PART III.
The twilight was almost gone on the Saturday night when I went back to the grave, solemn house. There was no one dead in it now. It was the first time that I had approached it without the abyss of shadow under its roof. A little elasticity came back to me. Kino came out to give his welcome: we had become friendly. Katie let me in.
"Perhaps you'd choose to wait down-stairs a bit," she said; "Mr. Abraham's getting his tea up in Miss Lettie's room."
She lighted the lamp, and left me. After my two explorations in unknown realms,—the one voluntary, looking at the painting on the wall, the other involuntary, looking at a human soul in sorrow,—I resolved to shut my eyes to all that they ought not to see; and therefore I stationed myself in the green glade of a chair, and very properly decided that the only thing I would look at should be the fire. What I might see there surely could offend no one, unless it were the deity of Coal,—and Redleaf was not near any carboniferous group.
Peculiar were the forms the fire took an elfish pleasure in assuming. Little blue flames came up into atmospheric life, through the rending fissures where so many years of ages they had been pent into the very blackness of darkness; and as they gained their freedom, they gave tiny, crackling shouts of liberty. "We're free! we're free!" they smally cried; and I wondered if a race, buried as deeply in the strata of races as these bits of burning coal had been in the geologic periods of earth, could utter such cries.
The fire grew, the liberty paeans ceased. Deep opaline content burned lambescent amid the coals. Ashy cinders fell from the grate slowly, slumberously, as the one dead, that very afternoon buried, had gone to rest, in the night-time, when the household was asleep, without any one to hold her hand whilst she took the first step in the surging sea of river. Yes, she died alone,—"in the heart of the night," Dr. Eaton said it must have been "that the bridegroom came." Had she oil in her lamp? What was she like? Like her son Abraham, or her daughter Lettie? I tried to paint her face as it must have been. It is darker still in that grave where she lies than was the night wherein she died. Miss Lettie was right: they have a fathom of earth over her,—there's not one glimmer of light down there. When I am buried, won't some one shut in one little sun-ray with me, that I may see to feel the gloom?
I looked down upon the gravelly earth lying above her, as I had looked across at it when I left the parsonage at night fall, and passed by the church-yard. All the while, my eyes were in the depths of the fire. I went down through stone and soil to the coffin there. All was unutterable blackness. I put out my hand to feel. It was a cold, marbleized face that my warm, living fingers wandered over. I touched the forehead: it was very stony, granite-like,—not a woman's forehead. The eyes were large,—I felt them under the half-closed lids. The mouth—Yes, Miss Lettie was right. Love for Abraham had covered up this mother-love for her. And confession unto her dead was, it must have been, better than unto her living. The answer would have been much the same.
Shudderingly, I picked up my hand, the one that had been lying upon the arm of the chair, whilst its life and spirit had gone out on their mission of discovery. It was very cold. I warmed it before the fire, and began to think that Aaron was right,—this House of Axtell was stealing away my proper self, or, at least, this hand of mine had been unlawfully employed, through occasion of them. As the warmth of burning coals revivified my hand, I saw something in the fire,—a face,—the very one these live fingers had just been tracing in yonder church-yard. Its eyes were open now,—large, luminous, earnest, with a wave of solid pride sweeping on through the irides and almost overwhelming the pupils. The mouth,—oh, those lips! ever uttered they a prayer? They look, trembling the while, so unutterably unforgiving! When they come to stand before the I AM, will they ever plead? It is hard to think the Deity maketh such souls. Doth He? I looked a little farther on in the fiery group. Other forms of coal took the human face. I saw two. Whose were they? One was like unto my mother. How little I remember of her! and yet this was like my memory,—sweetly gentle, loving past expression's power, no taint of earth therein. Another came up. I did not know it. Something whispered, "It is of you." I almost heard the words with my outward ears. I looked around the room. No one was with me. Stillness reigned in the house.
"It takes Mr. Axtell a very long time to take his tea," I thought; "he must know more of hunger's power than I.—I will look at the fire no more," I said, slowly, to myself, and closed my eyelids, somewhat willing to drop after all that they had endured that day.
A soft, silver, "swimming sound" floated through the room. It was the clock upon the mantel sending out tones of time-hours. I looked up. It was eleven of the clock. "I must have fallen asleep," I thought, and threw off the folds of a shawl which I surely left on the sofa over there when I seated myself in this chair. My head was upon a pillow, downy and white, instead of the green vale of chair in which I had laid it down. I sprang up. There was little of lamp-light in the room. I saw something that looked marvellously like somebody, near the sofa. It was Katie, my good little friend Katie. She was sitting on a footstool with her head upon her hands, and, poor, tired child! fast asleep. I awoke her.
"Who covered me up, Katie?" I asked.
"Mr. Abraham," said Katie; and her waking senses came back.
"And how did the pillow get under my head?"
