THE uprooting of their life took a surprisingly short time.
In all those dark months of argument Lewis Hall had been quietly making plans for this final step, and such preparation betrayed his knowledge from the first of the hopelessness of his struggle-- indeed, the struggle had only been loyalty to a lost cause.
His calm assent to his wife's ultimatum left her a little blank; but in the immediate excitement of removal, in the thrill of martyrdom that came with publicity, the blankness did not last.
What the publicity was to her husband she could not understand.
He received the protests of his family in stolid silence; when the venturesome great-aunt told him what she thought of him, he smiled; when his brother informed him that he was a fool, he said he shouldn't wonder. When the minister, egged on by distracted Hall relatives, remonstrated, he replied, respectfully, that he was doing what he believed to be his duty, "and if it seems to be a duty, I can't help myself; you see that, don't you?" he said, anxiously.
But that was practically all he found to say; for the most part he was silent. Athalia, in her absorption, probably had not the slightest idea of the agonies of mortification which he suffered; her imagination told her, truly enough, what angry relatives and pleasantly horrified neighbors said about her, and the abuse exhilarated her very much; but her imagination stopped there.
It did not give her the family's opinion of her husband; it did not whisper the gossip of the grocery-store and the post-office; it did not repeat the chuckles or echo the innuendoes:
"So Squire Hall's wife's got tired of him? Rather live with the Shakers than him!" "I like Hall, but I haven't any sympathy with him," the doctor said; "what in thunder did he let her go gallivanting off to visit the Shakers for?
Might have known a female like Mrs. Hall'd get a bee in her bonnet.
He ought to have kept her at home. _I_ would have.
I wouldn't have had any such nonsense in my family!
Well, for an obstinate man (and he IS obstinate, you know), the squire, when it comes to his wife, has no more backbone than a wet string."
"Wonder if there's anything under it all?" came the sly insinuation of gossip; "wonder if she hasn't got something besides the Shakers up her sleeve? You wait!"
If Athalia's imagination spared her these comments, Lewis's unimaginative common sense supplied them.
He knew what other men and husbands were saying about him; what servants and gossip and friends insinuated to one another, and set his jaw in silence. He made no excuse and no explanation.
Why should he? The facts spoke. His wife did prefer the Shakers to her husband and her home. To have interfered with her purpose by any plea of his personal unhappiness, or by any threat of an appeal to law, or even by refusing to give the "consent" essential to her admission, would not have altered these facts.
As for his reasons for going with her, they would not have enhanced his dignity in the eyes of the men who wouldn't have had any such nonsense in their families: he must be near her to see that she did not suffer too much hardship, and to bring her home when she was ready to come.
In those days of tearing his life up by the roots the silent man was just a little more silent, that was all. But the fact was burning into his consciousness: he couldn't keep his wife!
That was what they said, and that was the truth.
It seemed to him as if his soul blushed at his helplessness.
But his face was perfectly stolid. He told Athalia, passively, that he had rented the house and mill to Henry Davis; that he had settled half his capital upon her, so that she would have some money to put into the common treasury of the community; then he added that he had taken a house for himself near the settlement, and that he would hire out to the Shakers when they were haying, or do any farm-work that he could get.
"I can take care of myself, I guess," he said; "I used to camp out when I was a boy, and I can cook pretty well, mother always said." He looked at her wistfully; but the uncomfortable-ness of such an arrangement did not strike her.
In her desire for a new emotion, her eagerness to FEEL-- that eagerness which is really a sensuality of the mind-- she was too absorbed in her own self-chosen hardships to think of his; which were not entirely self-chosen.
