Kitabı oku: «Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 23, February, 1873», sayfa 5

CHAPTER VI.
THE MEN OF SPENERSBERG

This Spenersberg, about which Leonhard was not a little eager to know more when he shut the door of the apartment into which his host had ushered him—for he must remain all night—what was it?

A colony, or a brotherhood, or a community, six years old. Such a fact does not lie ready for observation every day—such a place does not lie in the hand of a man at his bidding. What, then, was its history? We need not wait to find out until morning, when Leonhard will proceed to discover. He is satisfied when he lies down upon the bed, which awaited him, it seems, as he came hither on the way-train—quite satisfied that Spener of Spenersberg must be a man worth seeing. Breathing beings possessed of ideas and homes here must have been handled with power by a master mind to have brought about this community, if so it is to be called, in six short years, thinks Leonhard. He recalls his own past six years, and turns uneasily on his bed, and finds no rest until he reminds himself of the criticism he has been enabled to pass on Miss Elise's rendering of "He is a righteous Saviour," and the suggestion he made concerning the pitch of "Ye shall find rest for your souls." The recollection acts upon him somewhat as the advancing wave acts on the sand-line made by the wave preceding. When he made the first suggestion, Sister Benigna stood for a moment looking at him, surprised by his remark; but, less than a second taken up with a thought of him, she had passed instantly on to say, "Try it so, Elise: 'He is a righteous Saviour.' We will make it a slower movement. Ah! how impressive! how beautiful! It is the composer's very thought! Again—slow: it is perfect!"

Was this kind of praise worth the taking? a source of praise worth the seeking? Leonhard had said ungrateful things about his prize-credentials to Miss Marion Ayres, and I do believe that these very prizes, awarded for his various drawings, were never so valued by him as the look with which priestly Benigna seemed to admit him at least so far as into the fellowship of the Gentiles' Court.

He would have fallen asleep just here with a pleasant thought but for the recollection of Wilberforce's letter, which startled him hardly less than the apparition of his friend in the moonlight streaming through his half-curtained window would have done. Is it always so pleasant a thought that for ever and ever a man shall bear his own company?

But this Spenersberg? Seven years ago, on the day when he came of age, Albert Spener, then a young clerk in a fancy-goods store, went to look at the estate which his grandfather had bequeathed to him the year preceding. Not ten years ago the old man made his will and gave the property, on which he had not quite starved, to his only grandson, and here was this worthless gorge which stretched between the fields more productive than many a famous gold-mine.

The youth had seen at once that if he should deal with the land as his predecessors had done, he would be able to draw no more from the stingy acres than they. He had shown the bent of his mind and the nature of his talent by the promptness with which he put things remote together, and by the directness with which he reached his conclusions.

He had left his town-lodgings, having obtained of his employer leave of absence for one week, and within twenty-four hours had come to his conclusion and returned to his post. Of that estate which he had inherited but a portion, and a very small portion, offered to the cultivator the least encouragement. The land had long ago been stripped of its forest trees, and, thus defrauded of its natural fertilizers, lay now, after successive seasons of drain and waste, as barren as a desert, with the exception of that narrow strip between the hills which apparently bent low that inland might look upon river.

Along the banks of the stream, which flowed, a current of considerable depth and swiftness, toward its outlet, the river, willows were growing. Albert's employer was an importer to a small extent, and fancy willow-ware formed a very considerable share of his importations. The conclusion he had reached while surveying his land was an answer to the question he had asked himself: Why should not this land be made to bring forth the kind of willow used by basket-weavers, and why should not basket-weavers be induced to gather into a community of some sort, and so importers be beaten in the market by domestic productions? The aim thus clearly defined Spener had accomplished. His Moravians furnished him with a willow-ware which was always quoted at a high figure, and the patriotic pride the manufacturer felt in the enterprise was abundantly rewarded: no foreign mark was ever found on his home-made goods.

But his Moravians: where did these people come from, and how came they to be known as his?

The question brings us to Frederick Loretz. In those days he was a porter in the establishment where Spener was a clerk. He had filled this situation only one month, however, when he was attacked with a fever which was scourging the neighborhood, and taken to the hospital. Albert followed him thither with kindly words and care, for the poor fellow was a stranger in the town, and he had already told Spener his dismal story. Afar from wife and child, among strangers and a pauper, his doom, he believed, was to die. How he bemoaned his wasted life then, and the husks which he had eaten!

