the uprooting of their life took a surprisingly short time. in all those dark months of argument lewis hall had been quietly making plans for this final step, and such preparation betrayed his knowledge from the first of the hopelessness of his struggle—indeed, the struggle had only been loyalty to a lost cause. his calm assent to his wife’s ultimatum left her a little blank; but in the immediate excitement of removal, in the thrill of martyrdom that came with publicity, the blankness did not last. what the publicity was to her husband she could not understand. he received the protests of his family in stolid silence; when the venturesome great-aunt told him what she thought of him, he smiled; when his brother informed him that he was a fool, he said he shouldn’t wonder. when the minister, egged on by distracted hall relatives, remonstrated, he replied, respectfully, that he was doing what he believed to be his duty, “and if it seems to be a duty, i can’t help myself; you see that, don’t you?” he said, anxiously. but that was practically all he found to say; for the most part he was silent. athalia, in her absorption, probably had not the slightest idea of the agonies of mortification which he suffered; her imagination told her, truly enough, what angry relatives and pleasantly horrified neighbors said about her, and the abuse exhilarated her very much; but her imagination stopped there. it did not give her the family’s opinion of her husband; it did not whisper the gossip of the grocery-store and the post-office; it did not repeat the chuckles or echo the innuendoes:
“so squire hall’s wife’s got tired of him? rather live with the shakers than him!” “i like hall, but i haven’t any sympathy with him,” the doctor said; “what in thunder did he let her go gallivanting off to visit the shakers for? might have known a female like mrs. hall’d get a bee in her bonnet. he ought to have kept her at home. i would have. i wouldn’t have had any such nonsense in my family! well, for an obstinate man (and he is obstinate, you know), the squire, when it comes to his wife, has no more backbone than a wet string.”
“wonder if there’s anything under it all?” came the sly insinuation of gossip; “wonder if she hasn’t got something besides the shakers up her sleeve? you wait!”
if athalia’s imagination spared her these comments, lewis’s unimaginative common sense supplied them. he knew what other men and husbands were saying about him; what servants and gossip and friends insinuated to one another, and set his jaw in silence. he made no excuse and no explanation. why should he? the facts spoke. his wife did prefer the shakers to her husband and her home. to have interfered with her purpose by any plea of his personal unhappiness, or by any threat of an appeal to law, or even by refusing to give the “consent” essential to her admission, would not have altered these facts. as for his reasons for going with her, they would not have enhanced his dignity in the eyes of the men who wouldn’t have had any such nonsense in their families: he must be near her to see that she did not suffer too much hardship, and to bring her home when she was ready to come.
in those days of tearing his life up by the roots the silent man was just a little more silent, that was all. but the fact was burning into his consciousness: he couldn’t keep his wife! that was what they said, and that was the truth. it seemed to him as if his soul blushed at his helplessness. but his face was perfectly stolid. he told athalia, passively, that he had rented the house and mill to henry davis; that he had settled half his capital upon her, so that she would have some money to put into the common treasury of the community; then he added that he had taken a house for himself near the settlement, and that he would hire out to the shakers when they were haying, or do any farm-work that he could get.
“i can take care of myself, i guess,” he said; “i used to camp out when i was a boy, and i can cook pretty well, mother always said.” he looked at her wistfully; but the uncomfortable-ness of such an arrangement did not strike her. in her desire for a new emotion, her eagerness to feel—that eagerness which is really a sensuality of the mind—she was too absorbed in her own self-chosen hardships to think of his; which were not entirely self-chosen.
“i think i can find enough to do,” he said; “the shakers need an able-bodied man; they only have those three old men.”
“how do you know that?” she asked, quickly.
“i’ve been to see them twice this winter,” he said.
“why!” she said, amazed, “you never told me!”
“i don’t tell you everything nowadays, ‘thalia,” he said, briefly.
in those two visits to the shakers, lewis hall had been treated with great delicacy; there had been no effort to proselytize, and equally there had been no triumphing over the accession of his wife; in fact, athalia was hardly referred to, except when they told him that they would take good care of her, and when brother nathan volunteered a brief summary of shaker doctrines—“so as you can feel easy about her,” he explained: “we believe that christ was the male principle in deity, and mother ann was the female principle. and we believe in confession of our sins, and communion with the dead—spiritualism, they call it nowadays—and in the virgin life. shakers don’t marry, nor give in marriage. and we have all things in common. that’s all, friend. you see, we don’t teach anything that christ didn’t teach, so she won’t learn any evil from us. simple, ain’t it?”
“well, yes, after a fashion,” lewis hall said; “but it isn’t human.”
and brother nathan smiled mystically. “maybe that isn’t against it, in the long run,” he said.
they came to the community in the spring twilight. the brothers and sisters had assembled to meet the convert, and to give a neighborly hand to the silent man who was to live by himself in a little, gray, shingled house down on lonely lake road. it was a supreme moment to athalia. she had expected an intense parting from her husband when they left their own house; and she was ready to press into her soul the poignant thorn of grief, not only because it would make her feel, but because it would emphasize in her own mind the divine self-sacrifice which she wanted to believe she was making. but when the moment came to close the door of the old home behind them, her husband was cruelly commonplace about it—for poor lewis had no more drama in him than a kindly newfoundland dog! he was full of practical cares for his tenant, and he stopped even while he was turning the key in the lock, to “fuss,” as athalia said, over some last details of the transfer of the sawmill. athalia could not tear herself from arms that placidly consented to her withdrawal; so there had been no rending ecstasies. in consequence, on the journey up to the community she was a little morose, a little irritable even, just as the drunkard is apt to be irritable when sobriety is unescapable.... but at the door of the family house she had her opportunity: she said, dramatically, “good-night—brother lewis.” it was an entirely sincere moment. dramatic natures are not often insincere, they are only unreal.
as for her husband, he said, calmly, “good-night, dear,” and trudged off in the cool may dusk down lonely lake road. he found the door of the house on the latch, and a little fire glowing in the stove; brother nathan had seen to that, and had left some food on the table for him. but in spite of the old man’s friendly foresight the house had all the desolation of confusion; in the kitchen there were two or three cases of books, broken open but not unpacked, a trunk and a carpet-bag, and some bundles of groceries; they had been left by the expressman on tables and chairs and on the floor, so that the solitary man had to do some lifting and unpacking before he could sit down in his loneliness to eat the supper brother nathan had provided. he looked about to see where he would put up shelves for his books, and as he did so the remembrance of his quiet, shabby old study came to him, almost like a blow.
“well,” he said to himself, “this won’t be for so very long. we’ll be back again in a year, i guess. poor little tay! i shouldn’t wonder if it was six months. i wonder, can i buy henry davis off, if she wants to go back in six months?”
and yet, in spite of his calm understanding of the situation, the wound burned. as he went about putting things into some semblance of order, he paused once and looked hard into the fire.... when she did want to go back—let it be in six months or six weeks or six days—would things be the same? something had been done to the very structure and fabric of their life. “can it ever be the same?” he said to himself; and then he passed his hand over his eyes, in a bewildered way—“will i be the same?” he said.
