Part 12

“I—I would not hear what thou hast to say about thy love, Stephen,” she said, with a faint smile. “Frieda hath told me her story, and it is enough for me to think of in the watches of the night. Detain me not. I must pray for Frieda Bergen. I must seek divine light for the understanding of mortal weaknesses, of which love is said to be the most dangerous. Verily, to-day I fear the inspiration hath been withdrawn from me, for I am dull of comprehension.”

Before Everett could reply, Gerson Brandt entered the room. The school-master came towards them with a stern look upon his face.

“Why dost thou talk here with the prophetess of Zanah?” he said, addressing Everett. “Thou canst have nothing to say that will be worthy of her hearing, since she is close to heaven and thou art of the wicked world.”

His long hair was wet as it lay upon his shoulders, and his thin face was deeply lined.

“We were talking of love—earthly love,” Walda said, leaving her place beside Everett. “Gerson Brandt, he hath just told me that he loveth.”

The school-master’s tall, gaunt form swayed beneath the burden of a great emotion.

“Tell me, sir, thou hast not dared to speak of love to the prophetess of Zanah?” he cried.

“Yes, I have spoken of love,” said Everett, going to the farther side of the fireplace. “Yes, I have spoken of love.” He was again the cool, well-poised man of the world. Carelessly he took up an old pair of bellows, as he added: “But you need not fear. The prophetess of Zanah did not care to hear about my love.”

“Walda, thou wouldst not listen to any man who would dare to speak of love to thee, wouldst thou?” Gerson Brandt asked, in an agony of fear.

“Disturb not thyself, Gerson Brandt,” Walda answered. “What harm can there be in Stephen Everett’s declaration that he loveth a woman out in the world?”

An expression of relief passed over the face of the school-master. Beads of perspiration stood upon his white forehead. He was shaking so that he had to steady himself against the end of the settle.

“Thy time of inspiration is so near that thou shouldst not speak to the stranger,” he said, in a softened tone. “Thou art close to heaven, and it is not wise for thee to commune with any man.”

“Must I speak no more with thee, Gerson Brandt?” Walda looked at him with all the tenderness of a deep affection shining in her eyes. Everett watched her as she addressed the school-master. The childish heart and the unawakened soul associated with the majestic form of a woman had fascinated him when he first came to Zanah, but he saw that the face, once as placid as a nun’s, showed the inner disquietude that is the recompense of those who come into a knowledge of the great emotions of life.

“Thou wouldst better dwell alone until the great day of the _Untersuchung_,” Gerson Brandt said to Walda. “Go now to thy closet, where thou canst pray until thou forgettest what thou hast heard of earthly love.”

Walda started to obey the counsel of the school-master, but she hesitated after she had gone to the door. She glanced at Everett. His tall form was outlined in the fire-light, but she could not see his face, which was in the shadow.

“I would speak a last word with Stephen Everett,” she said. Gerson Brandt stood by the door while she went near to Everett.

“Since this may be my last meeting with thee, I would offer thee gratitude from my heart for all that thou hast done for my father and for me,” she said. “Thou hast helped me to gain wisdom, Stephen.”

“Do not speak of gratitude, Walda. You cannot say good-bye to me here, for I shall see you again.”

“Nay, I may not be permitted to see thee again.” She stopped, as if she were taking care to speak wisely. “It is my prayer, Stephen, that thy love shall bring happiness to thee and to the woman upon whom thou hast set thine heart.”

She was gone before she could hear Everett’s reply.