"Mr. Abraham said 'he was sorry that you had come.' You looked very white in your sleep, and he said 'you wouldn't wake up'; so I lifted your head just a mite, and he fixed the pillow under it. He told me to stay here until you awoke."
"Which I have most decidedly done, Katie," I said; and I fully determined to take no more naps in this house.
How could it have happened? I accounted for the fact in the most reasonable way I knew,—I, who rejoice in being reasonable,—by thinking it occurred in consequence of my long watchfulness, and sombreness of thought and soul.
"I am sorry that you didn't wake me," I said to Katie, as she moved the chairs in the room to their respective places.
With the most childlike implicitness in the world, the little maid stood still and looked at me.
"I couldn't, you know, Miss Percival, when Mr. Abraham told me not to," were the positive words she used in giving her reason.
I forgave Katie, and wondered what the secret of this man's commanding power could be, as on this Saturday night.
I left the world, and went up to take my last watch with the convalescing lady. Her brother was with her. He looked a little surprised, when I went in; but the cloud of anger had gone away: folded it up he had, I fancied, all ready to shake out again upon the slightest provocation; and I did not care to see its folds waving around me, so I did not speak to him. Miss Axtell seemed pleased to see me; said "she trusted that this would be the last occasion on which she should require night-care."
Her beauty was lovely now, A roseate hue was over her complexion: a little of the old fever rising, I suppose it must have been.
"I've been talking with Abraham," she said, when I spoke of it.
Why should a conversation with her brother occasion return of fever? Perhaps it was not that, but the mention of the fact, which increased the glow wonderfully.
Mr. Axtell bade his sister good-night.
"You will do it to-morrow, Abraham?" she asked, as he was going from the room.
"I will think about it to-night, and give you my decision in the morning, Lettie."
Mr. Axtell must have been very absent-minded, for he turned back, hoped I had not taken cold in the library, and ended the wish with a civil "Good night, Miss Percival."
"Good night, Mr. Axtell," I said; and he was gone.
There was no need of persuasion to quietude to-night, it seemed, for Miss Axtell gave me no field for the practice of oratory: she was quite ready and willing to sleep.
"Can you not sleep, too?" she asked, as she closed her eyes; "if I need you, I can speak."
No, I could not sleep. The night grew cold: a little edge of winter had come back. I felt chilled,—either because of my sleep down-stairs, or because the mercury was cold before me. My shawl I had not brought up with me. Might I not find one? The closet-door was just ajar: it was a place for shawls. I crossed the room, and, opening it a little more, went in. I saw something very like one hanging there, but it was close beside that grave brown plaid dress, and I had resolved to intrude no farther into the affair of the tower. Results had not pleased me.
I grew colder than ever, standing hesitatingly in the closet, whence a draught blew from the dressing-room beyond. I must have the shawl. I reached forth my hand to take it down. The dress, I found, was hung over it. It must needs come off, before the shawl. I lifted it, catching, as I did so, my fingers in a rent,—was it? Yes, a piece was gone. I looked at the size and form of it, which agreed perfectly with the fragment I had found. This dress, then, had been in the tower, beyond all question.
I thought myself very fairy-like in my movements, but the fire was not. Some one—it must have been Mr. Axtell or Katie—had put upon the hearth a stick of chestnut-wood, which, suddenly igniting, snapped vigorously. This began ere I was safely outside of the closet. Miss Lettie was awakened. She arose a little wildly, sitting up in the bed. I do not know that it was the fire that aroused her.
"I've had a terrific dream, Miss Percival; don't let me fall asleep again"; and her heart beat fast and heavily. She pressed her hands upon it, and asked for some quieting medicine, which I gave. She was getting worse again, I knew; her hands wandered up to her head, in the same way that they had done when she was first ill.
"I want some one to help me," she said, as if talking to herself; "the waters are very rough. I thought they would be all smooth after the great storm."
"Perhaps it is only the healthful rising of the tide," I ventured to say.
She looked at me, took her hands down from her head, her beautiful, classic head, with its wide, heavenly arch of forehead, and sat still thus, looking at me in that fixed way, that wellnigh sent me to call Katie again, for full ten minutes. I moved about the room, arranged the fire on a more quiet basis, and then, finding nothing else to do, stood before it, hoping that Miss Axtell would lie down again. In taking something from my pocket I must have drawn out the trophy of my tower-victory, for Miss Axtell suddenly said,—
"You've dropped something, Miss Percival."
Turning, I picked it up hastily, lest she should recognize it.
She must have seen it quite well, for it had been lying in the full light of the blazing wood.
"Have you a dress like that?" she asked, when I had restored the fragment.
"I have not," I replied. "I am sorry I awakened you."
"It was a dream that awakened me," she said. "Will you have the kindness to give me that bit of cloth you picked up? I have a fancy for it."
