The Seeker

by Ann H. Gabhart

  While the Lord had never sent down a lightning bolt to strike Adam down as the preacher sometimes warned might happen to those who didn’t take the message of the Lord seriously enough, Adam’s grandfather had been more than ready to pick up the rod on the Lord’s behalf to keep Adam’s spirit in check. Adam hadn’t been in a church building since he left his grandfather’s house.

  It wasn’t that he didn’t believe there might be a God. The beauty of this very spring day seemed to suggest some higher power had set the world in motion. Even more than the beauty of nature, Adam couldn’t dismiss the strong belief of a man like Redmon who offered to pray for a white man he barely knew while enslaved to another white man. And the man clearly believed his prayer would be heard and attended to. Yet if that was so, why was Redmon still a slave? If what the Bible said was true and nothing was impossible with the Lord, why hadn’t that most powerful God set Redmon, a man who loved him, free?

  While Adam hoped Redmon’s prayers brought him comfort, he couldn’t imagine a most high God leaning down to pay attention to any petitions he, Adam, might offer up. Perhaps the Lord had lent his ear to the first Adam in the garden or helped the disciples catch fish the way the Bible said, but a lot of years had passed since then.

  And now soldiers were lining up to go to war, and on both sides men were praying to God for victory. What happened then? Wouldn’t it be better if the prayers of men of peace were answered and there was no war?

  The Shakers believed in peace. They had shut out the world in order to establish a community of perfect peace. A few days immersed in their peace might be good before he had to go back east where the armies were massing and the voices of those calling for peace had been drowned out by the beat of war drums.

  17

  The letter from Grayson came the first week of May. Spring had spread its blooms from one end of the village at Harmony Hill to the other, but when Charlotte paused to admire the white clouds of apple blossoms in the orchard, Gemma had mildly taken her to task.

  “We don’t look at the fleeting beauty of the bloom. It is the beginning of fruit that we see,” Gemma told her.

  “But what is the wrong in enjoying the flowers first? Don’t you think the Lord created such beauty for the eye to behold?”

  Charlotte was trying to understand the Shakers. Not because she planned to stay with them, but merely as a puzzle she needed to figure out. She had asked so many “why” questions that Sister Altha finally forbade Charlotte to speak the word in her presence. A novitiate’s place was to listen and learn and not to question why. Sister Altha said the why had been answered many years ago by Mother Ann through the visions she had received from the Eternal Father. There was no need to question the Believers’ truths given in such a sacred manner nor should one doubt the decisions of the Ministry who were even now led by Mother Ann’s precepts and spirit.

  More patient with Charlotte’s questions, Gemma stared out at the blooming trees as she explained, “The beauty in anything is in its usefulness. It is wrong to celebrate beauty for beauty’s sake, but with our bees’ help, these blossoms will become apples to supply our needs for nourishment and for produce to sell to the world. That is what we celebrate. We can ever be thankful for the bounty of nature.”

  But the whys still sat on Charlotte’s tongue. Why couldn’t they breathe in the beauty of the blossoms and still celebrate the apples? Why? Why? The questions circled in her head and always ended with the same ones sitting down to stay with her. Why was she still here? Why hadn’t she gone back to Grayson the way Mellie had told her she should on that first Sunday?

  Perhaps she needed to forbid her mind from thinking the word why, for she had no answers. She had always had answers. From the time she was a small child, she’d been able to see the path of her life clearly before her, but now the path she’d been so sure of was fading from sight. Selena had taken over her beloved Grayson, and Edwin showed no inclination to return to the “world,” as the Shakers called all that lay outside the borders of their villages. He was cut from the same cloth as the most devout of the brethren.

  When at last she had been able to speak with him face-to-face, she had never seen him so animated as he told her how anxious he was for his birthday in December when he would be of the proper age to officially sign the Covenant of Belief and hand over Hastings Farm to his new family. She stared at him and did not know him. Arguments rose in her mind, but she couldn’t seem to bring them to her lips with Sister Altha beside her and Elder Logan beside Edwin as they supervised their meeting.

