Twice-Told Tales (51 page)

Accordingly, each elder looked at the two candidates with a most
scrutinizing gaze. The man—whose name was Adam Colburn—had a face
sunburnt with labor in the fields, yet intelligent, thoughtful and
traced with cares enough for a whole lifetime, though he had barely
reached middle age. There was something severe in his aspect and a
rigidity throughout his person—characteristics that caused him
generally to be taken for a schoolmaster; which vocation, in fact, he
had formerly exercised for several years. The woman, Martha Pierson,
was somewhat above thirty, thin and pale, as a Shaker sister almost
invariably is, and not entirely free from that corpse-like appearance
which the garb of the sisterhood is so well calculated to impart.

"This pair are still in the summer of their years," observed the elder
from Harvard, a shrewd old man. "I would like better to see the
hoar-frost of autumn on their heads. Methinks, also, they will be
exposed to peculiar temptations on account of the carnal desires which
have heretofore subsisted between them."

"Nay, brother," said the elder from Canterbury; "the hoar-frost and
the black frost hath done its work on Brother Adam and Sister Martha,
even as we sometimes discern its traces in our cornfields while they
are yet green. And why should we question the wisdom of our venerable
Father's purpose, although this pair in their early youth have loved
one another as the world's people love? Are there not many brethren
and sisters among us who have lived long together in wedlock, yet,
adopting our faith, find their hearts purified from all but spiritual
affection?"

Whether or no the early loves of Adam and Martha had rendered it
inexpedient that they should now preside together over a Shaker
village, it was certainly most singular that such should be the final
result of many warm and tender hopes. Children of neighboring
families, their affection was older even than their school-days; it
seemed an innate principle interfused among all their sentiments and
feelings, and not so much a distinct remembrance as connected with
their whole volume of remembrances. But just as they reached a proper
age for their union misfortunes had fallen heavily on both and made it
necessary that they should resort to personal labor for a bare
subsistence. Even under these circumstances Martha Pierson would
probably have consented to unite her fate with Adam Colburn's, and,
secure of the bliss of mutual love, would patiently have awaited the
less important gifts of Fortune. But Adam, being of a calm and
cautious character, was loth to relinquish the advantages which a
single man possesses for raising himself in the world. Year after
year, therefore, their marriage had been deferred.

Adam Colburn had followed many vocations, had travelled far and seen
much of the world and of life. Martha had earned her bread sometimes
as a sempstress, sometimes as help to a farmer's wife, sometimes as
schoolmistress of the village children, sometimes as a nurse or
watcher of the sick, thus acquiring a varied experience the ultimate
use of which she little anticipated. But nothing had gone prosperously
with either of the lovers; at no subsequent moment would matrimony
have been so prudent a measure as when they had first parted, in the
opening bloom of life, to seek a better fortune. Still, they had held
fast their mutual faith. Martha might have been the wife of a man who
sat among the senators of his native State, and Adam could have won
the hand, as he had unintentionally won the heart, of a rich and
comely widow. But neither of them desired good-fortune save to share
it with the other.

At length that calm despair which occurs only in a strong and somewhat
stubborn character and yields to no second spring of hope settled down
on the spirit of Adam Colburn. He sought an interview with Martha and
proposed that they should join the Society of Shakers. The converts of
this sect are oftener driven within its hospitable gates by worldly
misfortune than drawn thither by fanaticism, and are received without
inquisition as to their motives. Martha, faithful still, had placed
her hand in that of her lover and accompanied him to the Shaker
village. Here the natural capacity of each, cultivated and
strengthened by the difficulties of their previous lives, had soon
gained them an important rank in the society, whose members are
generally below the ordinary standard of intelligence. Their faith and
feelings had in some degree become assimilated to those of their
fellow-worshippers. Adam Colburn gradually acquired reputation not
only in the management of the temporal affairs of the society, but as
a clear and efficient preacher of their doctrines. Martha was not less
distinguished in the duties proper to her sex. Finally, when the
infirmities of Father Ephraim had admonished him to seek a successor
in his patriarchal office, he thought of Adam and Martha, and proposed
to renew in their persons the primitive form of Shaker government as
established by Mother Ann. They were to be the father and mother of
the village. The simple ceremony which would constitute them such was
now to be performed.