I gave it to her.
She hastily put away the gift I had given, and said,—
"You like the old tower in the church-yard, Miss Percival, I believe?"
"Oh, yes: it is a great attraction for me. Redleaf would be Redleaf no longer, if it were away."
"Have you visited it since you've been here this time?"
"Once only."
"Were there any changes?" she asked.
"A few," I said. "There is another entrance to the tower than by the door, Miss Axtell."
Slowly the lady dropped back to the pillows whence she had arisen from the disturbing dream. She did not move again for many minutes; then it was a few low-spoken words that summoned me to her side.
"I know there is another entrance to the tower," she said; "but I did not think that any one else knew of it. Who told you?"
"Excuse me from answering, if you please," I said, unwilling to excite her more, for I knew that the fever was rising rapidly.
"Who knows of this besides you? You don't mind telling me that much?"
"No one knows it, I think; no person told me, and I have told no one. You seem to have more fever; can you not sleep?"
"Not with all this equinoctial storm raging, and the tide you told me of coming up with the wind."
She looked decidedly worse. Mr. Axtell let her have her own way. I thought it wise to follow his leading, and I asked,—
"What tide do you mean? You cannot hear the sea, and it isn't time for the equinoctial gale."
This question seemed to have quieted Miss Axtell beyond thought of reply. She did not speak again until the Sabbath-day had begun. Then, at the very point where she had ceased, she recommenced.
"It is a pity to let the sea in on the fertile fields of your young life," she said; "but this tide,—it is not that that is now flowing in on the far-away beach of Redcliff. It is the tide of emotion, that some one day in life begins to rise in the human heart,—and, oh, what a strange, wondrous thing it is! There are Bay-of-Fundy tides, and the uniform tides, and the tideless waters that rest around Pacific Isles; and no mortal knoweth the cause of their rise or fall. So in human hearts: some must endure the great throbbing surges that are so hard coming against one poor heart with nothing but the earth to rest upon, and yet must stand fast; then there are the many, the blessed congregation of hearts, that are only stirred by moderate, even-flowing emotions, that never rise over a tide-line, behind which the congregation are quite secure, and stand and censure the souls striving and toiling in waves that they only look upon, but never—no, never—feel. Is this right, Miss Percival?"
"It seems not," I said; "but the tideless hearts, what of them?"
"Oh, they are the hardest of all. Think! Imagine one of those serene, iridescent rings of land, moored close beside the cliff, at which the waves never rest from beating. Could the one forever at peace, with leave from wind and wave to grow its verdure and twine its tendrils just where it would,—could it feel for the life-points against which the Gulf-Stream only now and then sent up a cheering bit of warmth, whilst the soul of the cliff saw its own land of greenness, only far, far away over the waters, but could not attain unto it, not whilst north-land winds blow or the earth-time endures?"
Miss Axtell ceased, and the same fixed, absorbed expression came to her. She looked as she had done on the night, four days since, when I came in at that door for the first time. I thought of the question her brother had asked me concerning the turning of the key; and crossing the room, I turned it.
"Why did you lock the door?" she asked.
"I am constitutionally timid," was my apology.
"You have never evinced it before; why now?"
"Because I have not thought of it sooner."
"Will you unlock it, please?" she asked; and her eyes were very bright with the fever-fire that I knew was burning up, until I feared the flame would touch her mind. "I don't like being locked in; I wish to be free," she added.
This lady has something of Mr. Axtell's command of manner. I could not think it right to refuse to comply, and I unlocked the door.
She seemed restless. "Bring me the key, will you?" she asked, after a few moments of silence, in which her wandering eyes sought the door frequently.
I gave it to her. I might have locked the door before giving her the key, but I could not do it even in her approach to wildness. I hate deception as devoutly as she disguises. She thanked me for my compliance, and said, with a scintillation of coaxingness in her manner,—
"You need not be afraid; there's nothing to harm one in Redleaf."
"Why did you come, to be kind to me, sick and in sorrow?" she suddenly asked, whilst I, unseen by her, was preparing one of the soothing powders that still were left from the night wherein I forgot my duty.
I knew not how to reply. The very bit of material which she had hidden underneath a pillow was the cause; and so I answered,—
"Town-life is so different; one becomes so accustomed to a ring of changes in the all-around of life, that, when in the country, one looks for something to remind one of the life that has been left."
"Then you did not come from genuine kindness?"
"No, I am afraid not."
"Do not be afraid to be truthful, ever," she said, and added,—"Once more, will you tell me where you found the fragment you have given me?"
"I cannot, Miss Axtell."