  She had been surprised when Sister Altha suggested she talk with Edwin. Charlotte hadn’t requested to do so, even though she had almost given up meeting Edwin in some unsupervised place. There were no unsupervised places at Harmony Hill. Even the shadows seemed to have eyes and ears.

  Very aware of Sister Altha’s stern eyes upon her, she looked at Edwin and finally got out the weak question. “Are you sure?”

  “I have never been surer of anything in my life, Charlotte.” When he forgot to call her “sister,” Sister Altha frowned and he quickly amended his words. “Sister Charlotte. The brotherly love here surrounds me until I feel as if I’m resting on a pillow of peaceful purity. This is the way the Lord wants us to live. Staying pure of worldly sins of the flesh, listening to him and working to make his way our own. Mother Ann instructed us to let such be our inheritance, our treasure, our occupation, our daily calling. Isn’t that right, Elder Logan?” He looked to the man by his side for approval. They sat in two chairs facing Charlotte and Sister Altha with a good distance between, as if even the air the brothers and sisters breathed should not be mixed.

  “It is as you say, Brother. Our sister may come to know the same treasure if she bends her will and opens her heart to the teachings.” Elder Logan’s face was lined with wrinkles that seemed to speak of kindness and understanding. His hair was as white as the stones that made up the impressive exterior of the building they were in. He sat straight in the chair with his open hands resting lightly atop his knees. Edwin sat exactly the same, a head taller than the elder.

  “I have often told her so in the time she has been among us,” Sister Altha put in. “Have I not, Sister Charlotte?”

  “Yea,” Charlotte agreed, using the Shaker word. She was tempted to add that Sister Altha always made it sound as if it was a treasure Charlotte had scarce hope of finding, but she held her tongue. That hardly mattered, since the Shaker way was not a treasure she had ever thought to seek. It certainly wasn’t the reason she was sitting in a Shaker room looking across at Edwin, who had donned the Shaker spirit along with his Shaker clothes. The Hastings land no longer mattered to him. He had found his place among the brethren. Perhaps for the first time ever, he looked comfortable in his own skin.

  Charlotte had never been one to hide from the truth. Hadn’t she knelt by her mother’s body on the garden path and looked death in the face without pretense? She had looked on her arrangement with Edwin with the same direct honesty. She had realized early on that the two of them might never share any sort of bond other than the love for their land, but she had believed that would be enough. Now she knew it was not. And yet she stayed hidden among the Shakers, waiting for some word from her father that she could come back to Grayson. She needed the loving assurance that, even with Selena attempting to push her out the door, he—her father— would always make a place for her there.

  She had sent a letter to her father on that first Monday with the Shakers the way she had promised Mellie she would. Gemma told her she was free to write what she willed to her father, but that the Ministry would read her words before the letter was posted to be sure she had written nothing too worldly or improper. So she had carefully considered each word she penned.

  Dear Father,

  Please forgive me for leaving and coming here to Harmony Hill without talking to you first. I tried to explain my reasons in the letter I wrote to you before I left Grayson, but sometimes it’s hard to tell ever
ything in words on paper. As you may already know, Edwin has decided to join with the Shakers and become a Believer. Thus there will be no wedding in May and no joining of the Grayson and Hastings farms as we had once hoped and dreamed.

  I followed Edwin here at his invitation in hopes of finding a new plan for my life. I brought Mellie with me and she is now a free sister among the Shakers. She has heard some disturbing news from Grayson that Selena has no awareness—as is understandable since she is so new to our home—of our commitment to our people. Our Negroes have long been loyal to us at Grayson. I know you feel the same sort of loyalty back toward them and will want to protect them from the great sorrow of being forced to leave the only home many of them have ever known. I can’t believe you would approve of such a course of action and trust you will do what needs to be done to make things right again. For all of us.

