The Way to Peace | Page 7

back to us-- if she lives," Eldress Hannah ended.
Athalia listened breathlessly, her rapt, unhumorous eyes fixed on Eldress Hannah's still face. Now and then she asked a question, and once cried out that, after all, why wasn't it the way to live? Peace and self-sacrifice and love! "Oh," she said, turning to her husband, "can't you feel the attraction of it? I should think even you could feel it!"
"I think I feel it--after a fashion," he said, mildly; "I think I have always felt the attraction of community life."
Afterward, when they had left all this somnolent peace and begun the long walk back to the station, he explained what he meant: "I couldn't say so before the Eldress, but of course there are times when anybody can feel the charm of getting rid of personal responsibility-- and that is what community life really means. It's the relief of being a little cog in a big machine; in fact, the very attraction of it is a sort of temptation, to my way of looking at it. But it--well, it made me sleepy," he confessed.
For once his wife had no reply. She was very quiet on that return journey in the cars, and in the days that followed she kept referring to their visit with a persistence that surprised her husband. She thought the net caps were beautiful; she thought the exquisite cleanness of everything was like a perfume--"the perfume of a wild rose!" she said, ecstatically. She thought the having everything in common was the way to live. "And just think how peaceful it is!"
"Well, yes," Lewis said; "I suppose it's peaceful--after a fashion. Anything that isn't alive is peaceful."
"But their idea of brotherhood is the highest kind of life!"
"The only fault I have to find with it is that it isn't human," he said, mildly. He had no desire to prove or disprove anything; Athalia was looking better, just because she was interested in something, and that was enough for Lewis. When she proposed to read a book on Shakerism aloud, he fell into her mood with what was, for him, enthusiasm; he declared he would like nothing better, and he put his daily paper aside without a visible regret.
"Well," he admitted, "I must say there's more to it than I supposed. They've studied the Prophecies; that's evident. And they're not narrow in their belief. They're really Unitarians."
"Narrow?" she said--"they are as wide as heaven itself! And, oh, the peace of it!"
"But they are NOT human," he would insist, smiling; "no marriage-- that's not human, little Tay."
It was not until two months later that he began to feel vaguely uneasy. "Yes; it's interesting," he admitted; "but nobody in these days would want to be a Shaker." To which she replied, boldly, "Why not?"
That was all, but it was enough. Lewis Hall's face suddenly sobered. He had not stumbled along behind her in all her emotional experiences without learning to read the guide-posts to her thought. "I hope she'll get through with it soon," he said to himself, with a worried frown; "it isn't wholesome for a mind like 'Thalia's to dwell on this kind of thing."
It was in November that she broke to him that she had written Eldress Hannah to ask if she might come and visit the community, and had been answered "Yee."
Lewis was silent with consternation; he went out to the sawmill and climbed up into the loft to think it all out alone. Should he forbid it? He knew that was nonsense; in the first place, his conception of the relation of husband and wife did not include that kind of thing; but more than that, opposition would, he said to himself, "push her in." Not into Shakerism; "'Thalia couldn't be a Shaker to save her life," he thought, with an involuntary smile; but into an excited discontent with her comfortable, prosaic life. No; definite opposition to the visit must not be thought of--but he must try and persuade her not to go. How? What plea could he offer? His own loneliness without her he could not bring himself to speak of; he shrank from taking what seemed to him an advantage. He might urge that she would find it cold and uncomfortable in those old frame houses high up on the hills; or that it would be bad for her health to take the rather wearing journey at this time of year. But he knew too well how little effect any such prudent counsels would have. The very fact that her interest had lasted for more than three months showed that it had really struck roots into her mind, and mere prudence would not avail much. Still, he would urge prudence; then, if she was determined, she must go. "She'll get sick of it in