"Son Adam and daughter Martha," said the venerable Father Ephraim,
fixing his aged eyes piercingly upon them, "if ye can conscientiously
undertake this charge, speak, that the brethren may not doubt of your
fitness."

"Father," replied Adam, speaking with the calmness of his character,
"I came to your village a disappointed man, weary of the world, worn
out with continual trouble, seeking only a security against evil
fortune, as I had no hope of good. Even my wishes of worldly success
were almost dead within me. I came hither as a man might come to a
tomb willing to lie down in its gloom and coldness for the sake of its
peace and quiet. There was but one earthly affection in my breast, and
it had grown calmer since my youth; so that I was satisfied to bring
Martha to be my sister in our new abode. We are brother and sister,
nor would I have it otherwise. And in this peaceful village I have
found all that I hope for—all that I desire. I will strive with my
best strength for the spiritual and temporal good of our community. My
conscience is not doubtful in this matter. I am ready to receive the
trust."

"Thou hast spoken well, son Adam," said the father. "God will bless
thee in the office which I am about to resign."

"But our sister," observed the elder from Harvard. "Hath she not
likewise a gift to declare her sentiments?"

Martha started and moved her lips as if she would have made a formal
reply to this appeal. But, had she attempted it, perhaps the old
recollections, the long-repressed feelings of childhood, youth and
womanhood, might have gushed from her heart in words that it would
have been profanation to utter there.

"Adam has spoken," said she, hurriedly; "his sentiments are likewise
mine."

But while speaking these few words Martha grew so pale that she looked
fitter to be laid in her coffin than to stand in the presence of
Father Ephraim and the elders; she shuddered, also, as if there were
something awful or horrible in her situation and destiny. It required,
indeed, a more than feminine strength of nerve to sustain the fixed
observance of men so exalted and famous throughout the Beet as these
were. They had overcome their natural sympathy with human frailties
and affections. One, when he joined the society, had brought with him
his wife and children, but never from that hour had spoken a fond word
to the former or taken his best-loved child upon his knee. Another,
whose family refused to follow him, had been enabled—such was his
gift of holy fortitude—to leave them to the mercy of the world. The
youngest of the elders, a man of about fifty, had been bred from
infancy in a Shaker village, and was said never to have clasped a
woman's hand in his own, and to have no conception of a closer tie
than the cold fraternal one of the sect. Old Father Ephraim was the
most awful character of all. In his youth he had been a dissolute
libertine, but was converted by Mother Ann herself, and had partaken
of the wild fanaticism of the early Shakers. Tradition whispered at
the firesides of the village that Mother Ann had been compelled to
sear his heart of flesh with a red-hot iron before it could be
purified from earthly passions.

However that might be, poor Martha had a woman's heart, and a tender
one, and it quailed within her as she looked round at those strange
old men, and from them to the calm features of Adam Colburn. But,
perceiving that the elders eyed her doubtfully, she gasped for breath
and again spoke.

"With what strength is left me by my many troubles," said she, "I am
ready to undertake this charge, and to do my best in it."

"My children, join your hands," said Father Ephraim.

They did so. The elders stood up around, and the father feebly raised
himself to a more erect position, but continued sitting in his great
chair.

"I have bidden you to join your hands," said he, "not in earthly
affection, for ye have cast off its chains for ever, but as brother
and sister in spiritual love and helpers of one another in your
allotted task. Teach unto others the faith which ye have received.
Open wide your gates—I deliver you the keys thereof—open them wide
to all who will give up the iniquities of the world and come hither to
lead lives of purity and peace. Receive the weary ones who have known
the vanity of earth; receive the little children, that they may never
learn that miserable lesson. And a blessing be upon your labors; so
that the time may hasten on when the mission of Mother Ann shall have
wrought its full effect, when children shall no more be born and die,
and the last survivor of mortal race—some old and weary man like
me—shall see the sun go down nevermore to rise on a world of sin and
sorrow."