In his delirium Loretz would have put an end to his life. Spener talked him out of this horror of himself, and showed him that there was always opportunity, while life lasted, for wanderers to seek again the fold they had strayed from; for when the delirium passed the man's conscience remained, and he confessed that he had lived away from the brethren of his faith, and was an outcast. Oh, if he could but be transported to Herrnhut and set down there a well man in that sanctuary of Moravianism, how devoutly would he return to the faith and practice of his fathers!

When Spener returned from his trip of investigation he hastened immediately to the hospital, sought out poor half-dead Loretz, laid his hand on his shoulder, and said, "Come, get up: I want you." And he explained his project: "I will build a house for you, send for your wife and child, put you all together, and start you in life. I am going into the basket business, and I want you to look after my willows. After they are pretty well grown you shall get in some families—Simon-Pure Moravians, you know—and we will have a village of our own. D'ye hear me?"

The poor fellow did hear: he struggled up in his bed, threw his arms around Spener's neck, tried to kiss him, and fainted.

"This is a good beginning," said Spener to himself as he laid the senseless head upon the pillow and felt for the beating heart. The beating heart was there. In a few moments Loretz was looking, with eyes that shone with loving gratitude and wondering admiration, on the young man who had saved his life.

"I have no money," said this youth in further explanation of his project—for he wanted his companion to understand his circumstances from the outset—"but I shall borrow five thousand dollars. I can pay the interest on that sum out of my salary. Perhaps I shall sell a few lots on the river, if I can turn attention to the region. It will all come out right, anyhow. Now, how soon can you be ready? I will write to your wife to-day if you say so, and tell her to come on with the little girl."

"Wait a week," said Loretz in a whisper; and all that night and the following day his chances for this world and the next seemed about equal.

But after that he rallied, and his recovery was certain. It was slow, however, hastened though it was by the hope and expectation which had opened to him when he had reached the lowest depth of despair and covered himself with the ashes of repentance.

The letter for the wife and little girl was written, and money sent to bring them from the place where Loretz had left them when he set out in search of occupation, to find employment as a porter, and the fever, and Albert Spener.

During the first year of co-working Loretz devoted himself to the culture of the willow, and then, as time passed on and hands were needed, he brought one family after another to the place—Moravians all—until now there were at least five hundred inhabitants in Spenersberg, a large factory and a church, whereof Spener himself was a member "in good and regular standing."

Seven years of incessant labor, directed by a wise foresight, which looked almost like inspiration and miracle, had resulted in all this real prosperity. Loretz never stopped wondering at it, and yet he could have told you every step of the process. All that had been done he had had a hand in, but the devising brain was Spener's; and no wonder that, in spite of his familiarity with the details, the sum-total of the activities put forth in that valley should have seemed to Loretz marvelous, magical.

He had many things to rejoice over besides his own prosperity. His daughter was in all respects a perfect being, to his thinking. For six years now she had been under the instruction of Sister Benigna, not only in music, but in all things that Sister Benigna, a well-instructed woman, could teach. She sang, as Leonhard Marten would have told you, "divinely," she was beautiful to look upon, and Albert Spener desired to marry her.

Surely the Lord had blessed him, and remembered no more those years of wanderings when, alienated from the brethren, he sought out his own ways and came close upon destruction. What should he return to the beneficent Giver for all these benefits?

Poor Loretz! In his prosperity he thought that he should never be moved, but he would not basely use that conviction and forget the source of all his satisfaction. He remembered that it was when he repented of his misdeeds that Spener came to him and drew him from the pit. He could never look upon Albert as other than a divine agent; and when Spener joined himself to the Moravians, led partly by his admiration of them, partly by religious impulse, and partly because of his conviction that to be wholly successful he and his people must form a unit, his joy was complete.

The proposal for Elise's hand had an effect upon her father which any one who knew him well might have looked for and directed. The pride of his life was satisfied. He remembered that he and his Anna, in seeking to know the will of the Lord in respect to their marriage, had been answered favorably by the lot. He desired the signal demonstration of heavenly will in regard to the nuptials proposed. Not a shadow of a doubt visited his mind as to the result, and the influence of his faith upon Spener was such that he acquiesced in the measure, though not without remonstrance and misgiving and mental reservation.

To find his way up into the region of faith, and quiet himself there when the result of the seeking was known, was almost impossible for Loretz. He could fear the Judge who had decreed, but could he trust in Him? He began to grope back among his follies of the past, seeking a crime he had not repented, as the cause of this domestic calamity. But ah! to reap such a harvest as this for any youthful folly! Poor soul! little he knew of vengeance and retribution. He was at his wit's end, incapable alike of advancing, retreating or of peaceful surrender.

