Constance Fenimore Woolson

by Constance Fenimore Woolson

  Strange as it may seem, the wife pined for her artist husband. We found her in the Community trying to work, but so aged and bent that we hardly knew her. Her large eyes had lost their peevish discontent, and a great sadness had taken the place.

  “Seems like I could n’t get on without Sol,” she said, sitting with us in the hotel parlor after work-hours. “I kinder miss his voice, and all them names he used to call me; he got ’em out of the Bible, so they must have been good, you know. He always thought everything I did was right, and he thought no end of my good looks, too; I suppose I ’ve lost ’em all now. He was mighty fond of me; nobody in all the world cares a straw for me now. Even Roarer would n’t stay with me, for all I petted him; he kep’ a going out to that meader and a lying by Sol, until, one day, we found him there dead. He just died of sheer loneliness, I reckon. I sha’ n’t have to stop long I know, because I keep a dreaming of Sol, and he always looks at me like he did when I first knew him. He was a beautiful boy when I first saw him on that load of wood coming into Sandy. Well, ladies, I must go. Thank you kindly for all you ’ve done for me. And say, Miss Stuart, when I die you shall have that coal picter; no one else ’ud vally it so much.”

  Three months after, while we were at the sea-shore, Ermine received a long tin case, directed in a peculiar handwriting; it had been forwarded from C——, and contained the sketch and a note from the Community.

  “E. STUART: The woman Dorcas Bangs died this day. She will be put away by the side of her husband, Solomon Bangs. She left the enclosed picture, which we hereby send, and which please acknowledge by return of mail.

  JACOB BOLL, Trustee.”

  I unfolded the wrappings and looked at the sketch. “It is indeed striking,” I said. “She must have been beautiful once, poor woman!”

  “Let us hope that at least she is beautiful now, for her husband’s sake, poor man!” replied Ermine.

  Even then we could not give up our preferences.

  Wilhelmina

  * * *

  “AND so, Mina, you will not marry the baker?”

  “No; I waits for Gustav.”

  “How long is it since you have seen him?”

  “Three year; it was a three-year regi-mènt.”

  “Then he will soon be home?”

  “I not know,” answered the girl, with a wistful look in her dark eyes, as if asking information from the superior being who sat in the skiff,—a being from the outside world where newspapers, the modern Tree of Knowledge, were not forbidden.

  “Perhaps he will re-enlist, and stay three years longer,” I said.

  “Ah, lady,—six year! It breaks the heart,” answered Wilhelmina.

  She was the gardener’s daughter, a member of the Community of German Separatists who live secluded in one of Ohio’s rich valleys, separated by their own broad acres and orchard-covered hills from the busy world outside; down the valley flows the tranquil Tuscarawas on its way to the Muskingum, its slow tide rolling through the fertile bottom-lands between stone dikes, and utilized to the utmost extent of carefulness by the thrifty brothers, now working a saw-mill on the bank, now sending a tributary to the flour-mill across the canal, and now branching off in a sparkling race across the valley to turn wheels for two or three factories, watering the great grass-meadow on the way. We were floating on this river in a skiff named by myself Der Fliegende Holländer, much to the slow wonder of the Zoarites, who did not understand how a Dutchman could, nor why he should, fly. Wilhelmina sat before me, her oars idly trailing in the water. She showed a Nubian head above her white kerchief: large-lidded soft brown eyes, heavy braids of dark hair, a creamy skin with purple tints in the lips and brown shadows under the eyes, and a far-off dreamy expression which even the steady, monotonous toil of Community life had not been able to efface. She wore the blue dress and white kerchief of the society, the quaint little calico bonnet lying beside her; she was a small maiden; her slender form swayed in the stiff, short-waisted gown, her feet slipped about in the broad shoes, and her hands, roughened and browned with garden-work, were yet narrow and graceful. From the first we felt sure she was grafted, and not a shoot from the Community stalk. But we could learn nothing of her origin; the Zoarites are not communicative; they fill each day with twelve good hours of labor, and look neither forward nor back. “She is a daughter,” said the old gardener in answer to our questions. “Adopted?” I suggested; but he vouchsafed no answer. I liked the little daughter’s dreamy face, but she was pale and undeveloped, like a Southern flower growing in Northern soil; the rosy-cheeked, flaxen-haired Rosines, Salomes, and Dorotys, with their broad shoulders and ponderous tread, thought this brown changeling ugly, and pitied her in their slow, good-natured way.

