The Way to Peace | Page 9

married life. Some of them were no more remarkable or unexpected than this interest in Shakerism. He began to be slowly frightened. Suppose she should take it into her head--?
When her fortnight was nearly up and he was already deciding whether, when he drove over to Depot Corners to meet her, he would take Ginny's colt or the new mare, a letter came to say she was going to stay a week longer.
"I believe," she wrote--her very pen, in the frantic down-hill slope of her lines, betraying the excitement of her thoughts--"I believe that for the first time in my life I have found my God!" The letter was full of dashes and underlining, and on the last page there was a blistered splash into which the ink had run a little on the edges.
Lewis Hall's heart contracted with an almost physical pang. "I must go and get her right off," he said; "this thing is serious!" And yet, after a wakeful night, he decided, with the extraordinary respect for her individuality so characteristic of the man-- a respect that may be called foolish or divine, as you happen to look at it--he decided not to go. If he dragged her away from the Shakers against her will, what would be gained? "I must give her her head, and let her see for herself that it's all moonshine," he told himself, painfully, over and over; "my seeing it won't accomplish anything." But he counted the hours until she would come home.
When she came, as soon as he saw her walking along the platform looking for him while he stood with his hand on Ginny's colt's bridle, even before she had spoken a single word, even then he knew what had happened-- the uplifted radiance of her face announced it.
But she did not tell him at once. On the drive home, in the dark December afternoon, he was tense with apprehension; once or twice he ventured some questions about the Shakers, but she put them aside with a curious gentleness, her voice a little distant and monotonous; her words seemed to come only from the surface of her mind. When he lifted her out of the sleigh at their own door he felt a subtle resistance in her whole body; and when, in the hall, he put his arms about her and tried to kiss her, she drew back sharply and said:
"No!--PLEASE!" Then, as they stood there in the chilly entry, she burst into a passionate explanation: she had been convicted and converted! She had found her Saviour! She--
"There, there, little Tay," he broke in, sadly; "supper is ready, dear." He heard a smothered exclamation--that it was smothered showed how completely she was immersed in a new experience, one of the details of which was the practice of self-control.
But, of course, that night they had it out. . . . When they came into the sitting-room after supper she flung the news into his pale face: she wished to join the Shakers. But she must have his consent, she added, impatiently, because otherwise the Shakers would not let her come.
"That's the only thing I don't agree with them about," she said, candidly; "I don't think they ought to make anything so solemn contingent upon the 'consent' of any other human being. But, of course, Lewis, it's only a form. I have left you in spirit, and that is what counts. So I told them I knew you would consent."
She looked at him with those blue, ecstatic eyes, so oblivious to his pain that for a moment a sort of impersonal amazement at such self-centredness held him silent. But after the first shock he spoke with a slow fluency that pierced Athalia's egotism and stirred an answering astonishment in her. His weeks of vague misgiving, deepening into keen apprehension, had given him protests and arguments which, although they never convinced her, silenced her temporarily. She had never known her husband in this character. Of course, she had been prepared for objections and entreaties, but sound arguments and stern disapproval confused and annoyed her. She had supposed he would tell her she would break his heart; instead, he said, calmly, that she hadn't the head for Shakerism.
"You've got to be very reasonable, 'Thalia, to stand a community life, or else you've got to be an awful fool. You are neither one nor the other."
"I believe their doctrines," she declared, "and I would die for a religious belief. But I don't suppose you ever felt that you could die for a thing!"
"I think I have--after a fashion," he said, mildly; "but dying for a thing is easy; it's living for it that's hard. You couldn't keep it up, Athalia; you couldn't live for it."
Well, of course, that night was only the beginning. The days