It was pleasant to him to think, in the night-watches, of the young man who occupied the room next to his. He did not see—at least had not yet seen—in Leonhard a messenger sent to the house, as did his wife; but the presence of the young stranger spoke favorable things in his behalf; and then, as there was really nothing to be done about this decision, anything that gave a diversion to sombre thoughts was welcome. Sister Benigna had spoken very kindly to Leonhard in the evening, and he had pointed out a place in one of Elise's solos where by taking a higher key in a single passage a marvelous effect could be produced. That showed knowledge; and he said that he had taught music. Perhaps he would like to remain until after the congregation festival had taken place.

CHAPTER VII.
THE BOOK

In the morning the master of the house rapped on Leonhard's door and said: "When you come down I have something to show you." The voice of Mr. Loretz had almost its accustomed cheerfulness of tone, and he ended his remark with a brief "Ha! ha!" peculiar to him, which not only expressed his own good-humor, but also invited good-humored response.

Leonhard answered cheerily, and in a few moments he had descended the steep uncovered stair to the music-room.

"Now for the book," Loretz called out as Leonhard entered.

How handsome our young friend looked as he stood there shaking hands with the elderly man, whose broad, florid face now actually shone with hospitable feeling!

"Is father going to claim you as one of us, Mr. Marten?" asked the wife of Loretz, who answered her husband's call by coming into the room and bringing with her a large volume wrapped in chamois skin.

"What shall I be, then?" asked Leonhard. "A wiser and a better man, I do not doubt."

"What! you do not know?" the good woman stayed to say. "Has nobody told you where you are, my young friend?"

"I never before found myself in a place I should like to stay in always; so what does the rest signify?" answered Leonhard. "What's in a name?"

"Not much perhaps, yet something," said Loretz. "We are all Moravians here. I was going to look in this book here for the names of your ancestors. I thought perhaps you knew about Spenersberg."

"I am as new to it all as Christopher Columbus was to the West India islands. If you find the names of my kinsmen down in your book, sir, it—it will be a marvelous, happy sight for me," said Leonhard.

"I'll try my hand at it," said Loretz. "Ha! ha!" and he opened the volume, which was bound in black leather, the leaves yellowed with years. "This book," he continued, "is one hundred and fifty years old. You will find recorded in it the names of all my grandfather's friends, and all my father's. See, it is our way. There are all the dates. Where they lived, see, and where they died. It is all down. A man cannot feel himself cut off from his kind as long as he has a volume like that in his library. I have added a few names of my own friends, and their birthdays. Here, you see, is Sister Benigna's, written with her own hand. A most remarkable woman, sir. True as steel—always the same. But"—he paused a moment and looked at Leonhard with his head inclined to one side, and an expression of perplexity upon his face—"there's something out of the way here in this country. I have not more than one name down to a dozen in my father's record, and twenty in my grandfather's. We do not make friends, and we do not keep them, as they did in old time. We don't trust each other as men ought to. Half the time we find ourselves wondering whether the folks we're dealing with are honest. Now think of that!"

"Are men any worse than they were in the old time?" asked Leonhard, evidently not entering into the conversation with the keenest enjoyment.

"I do not know how it is," said Loretz with a sigh, continuing to turn the leaves of the book as he spoke.

"Perhaps we have less imagination, and don't look at every new-comer as a friend until we have tried him," suggested Leonhard. "We decide that everybody shall be tested before we accept him. And isn't it the best way? Better than to be disappointed, when we have set our heart on a man—or a woman."

"I do not know—I cannot account for it," said Mr. Loretz. Then with a sudden start he laid his right hand on the page before him, and with a great pleased smile in his deep-set, small blue eyes he said: "Here is your name. I felt sure I should find it: I felt certain it was down. See here, on my grandfather's page—Leonhard Marten, Herrnhut, 1770. How do you like that?"

"I like it well," said Leonhard, bending over the book and examining the close-fisted autograph set down strongly in unfading ink. Had he found an ancestor at last? What could have amazed him as much?

"What have you found?" asked Mrs. Loretz, who had heard these remarks in the next room, where she was actively making preparations for the breakfast, which already sent forth its odorous invitations.

"We have found the name," answered her husband. "Come and see. I have read it, I dare say, a hundred times: that was what made me feel that an old friend had come."

"That means," said the good woman, hastening in at her husband's call, and reading the name with a pleased smile—"that means that you belong to us. I thought you did. I am glad."

