 | REDWOOD. Redwood |  |
18. REDWOOD.
18. CHAPTER XVIII.
“Il y a dans l'aspect de la contrée quelque chose de calme
et de doux qui prépare l'âme à sortir des agitations de la vie.”
Madame de Stael.
It was a fine afternoon in the month
of August when our travellers passed
the romantic road which traverses the
mountain that forms the eastern boundary
of the valley of Hancock. The
varied pleasures they had enjoyed during
the day, and the excitement of drawing
near to the object of their long journey,
animated them both with unusual spirits.
Deborah's tongue was voluble in praise
of the rich farms that spread out on the
declivities of the hills, or embosomed in
they deserved, the enthusiastic commendations
of our experienced rustic. Ellen
listened in silence while she gazed with
the eye of an amateur upon this beautiful
country, which possesses all the elements
of the picturesque. Green hills
crowned with flourishing villages—village
spires rising just where they should
rise; for the scene is nature's temple, and
the altar should be there—lakes sparkling
like gems in the distant vallies—Saddle
mountain lifting his broad shoulders to
the northern sky, and the Catskills defining
with their blue and misty outline
the western horizon.
A sudden exclamation from Deborah
fixed Ellen's attention to one spot in the
wide spread landscape. “As I live,”
she said, “there is the very place at
last—see, Ellen, the yellow houses they
told us of.”
Ellen turned her eye to the long line
of habitations of a uniform colour and
plain and sheltered by the surrounding
hills, seem sequestered from the world,
and present an aspect of peace and comfort,
if not of happiness.
Ellen, as others have done, wondered
that this strange people, who in their
austere judgment would condemn the
delight that springs from natural beauty
as the gratification of the `lust of the
eye,' should have selected a spot of such
peculiar charms.
“Ah,” said Debby, as her eye wandered
over the stubble fields and the
rich crops that were yet unreaped,
“these are knowing people—they understand
their temporals—they have
chosen their land well.”
“Then,” thought Ellen, “it may be
that the maxim, the useful is the beautiful,”
holds good in relation to our mother
earth, and that she lavishes her smiles
upon those of her loyal children who
admirers of the beauties of nature
—no connoisseur in all the charms of
the various combinations of mountain
and valley, pasture hills and rich meadows,
dashing streams and quiet lakes,
could have selected a more beautiful
residence than this.”
Her meditations were suddenly cut
short by another exclamation from Deborah,
who had now turned an angle in
the road and entered the village street.
“Well, if this does not beat all! Just
look here, Ellen, at this little bright
stream,” and she pointed to a small
rivulet that sparkled like a chain of burnished
silver in the sunbeams; “see
where it comes racing down the hill
yonder, and here, where it crosses the
street, it darts under ground as if to hide
its capers from these solemn people—
the thing has sense in it.”
Ellen smiled, and asked “if it would
inquire at which house they should find
the elder sister Susan?”
Deborah immediately stopped her
horse, and waited for the coming up of
one of the brethren, who was approaching
them from an adjoining field. She
spent the few moments of waiting in admiring
the large richly stocked garden,
without weeds or waste places, the fine
stone-posts to the fences, the neatly
sawn wood, piled with mathematical
exactness, the clean swept street, and
all the neat arrangements of the shaker
economy, so striking to an eye accustomed
only to the slipshod ways of our
country people.
In the meanwhile Ellen was looking
eagerly at the windows of a large house
near which they had halted, to discern
if possible the well-known features of
Susan, or Emily, or any of the sisters
who, as they passed the windows like
the travellers.
When the man had arrived within
speaking distance, Deborah asked, “if
he would be so good as to direct her
where she could find Susan Allen!”
“Yea,” he replied, “she dwells
there;” and he pointed to the large
house Ellen was surveying.
“Is she at home?” asked Deborah.
“Yea, I believe so.”
Either Deborah's imagination was
busy, or her sagacity detected more
meaning in the man's face than was expressed
in his brief answers. “Is Susan
sick?” she asked hastily.
“If ye have business with her ye can
inquire for her at the house,” was all
the reply vouchsafed.
“Much thanks for his information,”
said Debby, who felt too conscious of
the liberty of free inquiry at all times
and places, to need the permission
stopped at the house designated, and
were admitted by one of the sisters who,
in reply to their inquiry for Susan Allen,
said, after a little hesitation, that, “she
was not right well, and would not be
able, she believed, to see strangers.”