XVI

The evening of the Day of Warning closed in dark and dreary. The rain stopped and a high wind came up. After tea in the inn, Everett walked up and down the porch. The village square and the winding street were deserted. At long intervals lights gleamed from fast-curtained windows. At first he took it for granted that Walda would not make her nightly visit to the grave of Marta Bachmann. When he thought over the matter, however, it occurred to him that it might be well to walk out towards the cemetery. He knew the fanaticism of the colonists caused them to be punctilious in the smallest religious observances. He watched for Walda in vain. After Gerson Brandt’s exhibition of evident unfriendliness to him he knew that precautions might be taken to prevent Walda from passing the _gasthaus_. As he had nothing else to do, he decided that a walk out through the woods to the shore of the lake might possibly be rewarded by a glimpse of the prophetess. He met no one on the way to the cemetery, but when he reached the gate he could dimly discern the forms of two women who were standing by the grave of Marta Bachmann. He guessed that Mother Kaufmann had been sent with Walda. A tall hedge surrounded the God’s-acre of Zanah, and he followed this evergreen wall to the point where it was nearest the grave of the dead prophetess. He was careful that his presence should not be discovered by the colony “mother.”

An old oak-tree spread its branches over the little plot of ground in which the tomb of Marta Bachmann was situated. The wind waved the branches of this tree and blew a shower of brown leaves upon the two women. It wound Walda’s cloak about her and tore the shawl from Mother Kaufmann’s shoulders.

“This is a night to make the spirits of the dead walk about their old haunts,” said Mother Kaufmann.

“Put superstition away from thee,” Walda answered. “If thou hast fixed thy faith on God, evil spirits cannot harm thee.”

Mother Kaufmann put her hand to her forehead while she peered about her, as if to discover some chance ghost.

“Dost thou not hear footsteps among the dried leaves?” she asked Walda.

“Nay, Mother Kaufmann. Why art thou so affrighted?” the girl replied. At that moment a gust of wind almost swept them from their feet. Mother Kaufmann uttered a scream of terror and pointed to a far corner of the graveyard where a white form was moving about among the graves. She did not wait to find out who or what the unexpected apparition might be. Gathering her skirts in her hand she fled, leaving Walda alone beside the grave. Everett stepped through the hedge and spoke gently to Walda.

“Do not be afraid,” he said. “I will find out what sort of a ghost has frightened Mother Kaufmann.” He walked towards the place, where what appeared to be a headless form wrapped in a sheet was moving back and forth. When he came near to it he saw that it was a most substantial substance, for Hans Peter had borrowed a white rubber blanket, through which he had thrust his head, and thus improvised a most serviceable rain-coat.

“What are you doing here?” Everett asked, in an angry tone of voice. “Do you know that you have scared one of the colony women?”

“Thou hast no concern in what my errand may be,” said the simple one, gathering his rubber blanket around him and calmly seating himself upon the nearest gravestone. “If Mother Kaufmann had been scared to death there is none in Zanah who would have wept upon her bier.”

“You had better go back to the village,” Everett advised, as he with difficulty restrained a laugh.

“Nay, it is thou who hast no occasion to linger near the cemetery,” the simple one replied. “I have come to wait for Walda Kellar.”

Another gust of wind, even stronger than the preceding one, carried Everett’s hat away, and while he searched for it in the dark a tree was uprooted. It fell with a crash that came from the direction of Marta Bachmann’s grave, towards which Everett ran in a frenzy of fear lest Walda had been injured.

“Stephen, Stephen,” he heard her call. She took a few steps towards him, and in a moment his arms were around her.

“You are not hurt, are you?” he said, putting his right hand upon her head, and drawing it close to him until it rested on his shoulder. He felt her tremble, and he said:

“You are quite safe now. I will take you home.”

The simple one had come near. Without glancing towards Stephen and Walda, he went to Marta Bachmann’s grave, and, climbing over the branches of the fallen tree, began to search for something. Everett gently put Walda away from him lest the simple one should notice them. Then, taking her by the hand, he led her through the hedge and along the road until they came to the open place by the lake.

“Stephen, I have shown a grievous weakness and lack of faith,” said Walda, catching her breath, and drawing her hand from his. “The prophetess of Zanah should not know fear, and yet I felt a strength and comfort in thine aid that my prayers have never given me.”

Walda raised her face to him, and again he put his arms around her.

“Walda, I mean to take care of you always,” he said. “I shall never let you go. Cannot you understand that it is meant you should belong to me?” He kissed her on the lips, and, abashed and trembling, she drew away from him.

