_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 and weeks that followed were full of argument, of entreaty, of determination.
Perhaps if he had laughed at her. . . . But it is dangerous to laugh at unhumorous people, for if they get angry all is lost.
So he never laughed, nor in all their talks did he ever reproach her for not loving him. Once only his plea was personal-- and even then it was only indirectly so.
"Athalia," he said, "there's only one kind of pain in this world that never gets cured. It's the pain that comes when you remember that you've made somebody who loved you unhappy--not for a principle, but for your own pleasure. I know that pain, and I know how it lasts.
Once I did something, just to please myself, that hurt mother's feelings.
I'd give my right hand if I hadn't done it. It's twenty-two years ago, and I wasn't more than a boy, and she forgave me and forgot all about it.
I have never forgotten it. I wish to God I could! 'Thalia, I don't want you to suffer that kind of pain."
She saw the implication rather than the warning, and she burst out, angrily, that she wasn't doing this for "pleasure"; she was doing it for principle! It was for the salvation of her soul!
"Athalia," he said, solemnly, "the salvation of our souls depends on doing our duty."
"Ah!" she broke in, triumphantly, "out of your own lips:-- isn't it my duty to do what seems to me right?"
He considered a minute. "Well, yes; I suppose the most valuable example any one can set is to do what he or she believes to be right. It may be wrong, but that is not the point.
We must do what we conceive to be our duty. Only, we've got to be sure, Tay, in deciding upon duty, in deciding what is right,-- we've got to be sure that self-interest is eliminated.
I don't believe anybody can decide absolutely on what is right without eliminating self."
She frowned at this impatiently; its perfect fairness meant nothing to her.
"You promised to be my wife," he went on with a curious sternness; "it is obviously 'right,' and so it is your first duty to keep your promise-- at least, so long as my conduct does not absolve you from it."
Then he added, hastily, with careful justice: "Of course, I'm not talking about promises to love; they are nonsense. Nobody can promise to love.
Promises to do our duty are all that count."
That was the only reproach he made--if it was a reproach-- for his betrayed love. It was just as well. Discussion on this subject between husbands and wives is always futile. Nothing was ever accomplished by it; and yet, in spite of the verdict of time and experience that nothing is gained, over and over the jealous man, and still more frequently the jealous woman, protests against a lost love with a bitterness that kills pity and turns remorse into antagonism.
But Lewis Hall made no reproaches. Perhaps Athalia missed them; perhaps, under her spiritual passion, she was piqued that earthly passion was so readily silenced. But, if she was, she did not know it.
She was entirely sincere and intensely happy in a new experience.
It was a long winter of argument;--and then suddenly, in early April, the break came. . . .
"I WILL go; I have a right to save my soul!"
And he said, very simply, "Well, Athalia, then I'll go, too."
"You? But you don't believe--" And almost in the Bible words he answered her, "No; but where you go, I will go; where you live, I will live."
And then, a moment later, "I promised to cleave to you, little Tay."