Were these folk so intent on securing a convert that in these various ways they made the young stranger feel that he was not among strangers in this unknown Spenersberg? Nothing was farther from their thought: they only gave to their kindly feeling hearty utterance, and perhaps spoke with a little extra emphasis because the constraint they secretly felt in consequence of their household trouble made them unanimous in the effort to put it out of sight—not out of this stranger's sight, but out of their own.

"Perhaps you will stop with us a while, and maybe write your name on my page before you go," said Loretz, afraid that his wife had gone a little too far.

"Without a single test?" Leonhard answered. "Haven't we just agreed that we wise men don't take each other on trust, as they did in our grandfathers' day?"

"A man living in Herrnhut in 1770 would not have for a descendant a—a man I could not trust," said Loretz, closing the book and placing it in its chamois covering again. "Breakfast, mother, did you say?"

"Have you wanted ink?" asked Sister Benigna, entering at that instant. "Are we writing in the sacred birthday book?"

"Not yet," said Leonhard hastily, the color rising to his face in a way to suggest forked lightning somewhere beyond sight.

"You have wanted ink, and are too kind to let me know," she said. "I emptied the bottle copying music for the children yesterday."

"The ink was put to a better use then than I could have found for it this morning," said Leonhard.

And Mrs. Loretz, who looked into the room just then, said to herself, as her eyes fell on him, "Poor soul! he is in trouble."

In fact, this thought was in Leonhard's mind as he went into breakfast with the family: "A deuced good friend I have proved—to Wilberforce! Isn't there anybody here clear-eyed enough to see that it would be like forgery to write my name down in a book of friendship?"

The morning meal was enlivened by much more than the usual amount of talk. Leonhard was curious to know about Herrnhut, that old home of Moravianism, and the interest which he manifested in the history Loretz was so eager to communicate made him in turn an object of almost affectionate attention. That he had no facts of private biography to communicate in turn did net attract notice, because, however many such facts he might have ready to produce, by the time Loretz had done talking it was necessary that the day's work should begin.

CHAPTER VIII.
CONFERENCE MEETING

The school-room was a large apartment in the basement of the factory which had been used as a drying-room until it became necessary to find for the increasing numbers of the little flock more spacious accommodations. The basement was entered by a door at the end of the building opposite that by which the operatives entered the factory, and the hours were so timed that the children went and came without disturbance to themselves or others. The path that led to the basement door was neatly bordered with flowering plants and bushes, and sunlight was always to be found there, if anywhere in the valley, from eight o'clock till two.

Leonhard walked to the factory with Sister Benigna, to whose conduct Loretz had consigned him when called away by the tower bell.

At the door of the basement Mr. Wenck was standing with a printed copy of Handel's sacred oratorio of The Messiah in his hand. Evidently he was waiting for Sister Benigna.

But when she had said to Leonhard, "Pass on to the other end of the building and you will find the entrance, and Mr. Spener's office in the corner as you enter," and Leonhard had thanked her, and bowed and passed on, and she turned to Mr. Wenck, it was very little indeed that he said or had to say about the music which he held in his hand.

"I have no doubt that all the preparation necessary for to-morrow evening is being made," he said. "You may need this book. But I did not come to talk about it. Sister Benigna," he continued in a different tone, and a voice not quite under his control, "is it not unreasonable to have passed a sleepless night thinking of Albert and Elise?"

"Very unreasonable." But he had not charged her, as she supposed, with that folly, as his next words showed.

"It is, and yet I have done it—only because all this might have been so easily avoided."

"And yet it was unavoidable," said she, looking toward the school-room door as one who had no time to waste in idle talk.

"Not that I question the wisdom of the resort if all were of one mind," said Mr. Wenck, who had the dreary all-day before him, and was not in the least pressed for time. "But I can see that even on the part of Brother Loretz the act was not a genuine act of faith."

Startled by the expression the minister was giving to her secret thoughts, Benigna exclaimed, "And yet what can be done?"

"Nothing," he answered. "If Loretz should yield to Spener, and if I should—do you not see he has had everything his own way here?—he would feel that nothing could stand in opposition to him. If he were a different man! And they are both so young!"

"I know that Elise has a conscience that will hold her fast to duty," said Benigna, but she did not speak hopefully: she spoke deliberately, however, thinking that these words conscience and duty might arrest the minister's attention, and that he would perhaps, by some means, throw light upon questions which were constantly becoming more perplexing to her. Was conscience an unfailing guide? Was one person's duty to be pronounced upon by another without scruple, and defined with unfaltering exactness? But the words had not arrested the minister's attention.

"If they could only see that there is nothing to be done!" said he. "Oh, they will, Benigna! Had they only the faith, Benigna!"