  Your loving daughter,

  Charlotte

  As Sister Altha read through the letter, the frown lines deepened between her eyes. But she made no comment for or against any of Charlotte’s words when she handed the sheet of stationery back to Charlotte. “Address the envelope,” she ordered. “I will have to post it for you.”

  Charlotte dipped the pen nib in the inkpot and stared at the blank envelope, not sure which address to write. She could post it directly to Frankfort, but then what if her father had returned to Grayson? It had been her experience in the past that letters sent to him in Frankfort often were lost if he wasn’t still in the capital city to receive them.

  “You surely know your own address, Sister Charlotte.” Sister Altha blew out an impatient sigh as she tapped her toe against the wood floor.

  “Yea, of course, Sister Altha.”

  “Then let’s be done with this. We cannot neglect our duties overlong.”

  Finally Charlotte wrote her father’s name on the letter and sealed it with a bit of wax before slipping it into the envelope. Quickly she addressed the envelope to Perkins, the overseer at Grayson, with instructions on the back to forward her letter to Frankfort if her father wasn’t expected home. Perkins might be taking orders from Selena, but his first loyalties would surely be to Grayson and her father. He would see that the letter was delivered into her father’s hand.

  “I hope you are not planning on writing many letters, Sister.” Sister Altha snatched the envelope from Charlotte before the ink had time to dry. “Now Sister Gemma is waiting to take you to your work duties. It is good to dwell on the truth that a Believer has no time to waste.”

  Days passed and became weeks as Charlotte anxiously awaited an answer, while at the Shaker village she continued the mind-numbing cycle of work and listening to Sister Altha’s instruction in the Shaker way. With the seed packets all sealed and ready to be marketed in the world by the Shaker traders, she followed Gemma to a new duty in the pressing room on the third floor of the Gathering Family House.

  It promised to be hot and tedious work. A fire in the small round stove in the center of the room kept the irons hot—and also the workers, whose faces glistened with sweat in spite of the windows open to the spring breeze. As she followed Gemma into the too warm room, Charlotte longed to fling off the worrisome cap and let her head feel the air, but she knew Gemma would simply fetch the discarded cap and pleasantly tell her to put it back on. Nothing she did upset Gemma, who seemed to float on a peaceful sea with no storm waves ever. But at the same time, she never allowed Charlotte to lag.

  When she noted Charlotte eyeing the overflowing basket of bedclothes beside the ironing board assigned to her, Gemma laughed. “We have need of many beds for our sisters and brothers, but do not despair, my sister. We also have many hands to get the work done. You are not expected to do more than your share.”

  “That is good to hear, but you’ll have to show me how,” Charlotte said as she watched one of the sisters pick up an iron from the stove and moisten the tip of her finger to give its flat side a quick touch. Obviously satisfied with the heat she felt, she moved back to her board and began smoothing the skirt of one of the Shaker dresses. “I’ve never used an iron.”

  “Never?” Gemma looked surprised. “Did you wear your clothes wrinkled?”

  “Oh no.” Charlotte almost laughed at the idea. Her mother had taught her that a lady had to maintain the proper appearance at all times. “That wouldn’t have been allowed.”

  A sister plain of face and looking to be in her middle years looked up from her steady pressing strokes. “Our new sister was a lady, Sister Gemma. Remember? Ladies have servants to do such common chores. I’ve even heard they have servants to dress them. That all they do is hold up their arms and turn and stand like a china doll while a servant tightens their corsets and does up their buttons. Is that true, Sister Charlotte?”

  The other sisters in the room held their irons up away from the fabric spread on their ironing boards and looked at Charlotte as they waited for her to answer. None of them had probably ever had a servant do up their buttons or tie the laces on their pantalettes, but Charlotte sensed no animosity, only interest in what her answer might be.

  “At times,” Charlotte said. “For fancy dresses and such. A lady’s waist must be fashionably slender and so the stays must be pulled as tight as possible. Tighter than one can do on her own. And then the buttons are completely out of reach on those dresses and they have no wiggle room. Not like these dresses at all.” Charlotte smiled and pulled the loose fabric of her dress out away from her waist.

