Part 7

Everett took from his pocket some of the letters that he had received during the week. All of them told of events that formerly had interested him. The letters took him back to his own place in the broad life of America. He reasoned with himself that he might leave Zanah within a week. He would go away without striving further to probe the mysterious nature of the prophetess of Zanah, and he would remember his sojourn in the colony as one of the many pleasant incidents in his varied life. Having settled the question to his own satisfaction, he experienced a sensation of relief. He strolled back to the village. Entering the inn, he found Diedrich Werther smoking a pipe behind the dog-eared register, which had not recorded a name since his own had been written there. He asked some questions about the hunting, and the innkeeper told him of a distant pond where ducks were plentiful. Everett announced that he meant to take his gun out early the next morning, and he asked whether Hans Peter might accompany him. Incidentally he dropped the remark that he expected to leave the colony within a few days. Then he borrowed the old-fashioned ink-horn and a quill-pen, which he took to one of the tables in a far corner of the main room of the inn. Selecting a dozen sheets of yellow paper from Diedrich Werther’s store of stationery, he began to write letters to the friends he had almost forgotten for a fortnight.

There was a woman in Newport to whom he had meant to send a note. He thought of her amusement when she would receive a sample of Diedrich Werther’s yellow stationery. He wrote the date line, and then he found it difficult to frame a graceful and conventional greeting to one whom he had quite forgotten for many days. He leaned back in his chair and tried to imagine how this woman and Walda would appear if he saw them together. The one was a typical product of American civilization, that educates its women broadly, giving them the liberty to mingle freely with the greatest of many lands—a woman born to wealth and station, one who knew how to value her extraordinary advantages, and how to make the most of them. She was still young, but she had learned much of the world, for she had travelled widely and had read books of every class. She had few illusions. He remembered that her broad grasp of life had sometimes shocked him. She had studied much of philosophy, and had but desultory connection with a fashionable church. She was witty, brilliant, fascinating. She was an aristocrat, in the best sense of the word. Her gowns were artistic masterpieces. A picture of her as he had seen her at an Easter ball came back to him. He recalled the shimmering satin and the frost of lace that set off her imperious beauty. That night he had been almost persuaded that she was the one woman in the world. For a moment he quite forgot Zanah. He was impatient to go back to the gay world that held so much of beauty and brightness. It was a strange vagary, this sojourn in the colony. He dipped the quill-pen into the ink-horn again. He drew the ugly sheet of yellow paper towards him, and then he heard the heavy step of Mother Werther as she hastened across the great kitchen to the porch.

“Walda, where art thou going?” she said.

Before he knew what he was doing, Everett had dropped his pen and sauntered out-of-doors into the little square where Walda had paused at the well. She was giving a cup of water to a child, and at first she did not see Everett. She was standing so that he could see only her profile, and its purity of outline made him say to himself that he had never beheld a face so clear-cut. The delicate line of the lips, which were always firmly closed, denoted a strength of character that the chin rather contradicted in its full curve. He went to her, and, taking the cup from her hand, hung it in its accustomed place.

“I am glad to have met you, Walda,” he said, with a little hesitation as he spoke her name, “for I am thinking of going away this week—”

The girl gave him a startled look.

“Nay, tell me not that, Stephen Everett,” she answered. “Truly, thou dost not mean thou wilt leave Zanah before the _Untersuchung_?”

“Surely, you do not care whether I go or stay?” he said.

The prophetess of Zanah knew no arts of coquetry. She did not understand the significance of his words, and she looked into his face with clear, untroubled eyes.

“Ah, but I do care,” she exclaimed. “My father needs thee yet; he is not so strong to-day.”

She turned away from the well and began to walk towards the bridge. Everett followed her.

“Your father will get on without me,” he declared, with some coldness, for the girl’s unconscious rebuff irritated him.

“Nay, thou seemest to hold the power which keepeth him alive. I mean, that although it is the Lord that hath vouchsafed to spare him, thou art his instrument. My faith is not steadfast. I am weak, indeed; but thou hast seemed to me a stay, a strong staff upon which I lean.”