  “It breaks the heart,” said Wilhelmina again, softly, as if to herself.

  I repented me of my thoughtlessness. “In any case he can come back for a few days,” I hastened to say. “What regiment was it?”

  “The One Hundred and Seventh, lady.”

  I had a Cleveland paper in my basket, and taking it out I glanced over the war-news column, carelessly, as one who does not expect to find what he seeks. But chance was with us, and gave this item: “The One Hundred and Seventh Regiment, O. V. I., is expected home next week. The men will be paid off at Camp Chase.”

  “Ah!” said Wilhelmina, catching her breath with a half-sob under her tightly drawn kerchief,—“ah, mein Gustav!”

  “Yes, you will soon see him,” I answered, bending forward to take the rough little hand in mine; for I was a romantic wife, and my heart went out to all lovers. But the girl did not notice my words or my touch; silently she sat, absorbed in her own emotion, her eyes fixed on the hilltops far away, as though she saw the regiment marching home through the blue June sky.

  I took the oars and rowed up as far as the island, letting the skiff float back with the current. Other boats were out, filled with fresh-faced boys in their high-crowned hats, long-waisted, wide-flapped vests of calico, and funny little swallow-tailed coats with buttons up under the shoulder-blades; they appeared unaccountably long in front and short behind, these young Zoar brethren. On the vine-covered dike were groups of mothers and grave little children, and up in the hill-orchards were moving figures, young and old; the whole village was abroad in the lovely afternoon, according to their Sunday custom, which gave the morning to chorals and a long sermon in the little church, and the afternoon to nature, even old Christian, the pastor, taking his imposing white fur hat and tasselled cane for a walk through the Community fields, with the remark, “Thus is cheered the heart of man, and his countenance refreshed.”

  As the sun sank in the warm western sky, homeward came the villagers from the river, the orchards, and the meadows, men, women, and children, a hardy, simple-minded band, whose fathers, for religion’s sake, had taken the long journey from Würtemberg across the ocean to this distant valley, and made it a garden of rest in the wilderness. We, too, landed, and walked up the apple-tree lane towards the hotel.

  “The cows come,” said Wilhelmina as we heard a distant tinkling; “I must go.” But still she lingered. “Der regi-mènt, it come soon, you say?” she asked in a low voice, as though she wanted to hear the good news again and again.

  “They will be paid off next week; they cannot be later than ten days from now.”

  “Ten day! Ah, mein Gustav,” murmured the little maiden; she turned away and tied on her stiff bonnet, furtively wiping off a tear with her prim handkerchief folded in a square.

  “Why, my child,” I said, following her and stooping to look in her face, “what is this?”

  “It is nothing; it is for glad,—for very glad,” said Wilhelmina. Away she ran as the first solemn cow came into view, heading the long procession meandering slowly towards the stalls. They knew nothing of haste, these dignified Community cows; from stall to pasture, from pasture to stall, in a plethora of comfort, this was their
life. The silver-haired shepherd came last with his staff and scrip, and the nervous shepherd-dog ran hither and thither in the hope of finding some cow to bark at; but the comfortable cows moved on in orderly ranks, and he was obliged to dart off on a tangent every now and then, and bark at nothing, to relieve his feelings. Reaching the paved court-yard each cow walked into her own stall, and the milking began. All the girls took part in this work, sitting on little stools and singing together as the milk frothed up in the tin pails; the pails were emptied into tubs, and when the tubs were full the girls bore them on their heads to the dairy, where the milk was poured into a huge strainer, a constant procession of girls with tubs above and the old milk-mother ladling out as fast as she could below. With the bee-hives near by, it was a realization of the Scriptural phrase, “A land flowing with milk and honey.”