“Stephen, thou dost betray my trust in thee. Why wouldst thou profane the lips of a prophetess of Zanah?” she cried. She put her hands over her heart, as if to still its wild beating, and her eyes were wide with fear and astonishment.

“Walda, I love you. I think I have loved you ever since the first day I came to Zanah. I have kissed you because my heart claims you from all the world. Life without you means nothing to me. Can’t you love me, Walda?”

“I know not what it means to love. I have been warned that it is selfish and sinful for men and women to fix all their thoughts upon each other. Oh, Stephen, what have I done that thou shouldst speak thus to me?”

“You have made me centre all my hopes in you. You have won my reverence. I know I am unworthy to touch your hand, but this love that has come to me gives me a supreme courage. Walda, surely your heart answers mine. Words are so clumsy that, now that my tongue should tell you how great and holy a thing is the love of a man for a woman, I am but a poor supplicant.” He took both her hands in his and drew her towards him. Again he kissed her, and, instead of resenting the caress, she hid her face upon his shoulder. He held her thus for a moment. He pushed back the white cap and softly touched her hair.

“Walda, do you know, I have often been afraid of the prophetess of Zanah,” he said, in a low tone, “and if it were not for my great love I would not have the courage to covet you for my wife. Love is stronger than reason, and so I dare covet you for my own forever. You are mine, for I could not love you so if you were not the woman destined to rule my life. Cannot you find in your heart a little love for me?”

“I know not what is in my heart,” she answered. “Thy kisses make me ashamed, Stephen, and yet my heart is glad. This night my weakness hath been revealed to me. Even now I cling to thee when I should bid thee go away from me.”

“You do love me, Walda. You must love me. It was fate that brought me to Zanah to find you. I know that all my years I have been waiting for you. You have been kept for me here in Zanah. Cannot you begin to comprehend that love is the birthright of every man and woman? Zanah would have cheated you, but now it cannot separate us.”

“Thy words make me think of my duty, Stephen.” Walda’s voice trembled. “Since thou hast kissed me, I am no longer fit to be the prophetess of Zanah.”

“You will be a wife instead of a prophetess, Walda. You can still be an instrument of the Lord, for you will make the world outside better for your presence.”

She was very quiet for a moment. It was as if she had not heard him.

“Is it love that maketh my heart beat? Is it love that casteth out fear while thou hast thine arms around me?” she asked, presently. “What meaning is there in a kiss that it should make me ashamed and yet happy, Stephen? Verily, thy kisses are not like the kisses of good-fellowship that the elders give one another at the _Untersuchung_; they are not like the kisses the mothers have pressed upon my forehead.”

“Of course they are not,” Everett said, and he laughed aloud in the joy the knowledge of her love gave him. “Look up, Walda, and let me kiss you again, and you will learn that the kiss of love is the token that unlocks the hearts of men and women.”

She looked into his eyes, and their lips met.

“Thou speakest truly, Stephen,” Walda said. “Let us go back to the village. I would think of thee and of love in solitude and with much prayer. This hour hath robbed me of the mantle of the prophetess.”

“But it has given you the highest heritage of life. It is better to be a wife than a prophetess, Walda.”

XVII

Kneeling by the window in her bare little room, Walda tried to pray after the manner of Zanah, yet no words of penitence came to the lips that had been touched by a lover’s kiss. The soul that the good elders had turned towards heaven as a mirror upon which the divine will might be reflected held an earthly image. A human love was enshrined in the heart that had been consecrated to God. As the girl prostrated herself, the discipline of long years of religious training was forgotten. Her Zanah life fell from her. New emotions swept over her, submerging her old character and bringing strange, sweet hopes. The soul of the priestess was consumed by the supreme passion of earth, and in its place flamed the soul of a woman.