“It is good to know that you count me even a little help.” An intonation in his voice told her that he felt himself aggrieved.

“Thou must count me a selfish woman of Zanah,” she made haste to say. “Thou hast stayed many days here in the colony, and neglected thine own work that thou mightst minister to my father.”

“I have but kept my pledge to you.”

“Thou hast my gratitude, Stephen.” She paused on the bridge. “I cannot estimate what sacrifice thou hast made to keep thy word, but thou hast caused me to know that all who belong to the great world are not wicked. Verily, Stephen, thou dost serve the Lord.”

Everett did not reply immediately. He had a guilty sense of misleading the prophetess of Zanah. He knew that of all his life but the smallest fragments had been given to service of any sort. A sense of regret for the futile years he had spent made him turn away, for the girl was looking at him with a searching gaze that made him uncomfortable.

“The darkness is falling; I must hasten on,” said Walda, but she did not move.

“Where were you going?” asked Everett. “Let me walk with you?”

“It is not the custom for the men of Zanah to talk with the women, or to walk with them,” said Walda. “It hath been decreed by the elders that I shall go alone at this hour every night to pray at the grave of Marta Bachmann.”

“I am not a man of Zanah. The cemetery is half a mile from here, along a lonely road. Let me go with you?” he pleaded, and, without waiting for an answer, he took her permission for granted. It was the hour for the evening meeting, and the street was quite deserted, so he knew that they ran little risk of being seen together in the dusk of the late summer day.

They walked slowly up the hill beyond the bridge. They passed the school-house, and Walda paused to look up at the little window of her father’s room, whence shone a candle-beam.

“When I think that through thy help I still have my father, there is so much of gratitude in my heart that I cannot speak it,” she said. “Surely, it will not be long before he is again able to mingle with the colony?”

“Not very long, if all goes well,” said Everett. “I hear that he is much needed by the elders of Zanah.”

“Bad luck hath come to the mills and the crops. I fear that we have not looked steadfastly to the Lord for guidance. I pray that it may be revealed through me what we shall do to increase the prosperity of Zanah.”

They were on the brow of the hill now, and had entered the wavering road, arched with oak and maple trees. Everett was silent for a few minutes while he pondered upon some method by which he could lead the conversation away from general topics. While the girl betrayed no uneasiness in his companionship, he knew that he must use the utmost tact if he would appeal to the woman instead of the prophetess.

“And when you are inspired, will you live apart from the people of Zanah?” he said. “You will pardon me, but I have often wondered just what your life will be. Are you never to know the duties and the joys that belong to other women?”

“I am to walk close to God. I am to forget self. I am to serve Zanah all my life.”

Walda spoke in a solemn tone, and her absolute resignation to the lot that appeared to the man of the world a needless and ridiculous sacrifice awoke a spirit of revolt in Everett’s heart.

“Temptations have assailed me,” she confessed, after a pause. “Now and then there hath been a restlessness within me. Thou hast sometimes appeared to me as one sent from Satan, for thou hast painted the great world most alluringly.”

Walda drew away from Everett, and he could feel that she was looking at him with fear and distrust.

“You misunderstand me,” said Everett. “I know that you live near to heaven, that you are better than the women I know. I reverence you, I—I—”

Although Everett made an effort to speak calmly, the intensity of his voice and manner disturbed the unfathomed depths of Walda’s soul. After the manner of Zanah she instinctively folded her hands over her bosom with a gesture that signified to the colonists the warding off of all worldly influences.

“Hush!” she said. “Speak not thus to the prophetess of Zanah.”

“I am not speaking to the prophetess now,” said Everett, taking a quick step in front of her. “Walda, listen to me. Don’t you know that you are choosing for your life loneliness and isolation? I think of you here in Zanah in the years that are coming, and I cannot bear to feel that one day will be just like another until the end.”

“A man thou art who hath set his thoughts on earth. Stephen, dost thou not know sorrow and trouble cannot touch me when I walk near to God? Hast thy spirit never been lifted up above all that belongs to self? Hast thou never been near to heaven in thy thoughts?”

