I afterward wrote to Barbara that I could not say one word of myself in this matter, but that she must act as she thought best; only that she must take all things into consideration, and must weigh one thing in the balance with another—that did she make a mistake in going from her people into the world, she might never rectify it to her own mind; but that if she could justify her acts to herself, there was no need to call upon any aid outside of what her own principles of right could afford her. I thought it as well not to put myself at all in the letter, and to let her think that it was as though I were writing as an interested friend to another who scarcely knew what to do in a momentous time. Her father's letter I passed entirely over. He never knew, nor does Barbara know to this day, that I received it.
Yet that night, when I sat with friend Jordan in the hallway of friend Afton's house, my mind seemed confused and full of uncertainty. I scarcely noted the name which friend Hicks told me belonged to the man he had seen his daughter walking with, and not until friend Afton called to the other woman that she should retire for the night did the similarity of the names bear upon me. The hireling minister was named Jordan, the demented woman's name was Jordan: it might be a casual coincidence, but the man seemed taking all away from me that had made my life pleasant and hopeful, while the woman said I gave her new life, new hope, and all that life and hope consisted of—a healthful belief in the Lord and His works—although I knew that while she said so her lost mind was perhaps only being influenced by a quiet and moderate one. Yet maybe there are moments of what is called delusion which are the most sane constituents of a lifetime. As it was, late in the night, as I lay awake and sore in spirit, and wild with all things and almost with the Lord, sleepless and with much yearning grown upon me, I heard the voice calling out in the night up to the stars and the mystery of quiet for love and all that had been near and dear to this one clouded mind; and I turned my face to the wall. And I was like Ishmael indeed when I remembered, while that voice threw out its plaint and the words were clear and cleaved the darkness, that when I had last parted with Barbara, when I hurried from her presence fearful to look back lest she might call me from manly order by a look or a smile, I had thrown myself against a man outside the garden-gate, the man with a white neckcloth and long black ill-cut coat, who had told me that he was the minister of the church but newly erected, and that I had bidden peace go with him, and he had bidden it back to me.
III.
I bethink me that I was very much perturbed in my mind after this, albeit I was exteriorly the quiet, drab-colored Quaker that all knew me to be. Still, I have failed yet to ascertain what discipline that can govern actions, looks and speech can make man's heart throb more sluggishly than the feelings to which all Nature is prone must ever provoke. Thee knows a Friend must be seemly to all, and that alone will inform thee that I manifested no alteration in my demeanor. And my business qualifications were not impaired because of the uprising in my mind, for what has worldly business to do with spiritual? I could bargain and sell to the best advantage, be wholly consistent in all things, and be termed a man whose feelings were so schooled that no emotion ever dared come nigh them. Thee may think, the world may think, that suppressed emotion is annihilated emotion: I who wear drab know differently. And the silence between friend Barbara and myself was not a silence to be broken by useless speech: it was too closely allied to the end of something I had been brought to think almost eternal. I still had letter after letter from friend Hicks, which I replied to always—letters on purely business-matters, never once touched by so much as the name of Barbara, for she no longer sent her duty to me; and I could but realize how stern her father must be to her at home for her dereliction, and I—pitied her. As the weeks went by and I heard nothing of or from her, I may safely asseverate that the cruelly weak feeling that had oppressed me at first left me by degrees, and I could see far clearer than before, and could perchance blame myself for having failed to see ere this that I was what I was to her. I began to weigh the many chances of happiness against the many certainties of unhappiness, and I could but understand that she had with a woman's keen insight found out easily what it had cost me so considerably to know. I could not blame her: why should I? She had acted most fairly to me: had I done as well to her? In friend Afton's house I fought the battle which alone Friends approve of and sanction—the battle of the spirit against the flesh; and I conquered well, I am assured, although I could never cease to care for friend Barbara as I had cared for her since I had known her: it would have been entirely inconsistent with the principles of constancy and truth which had been so early and late imbibed by me.
I must say now that my great comfort in these times was friend Jordan; and, odd as it may appear, the similarity of her name with that of the man whom friend Hicks's daughter had learned to regard so highly seemed to call her closer to me than anything else at the same season might have done. Of evenings we would take up our old manner, and she would say, "Quaker, you are kinder than you know."
She had never learned my name, nor had expressed a desire to know it: what were names of things to her who had lost the things themselves?
"Thank thee, friend Jordan," I would say; and then we would sit and talk. Sometimes she would do all the talking: at other times she let me join her. With her confused mind it was perhaps the best work I could have had, to try to let in a little light where darkness had been so long.
"We always love those the most who give us the most pleasure, do we not?" she asked me.
I could not give her the reply she wanted, for friend Hicks's daughter had given me considerable happiness; so I remained quiet.
"Then next to those I love, and who nightly shine down to me in long, cool reaches of light from the stars, I love you, Quaker," she said.