  The next morning, after breakfast, I strolled up the still street, leaving the Wirthshaus with its pointed roof behind me. On the right were some ancient cottages built of crossed timbers filled in with plaster; sundials hung on the walls, and each house had its piazza, where, when the work of the day was over, the families assembled, often singing folk-songs to the music of their home-made flutes and pipes. On the left stood the residence of the first pastor, the reverend man who had led these sheep to their refuge in the wilds of the New World. It was a wide-spreading brick mansion, with a broadside of white-curtained windows, an enclosed glass porch, iron railings, and gilded eaves; a building so stately among the surrounding cottages that it had gained from outsiders the name of the King’s Palace, although the good man whose grave remains unmarked in the quiet God’s Acre, according to the Separatist custom, was a father to his people, not a king.

  Beyond the palace began the Community garden, a large square in the centre of the village filled with flowers and fruit, adorned with arbors and cedar-trees clipped in the form of birds, and enriched with an old-style greenhouse whose sliding glasses were viewed with admiration by the visitors of thirty years ago, who sent their choice plants thither from far and near to be tended through the long, cold lake-country winters. The garden, the cedars, and the greenhouse were all antiquated, but to me none the less charming. The spring that gushed up in one corner, the old-fashioned flowers in their box-bordered beds, larkspur, lady slippers, bachelor’s buttons, peonies, aromatic pinks, and all varieties of roses, the arbors with red honeysuckle overhead and tan bark under foot, were all delightful; and I knew, also, that I should find the gardener’s daughter at her never-ending task of weeding. This time it was the strawberry bed. “I have come to sit in your pleasant garden, Mina,” I said, taking a seat on a shaded bench near the bending figure.

  “So?” said Wilhelmina in long-drawn interrogation, glancing up shyly with a smile. She was a child of the sun, this little maiden, and while her blond companions wore always their bonnets or broad-brimmed hats over their precise caps, Wilhelmina, as now, constantly discarded these coverings and sat in the sun basking like a bird of the tropics. In truth, it did not redden her; she was one of those whose coloring comes not from without, but within.

  “Do you like this work, Mina?”

  “O—so. Good as any.”

  “Do you like work?”

  “Folks must work.” This was said gravely, as part of the Community creed.

  “Would n’t you like to go with me to the city?”

  “No; I ’s better here.”

  “But you can see the great world, Mina. You need not work, I will take care of you. You shall have pretty dresses; would n’t you like that?” I asked, curious to discover the secret of the Separatist indifference to everything outside.

  “Nein,” answered the little maiden, tranquilly; “nein, fräulein. Ich bin zufrieden.”

  Those three words were the key. “I am contented.” So were they taught from childhood, and—I was about to say—they knew no better; but, after all, is there anything better to know?

  We talked on, for Mina understood English, although many of her mates could chatter only in their Würtemberg dialect, whose provincialisms confused my carefully learned German; I was grounded in Goethe, well read in Schiller, and struggling with Jean Paul, who, fortunately, is “der Einzige,” the only; another such would destroy life. At length a bell sounded, and forthwith work was laid aside in the fields, the workshops, and the houses, while all partook of a light repast, one of the five meals with which the long summer day of toil is broken. Flagons of beer had the men afield, with bread and cheese; the women took bread and apple-butter. But Mina did not care for the thick slice which the thrifty house-mother had provided; she had not the steady unfanciful appetite of the Community which eats the same food day after day, as the cow eats its grass, desiring no change.

  “And the gardener really wishes you to marry Jacob?” I said as she sat on the grass near me, enjoying the rest.

  “Yes. Jacob is good,—always the same.”

  “And Gustav?”

  “Ah, mein Gustav! Lady, he is young, tall,—so tall as tree; he run, he sing, his eyes like veilchen there, his hair like gold. If I see him not soon, lady, I die! The year so long,—so long they are. Three year without Gustav!” The brown eyes grew dim, and out came the square-folded handkerchief, of colored calico for week-days.

  “But it will not be long now, Mina.”