"Yet how vain their sacrifice, for they have it not!" said she. And as if she would not prolong an interview which must be full of pain, because no light could proceed from any words that would be given them to speak, Sister Benigna turned abruptly toward the basement door when she had said this, and entered it without bestowing a parting glance even on the minister.

He walked away after an instant's hesitation: indeed there was nothing further to be said, and she did well to go.

Going homeward by a path which led along the hillside above the village street, he must pass the small house separated from all others—the house which was the appointed resting-place of all who lived in Spenersberg to die there—known as the Corpse-house. To it the bodies of deceased persons were always taken after death, and there they remained until the hour when they were carried forth for burial.

As Mr. Wenck approached he saw that the door stood open: a few steps farther, and this fact was accounted for. A bent and wrinkled old woman stood there with a broom in her hand, which she had been using in a plain, straight-forward manner.

"Ah, Mary," he said, "what does this mean, my good woman?"

"It is the minister," she answered in a low voice, curtseying. "I was moved to come here this morning, sir, and see to things. It was time to be brushing up a little, I thought. It is a month now since the last."

"I will take down the old boughs then, and garnish the walls with new ones. And have you looked at the lamp too, Mary?"

"It is trimmed, sir," said the woman; and the minister's readiness to assist her drew forth the confession: "I was thinking on my bed in the night-watches that it must be done. There will one be going home soon. And it may be myself, sir. I could not have been easy if I had not come up to tidy the house."

Having finished her task, which was a short one and easily performed, the woman now waited to watch the minister as he selected cedar boughs and wove them into wreaths, and suspended them from the walls and rafters of the little room; and it comforted the simple soul when, standing in the doorway, the good man lifted his eyes toward heaven and said in the words of the church litany:

 
From error and misunderstanding,
From the loss of our glory in Thee,
From self-complacency,
From untimely projects,
From needless perplexity,
From the murdering spirit and devices of Satan,
From the influence of the spirit of this world,
From hypocrisy and fanaticism,
From the deceitfulness of sin,
From all sin,
Preserve us, gracious Lord and God—
 

and devoutly she joined in with him in the solemn responsive cry.

It was very evident that the minister's work that day was not to be performed in his silent home among his books.

On the brightest day let the sun become eclipsed, and how the earth will pine! What melancholy will pervade the busy streets, the pleasant fields and woods! How disconsolately the birds will seek their mates and their nests!

The children came together, but many a half hour passed during which the shadow of an Unknown seemed to come between them and their teacher. The bright soul, was she too suffering from an eclipse? Does it happen that all souls, even the most valiant, most loving, least selfish, come in time to passes so difficult that, shrinking back, they say, "Why should I struggle to gain the other side? What is there worth seeking? Better to end all here. This life is not worth enduring"? And yet, does it also come to pass as certainly that these valiant, unselfish, loving ones will struggle, fight, climb, wade, creep on, on while the breath of life remains in them, and never surrender? It seemed as if Sister Benigna had arrived at a place where her baffled spirit stood still and felt its helplessness. Could she do nothing for Elise, the dear child for whose happiness she would cheerfully give her life, and not think the price too dear?

By and by the children were aware that Sister Benigna had come again among them: the humblest little flower lifted up its head, and the smallest bird began to chirp and move about and smooth its wings.

Sister Benigna! what had she recollected?—that but a single day perhaps was hers to live, and here were all these children! As she turned with ardent zeal to her work—which indeed had not failed of accustomed conduct so far as routine went—tell me what do you find in those lovely eyes if not the heavenliest assurances? Let who will call the scene of this life's operations a vale of tears, a world of misery, a prison-house of the spirit, here is one who asks for herself nothing of honors or riches or pleasures, and who can bless the Lord God for the glory of the earth he has created, and for those everlasting purposes of his which mortals can but trust in, and which are past finding out. Children, let us do our best to-day, and wait until to-morrow for to-morrow's gifts. This exhortation was in the eyes, mien, conduct of the teacher, and so she led them on until, when they came to practice their hymns for the festival, every little heart and voice was in tune, and she praised them with voice so cheerful, how should they guess that it had ever been choked by anguish or had ever fainted in despair?

O young eyes saddening over what is to you a painful, insoluble problem! yet a little while and you shall see the mists of morning breaking everywhere, and the great conquering sun will enfold you too in its warm embrace: the humble laurels of the mountain's side, even as the great pines and cedars of the mountain's crest, have but to receive and use what the sterile rock and the blinding cloud, the wintry tempest and the rain and the summer's heat bestow, and lo! the heights are alive with glory. But it is not in a day.