tell him that he’s foolish about her. I have talked the matter over with Joseph and the ministers, and we have agreed that Friend Ford should be spoken to.” Frances went out of the room, turning her back upon the meditated outrage. “The only question now is,” continued Elihu, without regarding her withdrawal, “who shall speak to him.”

  A perceptible sensation passed through the others, but no one answered. After a moment, Laban said from the corner where he sat, “Some like bellin’ the cat.” The sisters relieved the tension of their nerves in a low titter, but Elihu and Humphrey remained grave; and it is doubtful if Laban really intended a joke, though his face relaxed at the merriment of the sisters.

  “The ministers,” resumed Elihu, “were not sure whether it was the province of the elders or the trustees, and I came to consider that point with you, Humphrey.”

  Humphrey rose, with his face twisted by an expression as of severe bodily pain. He moved his arms haplessly about, and took off and then put on his spectacles. He tried in vain to smile. “I d’ know,” he said, “as I’m a very good hand at speakin’ to folks. I don’t seem to have any command o’ language. I should think myself, it was for the elders, some on ‘em, to speak.”

  “You have transacted all the business with the young man,” said Elihu. “You have had frequent interviews with him, and you go a good deal into the world, on business. We thought, perhaps, that you would best know how to approach him.”

  “I ain’t one to get acquainted easy,” replied Humphrey, “and I never felt no ways at home with Friend Ford. He seems to be of a kind of offish disposition.” He sat down again, and hanging his head began to tilt the chair in front of him on its hind legs. “I shouldn’t want to intrude no ways into the province of the elders. I don’t seem to feel that it’s so much of a business question as what it is a question of family discipline.”

  “You may be right,” admitted Elihu.

  “If I could see it as my duty, I shouldn’t be one to shirk it. But it’s like this.” He paused unsuccessfully for a comparison, and then added, “It’s a question of family discipline. I should ha’ thought it was for the ministers to speak.”

  “We should only have recourse to the ministers in extreme cases,” said Elihu. “Besides, you thought just now it was for the elders to speak.”

  “Well, the elders or the ministers,” returned Humphrey, without looking up.

  Elihu compassionated his futility with a moment’s silence. Then he sighed slightly, and said, “I agree with you, Humphrey. But I thought that I ought to give you the opportunity, and if you saw your duty in it I ought to yield to you. I did not want to have the appearance of forth-putting, in such a case, and I certainly don’t covet the task of speaking to Friend Ford. He appears to me a person subject to sudden gusts of anger, and there is no telling how he may take the interference.”

  “That is so,” admitted one of the sisters.

  “There ain’t no question about forth-puttin’, Elihu,” said Humphrey, with the cordiality of a great relief. “Every one’d know’t you didn’t seek such a duty. But Friend Ford’ll take it all right; you’ll see. He’ll look at it in the same light you do.”

  Elihu rose, and took his hat and stick. “I shall probably find him in his room, now, I suppose.” Humphrey stood as much aghast as it was in his power to do. “Was you — you wa’n’t goin’ to speak to him right away?”

  “Yee. Why should I put it off? He cannot take it any better to-morrow or next week than he would to-night. And the trouble wouldn’t grow less if we waited till doomsday.” Elihu went out; the closing of the hall door upon him was like an earthquake to those within.

  “I declare for it,” said Laban, “I ‘most feel like goin’ along down to Friend Ford’s and waitin’ outside.”

  “Well,” observed Rebecca, slighting the bold proposition, “Elihu never was one to be afraid.”

  “That is so, Rebecca,” said Diantha.

  Humphrey said nothing. The accumulation and complication of evils brought upon the family by the Boyntons had long passed his control.

  XXIII.

  Elihu walked rapidly down the moon-lighted street. When he reached the old family house, he groped his way up from the outer door to that of the meeting-room, in which Ford lodged, and tapped upon it with his stick. There was the sort of hesitation within which follows upon surprise and doubt; then the sound of a chair pushed back was heard, and Ford came to the door with a lamp in his hand; he looked like one startled out of a deep reverie. “Anything the matter with Dr. Boynton?” he asked, after a gradual recognition of Elihu.

  “Nay,” replied the
Shaker. “Friend Boynton is better than usual, I believe. I wish to have a little talk with you, Friend Ford. Shall I come in?”