  “Yes; I hope.”

  “He writes to you, I suppose?”

  “No. Gustav knows not to write, he not like school. But he speak through the other boys, Ernst the verliebte of Rosine, and Peter of Doroty.”

  “The Zoar soldiers were all young men?”

  “Yes; all verliebte. Some are not; they have gone to the Next Country” (died).

  “Killed in battle?”

  “Yes; on the berge that looks,—what you call, I not know—”

  “Lookout Mountain?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were the boys volunteers?” I asked, remembering the Community theory of non-resistance.

  “O yes; they volunteer, Gustav the first. They not drafted,” said Wilhelmina, proudly. For these two words, so prominent during the war, had penetrated even into this quiet little valley.

  “But did the trustees approve?”

  “Apperouve?”

  “I mean, did they like it?”

  “Ah! they like it not. They talk, they preach in church, they say ‘No.’ Zoar must give soldiers? So. Then they take money and pay for der substitute; but the boys, they must not go.”

  “But they went, in spite of the trustees?”

  “Yes; Gustav first. They go in night, they walk in woods, over the hills to Brownville, where is der recruiter. The morning come, they gone!”

  “They have been away three years, you say? They have seen the world in that time,” I remarked half to myself, as I thought of the strange mind-opening and knowledge-gaining of those years to youths brought up in the strict seclusion of the Community.

  “Yes; Gustav have seen the wide world,” answered Wilhelmina with pride.

  “But will they be content to step back into the dull routine of Zoar life?” I thought; and a doubt came that made me scan more closely the face of the girl at my side. To me it was attractive because of its possibilities; I was always fancying some excitement that would bring the color to the cheeks and full lips, and light up the heavy-lidded eyes with soft brilliancy. But would this Gustav see these might-be beauties? And how far would the singularly ugly costume offend eyes grown accustomed to fanciful finery and gay colors?

  “You fully expect to marry Gustav?” I asked.

  “We are verlobt,” answered Mina, not without a little air of dignity.

  “Yes, I know. But that was long ago.”

  “Verlobt once, verlobt always,” said the little maiden, confidently.

  “But why, then, does the gardener speak of Jacob, if you are engaged to this Gustav?”


  “O, fader he like the old, and Jacob is old, thirty year! His wife is gone to the Next Country. Jacob is a brother, too; he write his name in the book. But Gustav he not do so; he is free.”

  “You mean that the baker has signed the articles, and is a member of the Community?”

  “Yes; but the baker is old, very old; thirty year! Gustav not twenty and three yet; he come home, then he sign.”

  “And have you signed these articles, Wilhelmina?”

  “Yes; all the womens signs.”

  “What does the paper say?”

  “Da ich Unterzeichneter,”—began the girl.

  “I cannot understand that. Tell me in English.”

  “Well; you wants to join the Zoar Community of Separatists; you writes your name and says, ‘Give me house, victual, and clothes for my work and I join; and I never fernerer Forderung an besagte Gesellschaft machen kann, oder will.’”

  “Will never make further demand upon said society,” I repeated, translating slowly.

  “Yes; that is it.”

  “But who takes charge of all the money?”

  “The trustees.”

  “Don’t they give you any?”

  “No; for what? It ’s no good,” answered Wilhelmina.

  I knew that all the necessaries of life were dealt out to the members of the Community according to their need, and, as they never went outside of their valley, they could scarcely have spent money even if they had possessed it. But, nevertheless, it was startling in this nineteenth century to come upon a sincere belief in the worthlessness of the green-tinted paper we cherish so fondly. “Gustav will have learned its value,” I thought, as Mina, having finished the strawberry-bed, started away towards the dairy to assist in the butter-making.

  I strolled on up the little hill, past the picturesque bakery, where through the open window I caught a glimpse of the “old, very old Jacob,” a serious young man of thirty, drawing out his large loaves of bread from the brick oven with a long-handled rake. It was gingerbread-day also, and a spicy odor met me at the window; so I put in my head and asked for a piece, receiving a card about a foot square, laid on fresh grape-leaves.