“Can we then,” asked Ellen, “see
Emily Allen?”
“Emily Allen!” exclaimed the sister,
put a little off her guard by surprise,
and then after a momentary pause and
without making any explanations, she
added, “I will acquaint elder sister that
there are strangers here—if she knows
who you are she may choose to see ye—
be pleased to give me your names.”
They gave them, and added an earnest
request that Susan would see them.
She had scarcely given Deborah and
Ellen time to interchange their mutual
apprehensions, ere she returned and
bade them follow her. She led them
up stairs and through a long passage to
from the others by being larger
and more commodious—their conductor
showed them into the room and then
left them, closing the door after her.
Susan was seated with her back to the
door—on hearing it close she rose from
her chair with an apparent effort, like
one enfeebled by disease, and advanced
towards Deborah and Ellen. Her face
was ghastly pale, but there was no other
sign of emotion. She gave a hand to
each of her visitors, and said faintly,
“ye are welcome—sit down, sit down.”
They obeyed her and she reseated herself;
a dead silence followed—even Deborah,
fearless as she was, was awed
into the deference of a momentary silence
by the imposing solemnity of Susan's
deportment. It was but for a moment,
for her courage flowing back, “what
signifies it?” said she; an expression
that with her always signified the utter
demolition of all barriers that opposed
may as well come to it first as last;
what has happened to Emily?”
“Emily is gone,” replied Susan, in a
deep low tone, her eyes downcast, and
her whole person fixed in statue-like
stillness.
“Gone!” echoed Deborah and Ellen
in the same breath; “how—what is it
you mean—she is not dead, surely?”
“Would to God she had died,” replied
Susan, clasping her hands and
raising her eyes, from which the tears
now flowed freely: “would to God she
had died—in the faith.” Terrifying and
incomprehensible as were Susan's words,
neither Deborah nor Ellen ventured another
question. There was something so
strange and unnatural in her convulsive
emotion, that it affected them as if a
being that had passed the bounds of
human feeling, should wake again to the
pangs of mortal suffering.
After some moments of `strong crying
looked on and seen the breath of life
leave her body, and yet have said with
the Shunammite woman, `it is well.'
I could have laid her away from me in
the cold earth, and yet felt that it was
well; who might not endure the brief
space of time deprived of the dearest
and the best?—but,” she added, shuddering,
“I have lost her for time, and
for eternity—this it is that wrings my
heart with such grief as I thought never
to have felt again.”
Ellen was filled with frightful apprehensions
for Emily's fate, and yet she
knew not how to frame an inquiry about
her. Even Deborah could not rally
courage to hasten an explanation: she
walked to the window desirous to conceal
the feeling she could neither control
nor express; but the frequent application
of her handkerchief to her nose
made the honest creature's sympathy
quite audible.
It was not long before Susan recovered
a degree of composure that enabled her
to relieve the impatient anxiety of her
visitors, as far as the information she had
to communicate could relieve it. She
began her relation with the fact of
Emily's clandestine departure with Harrington.
She had herself first learned it
on the succeeding morning, when she
returned from Lebanon, whither she had,
as our readers may remember, been suddenly
summoned. She said she should
herself have believed that Emily had
not been a party to Harrington's treachery.
She should have been sure he
had forced her away, but that she remembered
the child's emotion when she
parted with her, and the mysterious language
she then held, which was but too
clearly explained by the event. The
wiles of Harrington, of rather, she said,
the wiles of Satan by his servant Harrington,
had been too much for the poor
girl; she had been caught in the toils,
an easy prey.
Ellen inquired if nothing had been
heard of the fugitive since their departure.
“Nothing.—One of the brethren had
been dispatched to Albany, where, they
had reason to believe, Harrington meant
to put into execution a plan to defraud
the society of a considerable sum of money.
It was now the third day since
Harrington's departure, and on the next
day they expected the return of their
agent, and it was more than probable
that he would bring some intelligence of
the fugitives. But, oh Ellen!” she concluded,
“there is nothing to hope for—
there is nothing more to fear—the worst
has happened.”
Ellen would not allow the case to be
desperate; not that she could see any
rational ground for favourable expectations,
but hope is the happy instinct of
youth. She showed Susan Emily's letter
intimated a wish to leave the society;
she hinted at the attachment she believed
Emily to have cherished for James
Lenox, and she finished with expressing
the belief that the poor girl had been the
innocent dupe of Harrington's artifices,
and had availed herself of his departure,
as affording her an opportunity of returning
to her friends.