  The other women looked at her with unbelieving eyes as if hardly able to imagine such a life where somebody else fastened one’s buttons. One of the older sisters returned her iron to the stove and picked up a new one. When she spat on it, her spit sizzled on the hot surface before she turned toward Charlotte. “Did you not like being a lady, young sister? Or did your family’s fortunes change?”

  The woman’s look was sharp, and Charlotte thought that, not only would she know if Charlotte did not speak the truth, she would be sure to report such a lapse of honesty to Sister Altha. So she simply said, “At times I felt trapped in dresses I could not unbutton.”

  She might have said more, but one of the younger sisters spoke up. “I wore such a dress once. My wedding dress had tiny pearl buttons with fabric loops to hold them. My dear mother fastened them for me. She’d worn the dress when she married my father years before.”

  “And did you feel trapped in it the way our new sister says?” the older sister asked.

  “Nay. I felt beautiful and happy on my wedding day.” The girl’s face softened as if she could still see herself the way she had looked on that day.

  “Such feelings of vanity are a sin, Sister Dulcie,” the older sister warned.

  “Yea, Sister Erma.” The young woman lowered her eyes to the floor. “I will confess my sin at the first opportunity.”

  “You are married?” Charlotte looked at the girl in surprise. “I understood marriage was not allowed among you here.”

  Gemma answered before Dulcie could. “Many come among us with the need to shake free from the sin of matrimony before they can begin living the true way.”

  “And how does that happen?” Charlotte asked. “Aren’t the vows of marriage sacred? Doesn’t the Bible speak of forsaking all others and cleaving to your husband or wife?”

  Gemma smiled. “Sister Altha is right. You do have many questions and little understanding of our ways. Here in our community we demonstrate the practical love that is asked of believers in the Scripture. ‘By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.’ The selfish love of husband and wife and children cannot satisfy that commandment of the Lord. Such selfish unions bring naught but sin and stress into one’s life. But the peaceful, all-encompassing love we practice here for all our brethren enables us to live the perfect life at Harmony Hill. Is that not right, my sisters?” Gemma swept her eyes around the other women in the room.

  “Yea,” they echoed one another, but Charlotte noted some of the voice
s sounded less enthusiastic than the others. Dulcie’s yea was barely above a whisper.

  “Good, we are all agreed as how it should be. We have no ladies here, only sisters,” Sister Erma said with another sharp look toward Charlotte before she began plying her iron again. “Now it will be best if we stop our chatter and attend to our labor. The irons do not smooth the wrinkles without our arms pushing them.”

  Again the sisters answered with a chorus of obedient yeas as they turned back to their ironing boards. Dulcie stepped over in front of Gemma. “If it pleases you, Sister Gemma, let me show our new sister how to iron the sheets. I have not learned much well enough to teach it while I have been here at Harmony Hill, but I know well how to do this duty. And there is an open ironing board here beside me.”

  “That would be good, Sister Dulcie. Sister Altha has asked me to write some letters for her since her arthritis is making writing difficult, so this will give me the opportunity to tend to those duties. Plus I must confess ironing is not my favorite duty.” Gemma flashed them her smile before she headed for the door.

  18

  Dulcie watched Gemma leave and then shook her head slightly. “Sometimes you want to pinch Sister Gemma just to be sure she is a flesh-and-blood sister and not an angel in Shaker dress. Have you ever seen her the least bit perturbed?”

  Charlotte thought a minute before she said, “Not that I can remember. Even my many questions don’t seem to bother her. She always answers me kindly. Unlike Sister Altha who tells me such mindless curiosity will surely lead me down the devil’s path.”

  Dulcie made a sympathetic face. “Yea, Sister Altha does greatly desire to keep us off that path. But engaged in our duties, we won’t be tempted to stray. Come, let me show you how to do this ironing duty.”