The aged father sank back exhausted, and the surrounding elders
deemed, with good reason, that the hour was come when the new heads of
the village must enter on their patriarchal duties. In their attention
to Father Ephraim their eyes were turned from Martha Pierson, who grew
paler and paler, unnoticed even by Adam Colburn. He, indeed, had
withdrawn his hand from hers and folded his arms with a sense of
satisfied ambition. But paler and paler grew Martha by his side, till,
like a corpse in its burial-clothes, she sank down at the feet of her
early lover; for, after many trials firmly borne, her heart could
endure the weight of its desolate agony no longer.

Pleasant is a rainy winter's day within-doors. The best study for such
a day—or the best amusement: call it what you will—is a book of
travels describing scenes the most unlike that sombre one which is
mistily presented through the windows. I have experienced that Fancy
is then most successful in imparting distinct shapes and vivid colors
to the objects which the author has spread upon his page, and that his
words become magic spells to summon up a thousand varied pictures.
Strange landscapes glimmer through the familiar walls of the room, and
outlandish figures thrust themselves almost within the sacred
precincts of the hearth. Small as my chamber is, it has space enough
to contain the ocean-like circumference of an Arabian desert, its
parched sands tracked by the long line of a caravan with the camels
patiently journeying through the heavy sunshine. Though my ceiling be
not lofty, yet I can pile up the mountains of Central Asia beneath it
till their summits shine far above the clouds of the middle
atmosphere. And with my humble means—a wealth that is not taxable—I
can transport hither the magnificent merchandise of an Oriental
bazaar, and call a crowd of purchasers from distant countries to pay a
fair profit for the precious articles which are displayed on all
sides. True it is, however, that amid the bustle of traffic, or
whatever else may seem to be going on around me, the raindrops will
occasionally be heard to patter against my window-panes, which look
forth upon one of the quietest streets in a New England town. After a
time, too, the visions vanish, and will not appear again at my
bidding. Then, it being nightfall, a gloomy sense of unreality
depresses my spirits, and impels me to venture out before the clock
shall strike bedtime to satisfy myself that the world is not entirely
made up of such shadowy materials as have busied me throughout the
day. A dreamer may dwell so long among fantasies that the things
without him will seem as unreal as those within.

When eve has fairly set in, therefore, I sally forth, tightly
buttoning my shaggy overcoat and hoisting my umbrella, the silken dome
of which immediately resounds with the heavy drumming of the invisible
raindrops. Pausing on the lowest doorstep, I contrast the warmth and
cheerfulness of my deserted fireside with the drear obscurity and
chill discomfort into which I am about to plunge. Now come fearful
auguries innumerable as the drops of rain. Did not my manhood cry
shame upon me, I should turn back within-doors, resume my elbow-chair,
my slippers and my book, pass such an evening of sluggish enjoyment as
the day has been, and go to bed inglorious. The same shivering
reluctance, no doubt, has quelled for a moment the adventurous spirit
of many a traveller when his feet, which were destined to measure the
earth around, were leaving their last tracks in the home-paths.

In my own case poor human nature may be allowed a few misgivings. I
look upward and discern no sky, not even an unfathomable void, but
only a black, impenetrable nothingness, as though heaven and all its
lights were blotted from the system of the universe. It is as if
Nature were dead and the world had put on black and the clouds were
weeping for her. With their tears upon my cheek I turn my eyes
earthward, but find little consolation here below. A lamp is burning
dimly at the distant corner, and throws just enough of light along the
street to show, and exaggerate by so faintly showing, the perils and
difficulties which beset my path. Yonder dingily-white remnant of a
huge snowbank, which will yet cumber the sidewalk till the latter days
of March, over or through that wintry waste must I stride onward.
Beyond lies a certain Slough of Despond, a concoction of mud and
liquid filth, ankle-deep, leg-deep, neck-deep—in a word, of unknown
bottom—on which the lamplight does not even glimmer, but which I have
occasionally watched in the gradual growth of its horrors from morn
till nightfall. Should I flounder into its depths, farewell to upper
earth! And hark! how roughly resounds the roaring of a stream the
turbulent career of which is partially reddened by the gleam of the
lamp, but elsewhere brawls noisily through the densest gloom! Oh,
should I be swept away in fording that impetuous and unclean torrent,
the coroner will have a job with an unfortunate gentleman who would
fain end his troubles anywhere but in a mud-puddle.