“Never until now,” said Everett.

Into Walda’s face came a new light.

“Dost thou mean that thou hast learned in Zanah to think less of the world and to long for heaven?”

The man looked down at the girl. She was so near him that the light breeze blew her gown against him. He stifled a longing to put out his hand to touch her.

“Yes, Walda, I can say with all truthfulness that the world has become as nothing to me, and that I long for heaven.”

“Thou hast made me very happy, Stephen. It hath been a sorrow to me to know that thou wert not numbered with those who strive to earn eternal life.”

“Then you have been troubled about me?” Everett questioned.

The girl hesitated a moment.

“I have hoped that I might meet thee in the other life, where there are none of the barriers that divide men and women who would serve the Lord.”

Everett felt the blood pour out of his heart. The girl had made a strange admission. For a brief moment he was glad with all the joy of an unexpected victory. Exultant words came to his lips, but when he looked at Walda he felt anew the awe that her innocence and her spirituality cast upon him. She appeared absolutely unconscious of what her admission meant to the man of the world. She moved onward. They emerged from the wooded road and came to the shore of the placid little lake. The distant bluffs beyond the lake were dimly outlined in the evening shadows, and above them the last lingering purple of the sunset was fading in the sky. In the trees behind them a bird trilled the fragment of a dream-song. The beauty of the scene, the quiet of the night, and the nearness of Walda stirred in Everett warring impulses, yet he was dumb before the prophetess of Zanah. The girl’s attitude of perfect trust in him forbade him to take advantage of the opportunity to tell her that his heaven was not the one for which she lived and worked, and yet he felt almost cowardly in letting her believe that his sudden aspiration was a religious experience.

“Stephen, I would have thee know what is in my heart,” she said, fixing her clear eyes on him. “I would have thee understand that I am but a weak woman of Zanah, called to do the Lord’s will. There have been times when Satan tempted me with longing for the things forever denied to the people of Zanah. There have been days when I begged that I might not be compelled to be the prophetess. Often have I prayed to escape this work of the Master, but since thou camest to Zanah there hath been a new strength in me. Thou hast made me see many things unto which mine eyes were closed; thou hast helped me to wisdom not vouchsafed to the colony of Zanah. Since one day, when thou didst teach me to look from the window of my father’s room, and behold the beauties of earth and sky, peace hath come to me from the woods and fields whenever there was unrest in my soul. Now that thou hast aspirations for heaven, I am assured that thou art one sent from God to help the least of his children.”

“I am unworthy to be your teacher,” Everett faltered.

They walked on until they came to the high, arched gate of the graveyard. Everett unlatched the gate and they went in among the sunken mounds, each of which was marked by a flat stone bearing the simple name of some colonist who had passed out of the narrow life of Zanah. On a little knoll, separated from the other graves, was one over which a willow-tree trailed its low branches. Towards this Walda led the way, and when they had come to it she said to Everett:

“Thou must leave me now.”

“I was thinking of going away from Zanah,” said Everett, with a sudden memory of his letters. “When I took the liberty of walking with you to-night it was my intention to say good-bye to you, Walda.”

The girl turned on him a glance of such frank regret that he asked again:

“Will you miss me, Walda?”

“Miss thee?” she repeated. “Yea, for I have come to count thee as one who maketh each day better for me. Thou hast become like unto Gerson Brandt in thy brotherly care.”

Everett winced.

“But I don’t want you to think of me as your brother,” he said. “I would have you call me friend.”

“Nay, friendship is denied between men and women in Zanah. Have I not told thee that before? But surely thou wilt not go away before the _Untersuchung_?”

There was a tone of pleading in the girl’s voice.

“Since I have to leave Zanah, since I have to go out into the world, where I shall be lost to you, I may as well go now as at any future time.”

“Nay, wait in Zanah until after the spirit of strength hath taken possession of me. When I am, indeed, the instrument of the Lord, then can I see thee turn again to the world. Then can I know, indeed, it will be well with me. Stephen, thou hast just said thou art near to heaven, and I would send thee forth with a firm faith. From now until the day of the _Untersuchung_ I will pray for thee.”