At another time this would have
sounded like harsh consolation to Susan;
but now, in comparison with what she
feared, this was innocence and happiness,
and she eagerly grasped at Ellen's
suggestions. “God grant it may be so!
“God grant it,” she reiterated. “Oh
had I but known, Ellen, that it was in
the child's heart to go back to you, I
would have given her up as freely as
Abraham yielded up Isaac. It would
have been but honestly following her light,
and though but a dim one, still she would
have been saved from this utter ruin—
fallen innocently, I might weep for her
—yea, I must weep for her, but not these
bitter hopeless tears.”
Ellen entreated her to mitigate her
grief, at least till she had more certain
knowledge of the motives of Emily's
departure. Susan evidently felt humbled
to find herself the subject of the compassionate
efforts of even the loveliest
of the world's people; but she yielded
insensibly to Ellen's beneficent influence,
and even admitted that there was
some consolation in her rational suggestions.
Deborah had tact enough to perceive
this was too delicate a case for her
handling—quite out of her province,
and beyond her skill; and therefore she
had remained silent till she perceived
that the elder sister was tranquillized,
and that Ellen had expended all her consolatory
arguments; she then, like a
prudent officer, thought it best to retreat
discover that their strength was exhausted,
and she abruptly proposed their
departure. Ellen, grieved to think they
had no reason for delay, assented; and
Susan, who at another time would have
insisted on performing the rites of hospitality
to friends that she both valued
and loved, silently acquiesced, probably
deeming it prudent in the present state
of her feelings to exclude every exciting
cause. This caution would seem
incompatible with strong emotion; but
it must be remembered that caution was
habitual to the elder sister—was virtue
in her estimation—and was essential to
the preservation of her influence with
the society, and had yielded for a short
time only to the mastery of those powerful
affections over which it had held a
long and secure dominion. Such an exhibition
of her feelings as that into which
she had been surprised by the sudden
appearance of Emily's friends would, she
and sisters, degrade her to a level far
below the frozen summits where they remained
secure, regarding with equal
contempt the earthly influences that
bless and fertilize, or ravage and destroy.
Before parting, she promised to despatch
a messenger to Lebanon springs
(whither Deborah informed her that she
and Ellen were going, and should remain
for a few days) with any intelligence
that she might receive of the fugitives:
she then summoned one of the
sisters, and having requested her to
provide some refreshments for her friends,
she bade them farewell with her usual
composure, save a little faltering of the
voice, and trembling of the lip.
The travellers were then conducted to
a small parlour, where a table was
quickly spread for their entertainment.
It was covered with a cloth of the purest
white by one of the sisters, who lingered
pulling it first on one side, and then on
the other, till this artifice of her innocent
vanity had succeeded, and Deborah's
liberal praises were bestowed on the
delicate manufacture which had employed
the skill and taste of the sisterhood.
All the varieties of the `staff of life'
were now displayed: bread made of the
`finest of the wheat,' interspered with
slices produced from the native Indian
corn, which, in its prepared state,
deserves still to retain the epithet of
golden; next to this plate, groaning with
its burden, were placed some tempting
slices of the sad-coloured rye: these
gifts of Ceres were so perfect in their
kind, that the delicate goddess herself
might have banquetted on them: then
came the delicious butter and the purest
honey—the fruits in season, and pies,
cakes, and sweetmeats—accompanied
(it may be thought somewhat incongruously,)
to crown all, the aromatic tea-pot, diffusing
like the censer at the ancient
feasts, its fragrant fumes over all the
board—with such incitement, what mortal
with mortal senses, would have contemned
the fare?
If the truth must be told, the
spirituelle Ellen Bruce, after her long
abstinence, did not regard this repast
with the indifference of a true heroine,
and Deborah played her part as well as
one of Homer's heroes might have done,
had he had the good fortune to sit at a
shaking quaker tea-table. She was
yielding to the hospitable solicitations of
the sister in attendance, and taking her
fifth cup of tea, when Ellen reminded
her a second time that the sun was fast
declining, and that without despatch, they
should be overtaken by the night before
they reached Lebanon. Deborah's appetite
submitted to the necessity of the
case, and our travellers, after thanking
and left the village, as many other travellers
have done, with a grateful sense
of the unpretending hospitality of its
simple inhabitants.
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