One by one the lowly duties that had occupied her days came up before her. She recalled the pious fervor that had made them pleasant. Looking back to the time when Everett’s chance words in the sick-room had tempted her to enjoy the beauties of sky and field, she realized how far she had grown away from her former self since the almost imperceptible beginning of the fuller life which she had unconsciously entered. Kneeling there in the darkness, for the first time in all her life she rebelled against the laws of Zanah. Her youth and womanhood demanded the privilege of accepting human love. Everett’s influence was over her, and she gave little thought to the future. It was enough to feel the exaltation of love, to comprehend that she stood at the threshold of the ultimate mystery of life. She looked out at the stars that shone above the far horizon. She felt that she had ceased to belong to Zanah. It was as if she had entered into a larger kinship with all nature. Love had wrought the miracle that puts away all one’s years and leads the soul into a new existence independent of the past, expectant of the future.

Long after the village had gone to sleep Everett stayed out in the starlight, thinking of the weeks he had spent in Zanah, and of the woman who would henceforth claim his life’s allegiance. He dreamed of the future that was his and Walda’s. He saw the girl’s stunted life expanding under its new environments. His thoughts wandered over imaginary years, and he beheld her clad in the ripened charm of maturity. He saw the light of happiness in her eyes reflected in the eyes of their children. Sometimes, perhaps, they would look back to Zanah and thank God that among the middle-aged mothers with dwarfed minds and cramped souls there was none that bore the name of Walda Kellar.

For Walda the next day dawned with mysterious splendor. Zanah had fallen under a spell of enchantment, yet as the village awoke to life all its influences once more stole over her. Looking out of her window, she began to remember that she had been the prophetess of Zanah. She watched the men and boys walk leisurely towards the factory. Ox-teams creaked up the narrow street. The children solemnly wandered schoolward. She could no longer put her father or Gerson Brandt from her thoughts. The realization that she would give them pain burst upon her.

She tried to think what Everett’s love meant to her, but she found it impossible to get beyond the one idea that she was to be unfaithful to the trust that the people of Zanah had put in her. She did not shrink from facing the change in her position in the colony, but she could not understand what her future would be. She recalled that Everett had taken it for granted she would leave Zanah, but she knew she could not desert her father, even though a greater love than that which she bore for him might call her away. She was not sad, however, for underneath her new anxieties there was the consciousness of the revelation of love, the recognition of divinity that was so different from the one to which she had looked forward since her childhood. It gradually came over her that the inspiration she had felt came through a human medium, and not directly from heaven. She fell upon her knees before the low table that held her little German Bible. She tried to pray that she might know the will of God, but she could not bring herself to plead that she would have power to cast out from her heart the human love which had brought to her life the holy exaltation she had hoped to obtain through rigid conformity to the creed of Zanah.

Walda went out of the house of the women and stood in the little street, in which she felt suddenly that she was a stranger. She turned her steps towards the hill, for she obeyed the impulse to go to her father. Wilhelm Kellar was sitting in the window whence Walda had looked so many times at the far-off bluffs. He was reading his Bible, and as Walda entered the room he was mildly rebuking Piepmatz, who was singing the doxology and the love-song, mingled in such a medley as was never before heard from the throat of any bird.

“Peace be with thee, daughter,” he said, taking off his horn spectacles and stretching out his thin hand to her.

Walda clasped his hands, and her eyes fell beneath his glance. “Thou art feeling better, I hope?” she said, sinking upon a stool that was just beneath Piepmatz’s cage.

“The knowledge that the day of the _Untersuchung_ is so near giveth me new life,” declared the old man. “To-day I am full of gratitude because the Lord hath kept thee safe from the wiles of men. I have given thanks unto the Lord that thou art to be the prophetess.”

Walda’s face flushed and then became pale. Her heart beat so that she could not answer.

“Come near to me, Walda,” her father said. “I would tell thee that thou hast crowned my life with happiness, that thou hast atoned for the sin of the mother who bore thee.”

Walda knelt before him and hid her face upon his knee.

“Nay, nay, father,” she cried, “I am unworthy of thy trust. I am but a weak woman such as thou sayest my mother was.”

“It is right that thou shouldst feel humble, my daughter,” the old man replied, putting both hands upon her head. “But thou hast not sinned in deceiving those that trust thee. Thou hast not known the temptations of a human love.”