“Your wishes shall be commands to me, Walda. But if I decide to stay in Zanah, it will mean much to me. There may be days when I shall repent that I changed my mind.” He stood looking at her for a moment. “I will pledge myself to wait in Zanah until the day on which the colonists expect to recognize you as their prophetess.”

“Thou hast made me glad, Stephen. Since it is for thy good to stay here, I can no longer feel that I am selfish.”

“Inasmuch as you have accepted my pledge, you must let me take your hand as a token of my promise,” said Everett. In the intensity of his longing there was such a compelling force that Walda made no objection when, without waiting for her permission, he took both her hands in his, and held them for a moment. A deep flush suffused her pure face, and for the first time in all their acquaintance her eyes refused to meet his. Her hands trembled, and with a sudden awakening to something of the consciousness that first comes to every woman who is loved, she suddenly freed herself.

“Peace be with thee to-night, Stephen,” she said. She turned quickly, and took a few slow steps towards the grave of Marta Bachmann. Everett, looking after her, beheld a strange shape rise above the tomb. He strode forward to see what it might be, and in the dim light recognized Hans Peter.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded, in a stern voice.

The fool leisurely seated himself upon the flat stone and answered:

“The simple one doth not have to account to any man concerning himself. The fool can do no harm. It is the man from the wicked world that should be under watch among the people of Zanah.”

Hans Peter swung his short legs over the edge of the gravestone; and if his words had a sinister meaning, his round, immobile face betrayed not the slightest expression of intelligence. He took from his pocket one of his treasured gourds, calmly opened his knife, and made a few marks.

“Hans Peter, thou shouldst remember to treat the stranger within our gates with respect,” said Walda, reprovingly; but the fool seemed not to hear her.

Everett lingered beside the girl, as if he could not summon courage to go away.

“Leave me here alone,” Walda commanded, gently. “Hans Peter will take me back to the village.”

As Everett latched the gate to the cemetery he looked back to see Walda kneeling at the grave, while Hans Peter, who had withdrawn to a little distance, lay flat upon a sunken stone.

XII

Gerson Brandt went about his duties with a listless air. The boys who gathered every morning in the learning-school noticed that he was less exacting about their lessons, and that often his thoughts appeared far away. When he ascended to the little platform, after returning from morning prayers in the meeting-house, he looked down upon them with compassion in his glance. It was noticed that his thin face was pinched and that his eyes were sunken. When they opened their word-books for the spelling-class he showed slight interest. During recess he sat with his head resting on his hands and his eyes fixed on the old desk. One day, when he was even more preoccupied than usual, Adolph Schneider and Karl Weisel visited the school in order to inquire into the progress of the boys of Zanah. Gerson Brandt called his pupils to order.

“The Herr Doktor would speak with you,” he said.

“Yea, I would know whether you are diligent in your lessons,” announced Adolph Schneider. He pounded on the floor with his cane, and spoke in a tone that frightened the more timid of the children.

“Why was Adam cast out of the Garden of Eden?”

There was a moment of silence. All the tow-headed boys, with arms folded across their breasts, stared straight ahead of them. Karl Weisel, who had taken the school-master’s chair, tipped it back against the black-board, twirled his thumbs, and stared at the rows of benches with something like a sneer on his heavy features. The school-master, standing on the floor beside the platform, looked out of the nearest window and waited patiently for the tardy answer.

“Can any one tell me why Adam was cast out of the Garden of Eden?”

The Herr Doktor repeated his question in a thundering tone.

“Because he ate an apple,” piped a small voice from a far corner of the room.

“And art thou taught that it is wicked to eat an apple?”

A dozen tow-heads were shaken emphatically.

“The apple grew on the tree of knowledge.” It was a pale, red-haired child who spoke.

“It is Johann Werther who knows about the tree of knowledge,” said the Herr Doktor. “At the _gasthaus_ Johann sometimes hath a glimpse of forbidden things.”

Scores of round eyes immediately were turned upon Johann with glances of envy.

