The Way to Peace | Page 7

The world's people say we're
dying out. But the Lord will preserve the remnant to redeem the world,
young man. Yee; when they come in from the world they cast their
possessions into the whole; we own nothing, for ourselves. Nay; we
don't have many come. Brother William was the last. Why did he
come?" She looked coldly at Athalia, who had asked the question.
"Because he saw the way to peace. He'd had strife enough in the world.
Yee," she admitted, briefly, "some fall from grace, and leave us. The
last was Lydia. She was one of our children, and I thought she was of
the chosen. But she was only thirty when she fell away, and you can't
expect wisdom at that age. That was nearly twenty years ago. When she
has tasted the dregs of the world she will come 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,