“Father, father!” Walda raised her head and looked up with tearful eyes.

A knock sounded on the door, and Hans Peter, still tapping on the door-jamb with one of his gourds, crossed the threshold.

“The elders have sent me to tell thee they would consult with thee. They bade me make ready the ink-horn and the papers, as they have business of much importance,” he announced.

Walda went away from her father’s room with her confession still unspoken. She lingered for a moment on the school-house porch, for she felt uncertain what to do with her day. For the first time in all her Zanah life she had no inviting task before her. She was already removed from the calm routine of duty. Ordinarily she would have gone to study the heavy books kept in the elders’ room which occupied a little wing of the meeting-house, but as she looked at the door, which stood invitingly open, she felt that she would no longer need to be familiar with the annals of former prophetesses and the discourses of the elders long since sanctified by good works. She had a sense of being outside the colony. A pang of homesickness made her sink upon the bench and look out upon the quiet valley.

The years had slipped by so noiselessly that she had come into womanhood without realizing the changes wrought by time. When she was a child, the colonists had labored in simple harmony and humble faith, content to work for the common welfare. Each season their harvests had been more abundant, their vineyards more fruitful, their lands more extensive. In the midst of this well-preserved plenty she had been happy, although she had often vexed the “mothers” by her sudden impulses and hasty actions. Beneath the kerchief crossed upon her breast now an eager, restless heart beat, and she comprehended that all the teachings of the good elders had not altered her intense nature. It seemed to her that Zanah had been metamorphosed since the coming of the early summer-time when she had looked forward to the autumn with a large hope for the final step towards her complete consecration to the service of God and the colony. She felt that, somehow, mysterious influences were at work. There was a general discontent. It had been a bad year for both the mills and the harvest fields, and she had represented hope and wisdom to the colonists. Tears came to her eyes when she thought that she had betrayed the trust of Zanah, and yet underneath her remorse was the consciousness that she was being led by the divine power in which she had trusted. Love flamed beneath every shifting emotion.

Through her tears Walda gazed down at the quaint village. The low-roofed stone houses were almost hidden beneath the vines and shrubbery that were turning to gorgeous color with the magic touch of the first frosts which had come early. Beyond the village the little valley melted into the plain, which rolled away to the far-off bluffs. The fields were brown and gold, as the gleaners had left them after the harvests, except here and there where the rich, black earth had been turned up by the plough. Cattle grazed beside the placid river that flowed almost imperceptibly onward to the Mississippi. The sunlight, mellowed by the autumn haze, glorified even the commonest every-day things. The scene had the beauty that gave it unreality. As her eyes rested upon the familiar landscape Walda felt a vague fear that it might vanish, since she had forfeited her right to remain in it as one of the faithful colonists. While she was looking down the wavering street she saw Gerson Brandt slowly climbing the hill. He had taken off the broad-rimmed hat that distinguished him from the other men of Zanah, and Walda noticed with a pang that his face had the stamp of pain upon it. He paused half-way up the hill to look back upon the village, and the girl, whose perceptions had been quickened with her recognition of an earthly love, noticed that the school-master’s tall form was more stooped than usual. When he resumed his walk towards the school-house Gerson Brandt caught sight of Walda, and his face took on an expression of gladness.

“Providence is kind to give me yet another chance to speak with thee before the _Untersuchung_,” he said, pausing before her. He saw that there were tears in her eyes, which refused to meet his glance. “Thou hast no sorrow? Surely, I know that nothing can disturb thee, now that thou art so near to thy Father in heaven. Yet why dost thou weep?”

He pushed the long hair back from his forehead with a trembling hand while he waited for her reply, but she remained silent, with only her profile turned to him. The white kerchief on her breast moved with her quick breathing.

“Canst thou not answer me, Walda?” he asked, in the tender tone that she remembered from her childhood.

Walda rested her elbows on the back of the porch seat, and, with her chin in her hands, shook her white-capped head. The tears began to fall so rapidly that she dared not try to speak. Gerson Brandt sank upon the seat opposite her.