“But did man fall through his own sinful desires?” questioned the Herr Doktor, standing very straight, throwing out his chest, and lifting his chin out of his big stock.

“It was Eve who did tempt him,” announced a small boy that sat on the front seat.

“Right. Sin came into the world through a woman, and ever since then the man who would reach heaven hath to guard against the wiles of the temptress. If it had not been for a woman, we might now be living in the Garden of Eden.”

“Nay, Brother Schneider, teach not that women are evil.” Gerson Brandt placed one thin hand on the desk and turned on the Herr Doktor a face in which was a determined look. “It is meet that thou shouldst tell the children how the world was saved through a woman, who was the mother of Christ.”

“Gerson Brandt, interrupt not this lesson. I have come here to measure the knowledge of those intrusted to thy care.” Adolph Schneider again pounded the floor with his cane. “Can the school tell me nothing more about Eve’s fall?” Adolph Schneider asked.

In the back part of the room rose the fool. He had in his hand one of the gourds that he always carried with him.

“The Bible teacheth us it was the serpent that did tempt Eve,” he said, studying the gourd as if he were reading from it.

“Ja, ja,” said the Herr Doktor; “but Eve, being a woman, was full of curiosity; she inclined her ear to the serpent.”

“And Adam did incline his ear to Eve,” the simple one announced. “It is said it is always thus. Even in the colony I have noticed that the men are keen, indeed, to hear what the women would say.”

Something like a smile flitted over Karl Weisel’s face. He brought his chair forward on its four legs, and listened for what was coming.

“Take thy seat. How darest thou comment on the men and women of Zanah? Thou art the simple one who cannot separate good from evil.”

The fool still stood in his place with the gourd in his hand.

“The fool hath ears that he can hear; he hath eyes that he can see.”

“But what he seeth and heareth hath not the right meaning to him.”

“The fool hath seen Karl Weisel, head of the thirteen elders, listen to the words of Gretchen Schneider, the daughter of the leader of Zanah,” declared the fool, still reading from his gourd.

“Silence!” shouted the Herr Doktor. Turning to Gerson Brandt, he said: “So the fool hath become a spy. He is more dangerous than a wise man.”

“The truth is not in him,” said Karl Weisel, springing to his feet. “Hans Peter should be kept in confinement where he cannot speak harmful things.”

“He meaneth nothing wrong,” said Gerson Brandt. “Be merciful to the simple one.”

“The main object in coming here to-day was to instruct you concerning the _Untersuchung_,” said Adolph Schneider, when Karl Weisel had resumed his seat and the children were once more gazing stolidly in front of them. “I hope you are all prepared to give an account of your souls when the elders of Zanah shall inquire into your spiritual condition. From now until the day when we hope to behold the inspiration of a new prophetess I want you all to think over your sins. I wonder how many of you have told a lie this week.” Every boy in the school looked guilty. “I should like to have all who have spoken only the truth stand up that I may see them.”

“Nay, ask not that,” said the school-master. “I fear lest the children be tempted to forget their shortcomings and to act a falsehood because they desire to appear well before thee.”

“Since the loss of thine illuminated Bible thou art tender-hearted towards liars,” said Karl Weisel, in an undertone.

“Thy taunt shouldst cost thee dear, Karl Weisel, were it not forbidden in Zanah that we should resent insult.” In an instant the gentle school-master was transformed. He stood erect, and the scorn in his tone made the head of the thirteen elders feel that the contempt of a righteous man was something not to be easily ignored. The Herr Doktor gave the boys no opportunity to perjure themselves.

“I want you to prepare for the _Untersuchung_ with prayer and fasting,” he said, and there was dismay upon every face before him.

“It hath been shown the elders of Zanah that Walda Kellar is to be the instrument of the Lord. From her lips will fall words of wisdom. You all know her, for she hath often spoken to you. She hath sung to you hymns of praise. She will no longer come among you, for she must live apart, but it will be revealed to her what is best for the colony. You must no longer run to her as if she were your mother. You must bow before her. You must no longer speak unto her, for she will be above all the people of the colony.”