The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 | Page 7

then?"
The two old women looked at each other, warningly, but Christina,

being on the full tide of confidence, answered at last in a whisper,
"Father Rapp did hold a counsel mit five others."
"And his brother?"
"He was killed. He did never see his child."
"But," I resumed, breaking the long silence that followed, "your women
do not care to go back to their husbands? They dwell in purer thoughts
than earthly love?"
"Hein?" said the woman with a vacant face.
"Were you married?"--to Fredrika, who sat stiffly knitting a blue
woollen sock.
"Nein," vacantly counting the stitches. "Das ist not gut, Father Rapp
says. He knows."
"She war not troth-plight even," interrupted the other eagerly, with a
contemptuous nod, indicating by a quick motion a broken nose, which
might have hindered Fredrika's chances of matrimony. "There is
Rachel," pointing to a bent figure in a neighboring garden; "she was to
marry in the summer, and in spring her man came mit Father Rapp. He
was a sickly man."
"And she followed him?"
"Ya. He is dead."
"And Rachel?"
"Ya wohl! There she is," as the figure came down the street, passing us.
It was only a bent old Dutchwoman, with a pale face and fixed, tearless
eyes, that smiled kindly at sight of the child; but I have never seen in
any tragedy, since, the something which moved me so suddenly and
deeply in that quiet face and smile. I followed her with my eyes, and
then turned to the women. Even the stupid knitter had dropped her

work, and met my look with a vague pity and awe in her face.
"It was not gut she could not marry. It is many years, but she does at no
time forget," she mumbled, taking up her stocking again. Something
above her daily life had struck a quick response from even her, but it
was gone now.
Christina eagerly continued; "And there is ----" (naming a woman, one
of the directors.) "She would be troth-plight, if Father Rapp had not
said it must not be. So they do be lovers these a many years, and every
night he does play beneath her window until she falls asleep."
When I did not answer, the two women began to talk together in
undertones, examining the cut of Tony's little clothes, speculating as to
their price, and so forth. I rose and shook myself. Why! here in the new
life, in Arcadia, was there the world,--old love and hunger to be
mothers, and the veriest gossip? But these were women: I would seek
the men with Knowles. Leaving the child, I crossed the darkening
streets to the house which I had seen him enter. I found him in a
well-furnished room, sitting at a table, in council with half a dozen men
in the old-time garb of the Communists. If their clothes were relics of
other times, however, their shrewd, keen faces were wide awake and
alive to the present. Knowles's alone was lowering and black.
"These are the directors of the society," he said to me aloud, as I
entered.
"Their reception of us is hardly what I expected," nodding me to a seat.
They looked at me with a quiet, business-like scrutiny.
"I hardly comprehend what welcome you anticipated," said one, coolly.
"Many persons offer to become members of our fraternity; but it is, we
honestly tell you, difficult to obtain admission. It is chiefly an
association to make money: the amount contributed by each new-comer
ought, in justice, to bear some proportion to the advantage he obtains."
"Money? I had not viewed the society in that light," stammered

Knowles.
"You probably," said the other, with a dry smile, "are not aware how
successful a corporation ours has been. At Harmony, we owned thirty
thousand acres; here, four thousand. We have steam-mills, distilleries,
carry on manufactures of wool, silk, and cotton. Exclusive of our stocks,
our annual profit, clear of expense, is over two hundred thousand
dollars. There are few enterprises by which money is to be made into
which our capital does not find its way."
Knowles sat dumb as the other proceeded, numbering, alertly as a
broker, shares in railroad stocks, coal-mines, banks.
"You see how we live," he concluded; "the society's lands are
self-supporting,--feed and clothe us amply. What profits accrue are
amassed, intact."
"To what end?" I broke in. "You have no children to inherit your
wealth. It buys you neither place nor power nor pleasure in the world."
The director looked at me with a cold rebuke in his eyes. "It is not
surprising that many should desire to enter a partnership into which
they bring nothing, and which is so lucrative," he said.
"I had no intention of coming empty-handed," said Knowles in a
subdued voice. "But