  Ford found that he was holding the door ajar, and blocking the entrance. “Why, certainly,” he said. He led the way, and setting the lamp on the table pushed up another chair to the corner fireplace, where some logs were burning, and where he had evidently been sitting. “Sit down.”

  The Shaker obeyed, and with his palms resting on his knees craned his neck round and peered at the different corners of the room and up at the ceiling before he spoke. “Are you comfortable here, Friend Ford?”

  “Yes,” answered the young man. “I am a sort of stray cat, and any garret is home to me. I can’t say, though, that I’ve ever occupied the dwelling of a whole community before.”

  “Yee, this building once housed a good many people. It was a cross to leave it; but our numbers have fallen away, and we crowd together for comfort and encouragement. It’s an instinct, I suppose. Well, what do you think of the Shakers, so far, Friend Ford?” Elihu had an astute glimmer in his eye as he asked the question.

  “Really, I hardly know what to say,” answered Ford.

  “Say what you think. We may not like the truth, but we always desire to hear it.”

  “I should probably say nothing offensive to you, if I said all that’s in my mind. I believe I think very well of you. I don’t see why you don’t succeed. I don’t see why you don’t supply to Protestantism the very refuge from the world that we talk of envying in Catholicism.”

  “That is much the position that Friend Boynton took.”

  “I don’t understand why you are a failing body. The world has tired and hopeless people enough to throng ten thousand such villages as yours.”

  “We should hardly be satisfied with the weary and discouraged,” said Elihu, without resentment.

  “And our system offers few attractions. Folks are not so anxious for the angelic life in heaven that they want to begin it on earth.”

  Ford smiled. “You offer shelter, you offer a home and perfect immunity from care and anxiety.”

  “But we require great sacrifices,” rejoined the Shaker gravely. “We put husband and wife asunder; we bid the young renounce the dream of youth; we say to the young man, Forego; to the young girl, Forget. We exact celibacy, the supreme self-offering to a higher life. Even if we did not consider celibacy essential to the angelic life, we should feel it to be essential to communism. We must exact it, as the one inviolable condition.”

  Ford sat a moment thinking. “I dare say you are right.” He looked interested in what Elihu was saying, and he added, as if to prompt him to further talk, “I have been thinking about it a good deal since I’ve been here, and I don’t see how you can have communism on any other terms. But then your communism perishes, because nature is the stronger, and because you can’t recruit your numbers from the children of your adherents. You must look for accessions from the enemy.”

  “Yee, that is one of our difficulties. And we have to fight the enemy within our gates perpetually. Even such of us as have peace in our own hearts must battle in behalf of the weaker brethren. We must especially guard the young against the snares of their own fancies.”

  “I dare say it keeps you busy,” said Ford.

  “It does. We must guard them from both the knowledge and the sight of love.” The word brought a flush to the young man’s face, which Elihu did not fail to note. “Friend Ford, I have understood you to wish us well?” He rose, and resting his arm on the chimney-piece looked down with gentle earnestness into the face of the young man, as he sat leaning back in his chair with his hands clasped behind his head.

  “Yes, certainly.”

  “You would not wittingly betray us?”

  “Really” —

  “I don’t mean that. You wouldn’t knowingly put any obstacle in our way, — any stumbling-block before the feet of those whom we are trying to lead towards what we think the true life?”

  “Elihu,” said Ford, “I thoroughly respect you all, and I should be grieved to interfere with you. Why do you ask me these questions? Have you any reason to be dissatisfied with my behavior here?”

  “Nothing,” continued Elihu, “is so hard to combat in the minds of our young folks as the presence of that feeling in others who consider it holy and heavenly, while we teach that it is of the earth, earthy.”

  “Well?”

  “The more right and fit it appears, the more complex and subtle is the effect of such an example. It is impossible that we should tolerate it a moment among us after we become convinced of its existence. Self-defense is the law of life.”

  “Well, well!” cried Ford, getting up in his turn, and confronting Elihu on more equal terms, “what has all this to do with me?” His face was red, and his voice impatient.

  Elihu was not disturbed. He asked calmly, “Don’t you know that Egeria is in love with you?”

  Ford stood breathless a moment. “Good heavens, man!” he shouted. “Her father is at death’s door!”

  Elihu stood with his wide-brimmed hat resting on one hand; he turned it slowly round with the other. “Friend Boynton is very strangely sick. The doctor says he doesn’t know how long he may last. Young people soon lose the sense of danger which is not immediate. The kind of love I speak of is the master-feeling of the human heart; it flourishes in the very presence of death; it grows upon sorrow that seems to kill. It knows how to hide itself from itself. It takes many shapes, and calls itself by many other names. We have seen much to make us think we are right about Egeria. Have you seen nothing?”

  Ford did not reply. His thoughts ran back over all the times that he had seen and spoken with Egeria, and his heart slowly and deeply beat, like some alien thing intent upon the result; and then it leaped forward with a bound.

  “Perhaps,” said the Shaker, “I am wrong to put the question in the way I do. We deal so plainly with ourselves and with one another in such cases that I might well forget the sophistication that the world outside requires in the matter. I do not wish to do you injustice, and I shall be glad if I have opened my mind for nothing. I will merely ask whether you have not done anything or said anything to make her like you.”

  “This is preposterous,” said Ford. “Do you think these are the circumstances for love-making? I am here very much against my will, because I can’t decently abandon a friendless man” —

  “Friend Boynton has plenty of friends here,” interrupted Elihu.

  “I beg your pardon; I know that. Then I am here because I can’t leave a dying man who seems to find comfort in my presence. And whatever may be the security which Miss Boynton has fallen into, I have had her father to remind me of his danger by constant allusions to it, as if his death were near at hand.”

  “Do you believe it is?”

  “That isn’t the question. The question is whether a man, being trusted with a knowledge of dangers which she doesn’t know, could have any such feeling towards her as you imagine.” Ford bent a look of angry demand upon the Shaker.

  “Yee,” the latter answered, “I think he could, if he meant the best that love means. If he knew that they were poor, and that after her father’s death she would be left alone in the world, he might very well look on her with affection even across a dying pillow, and desire to be the protector and the stay of her helplessness. I don’t wish to pry into your concerns, and if there is nothing between you and Egeria it will be enough for you to say so.”

  “Between us!” cried Ford, bitterly. “I will tell you how I first met these people, and then you shall judge how much reason there is for love between her and me.”

  “Nay,” interjected Elihu, “there is no need of a reason for love. I learned that before I was gathered in.”

  Ford did not regard the interruption. “I saw them first at a public exhibition, and I made up my mind that Dr. Boynton was an impostor; and then I went to their house with this belief. I never believed his daughter was anything but his tool,
the victim of himself and the woman of the house who did the tricking. I suspected tricking in the dark, but when I attempted to seize her hand it was Miss Boynton’s hand that I caught, and I hurt her — like the ruffian I was. Afterwards the old man tried to face me down, and we had a quarrel; and I saw him next that morning here, when he flew at my throat. It’s been his craze to suppose that I thwarted his control over his daughter, and he has regarded me as his deadliest enemy. Now you can tell how much love is lost between us.” Ford turned scornfully away and walked the length of the room. —

  The Shaker remained in his place. “Egeria is of a very affectionate and believing disposition. She would take a pleasure in forgiving any unkindness, and she would forgive it so that it would never have been. I don’t see any cause in what you say to change my mind. If you told me that you did not care for her, it would be far more to the point than all you could say to show why you don’t.” Ford stopped, and glared at the serene figure and placid countenance. “This is too much,” he began, and then he paused, and they regarded each other.

  “You don’t pretend now,” resumed Elihu, “that you suspect either of them of wrong.”

  “No!”

  “Then, whatever the mystery is about them, you know that they are good folks. We have had much more cause than you to suspect them, but I don’t doubt them any more than I doubt myself.”

  “I would stake my life on her truth!” exclaimed Ford. The Shaker could not repress the glimmer of a smile. “!” — Ford paused. Then he burst out, “I have been a hypocrite, — the worst kind; a hypocrite to my own deceit! I do love her! She is dearer to me than — You talk of your angelic life! Can you dream of anything nearer the bliss of heaven than union with such tenderness and mercy as hers?”

  “We say nothing against marriage in its place. A true marriage is the best thing in the earthly order. But it is of the earthly order. The angels neither marry nor are given in marriage. We seek to be perfect, as we are divinely bidden. If you choose to be less than perfect” —