She did not speak again, but lay looking at the ceiling until long after the moon had risen,—the waning moon, that comes up so weirdly, late in the night, like a spectre of light appointed to haunt the solemn old earth, and punish it with the remembrance of a brighter, better light gone, and a renewed consciousness of its own once unformed, chaotic existence. I saw rays from it coming in through the parted curtains, and distinctly traced tree-branches wavering to and fro out in the night-wind, set astir as the moon came up. At last she said,—
"I wish you would go to sleep. Won't you wake Katie up, and then lie down? She has had a rest."
"Poor, tired child," I said; "she had work to do yesterday; I had not."
"Abraham, then, if not Katie."
"He has been up three nights, Miss Axtell,—I only one."
"I did not know it," she said. "I forgot that I had been so long ill."
"Will you try and sleep?" once more I asked; "it is near morning."
She wished to know the hour, made me give her watch into her own keeping, and then said "she would not talk, no, she would be very quiet, if I would only gratify her by making myself comfortable on the lounge." It did not seem very unreasonable, and I consented.
"But you are looking at me," she said. "I hate to be watched; do shut your eyes."
I looked away from her. Time went on. I heard the clock strike four times, in the March night. Miss Axtell was very quiet,—better, I was convinced. I arose once to rebuild the fire. Wood-fires burn down so soon. Then I took up my watch, thinking over the strange events, all unconsummated, that had been and still were in being under this roof.
Five hours came booming up from the village-clock. The wind must have changed, or I could not have heard the strokes, so roundly full.
"How short the hour has been!" was my first thought. Kino began a furious, untimely barking. "What for?" I wondered; and I lifted up my head and listened. No sound; the room was very still. Miss Axtell had dropped the curtains of the bed. It annoyed her, I supposed, to feel herself watched. "Her breathing is very soft," I thought; "I do not even hear it. Her sleep must be pleasant, after the fever."
I laid my head down to its resting-place, listening still. Kino kept up a low, ominous growl, quite different from his first barking. Nothing more came. "I'm glad he doesn't waken Miss Axtell," I thought; and gradually Kino dropped his growls into low, plaintive moans, which in time died away. As they did so, another sound, not outside, but in the house, set my poor, weak heart into violent throbbings. Footsteps were in the upper hall, I felt sure. Miss Axtell might not hear them, if she had not heard Kino's louder noise. Slowly they came,—not heavy, with a stout, manly tread, but muffled. They came close to the door. If the key were only in it! But I could not move. I heard a hand going over it, just as I had heard that hand three days before in the dark tower. A moment's awful pour of feeling, and then came the gentlest, softest of knocks. Why did I not get up and see who it was? Simply because Nature made me cowardly, and meant me, therefore, to bear cowardice bravely. I never moved. A second time came the knock, but no more nerve of sound in it than at the first. A hand touched the knob after that, and turning it gently, the door was carefully pushed open, and a figure, looking very much like Mr. Axtell, only the long, dark hair fell over his face, came noiselessly in. I could not tell at the moment who it was. I watched him cautiously. He stood still, looking first at the bed, whose curtains were down, then around the room. For one moment I thought him looking at me, and involuntarily my eyelids closed, lest he might know himself watched. He put up his hand, and pushed back the heavy hair from his forehead. It was only Mr. Axtell. The relief was so great that I spoke,—softly, it is true.
"What is it?" I asked. "Is anything wrong, Mr. Axtell?"
"It seems not," he said. "Kino's barking aroused me,—it is so unusual. How has she slept?"
"Very well. For the last hour she has not spoken."
Kino began again his low, dismal howling.
"Did not the dog disturb her when he barked?"
Mr. Axtell had walked to the lounge from which I had risen, still speaking in the voice that has much of tone without much sound.
"No,—she did not seem to hear it."
"She must be sleeping very deeply," the brother said; and as he spoke, he cautiously uplifted a fold of the hangings.
What was it that came over his face, made visible even in the gloom of the room? Something terrible.
"What is it?" I asked, springing up; "what has happened?" and I put out my hand to take the look at the sleeper in there that he had done.
He stayed my hand, waved it back, folded his arms, as if nothing unusual had occurred, and questioned me.
"What has she talked about to-night?"
"She has said very little."
"Tell me something that she has said, immediately"; and he looked fearfully agitated.
"What has happened?" I asked; and again I caught at the hangings which concealed the fearful thing that he had seen.
"Answer me!" Two words only, but tremendously uttered.
"She asked me if I liked the tower in the church-yard," I said.
"You told her what?"
"That I did like it."
"Has she seemed worried about anything?" and Mr. Axtell threw up a window-sash, letting the cold March wind into this room of sickness. As he did so, I lifted the folds that the wind rudely swayed. Miss Axtell was not there.
He turned around. I stood speechless.
"How long have you been asleep?" he asked, coolly, as if nothing had occurred.
"Not at all," I answered. Then I thought, "I must have slept, else she could not have gone out without my knowing it."—"I heard the stroke of four and of five," I said.
He looked up and down the street, only a little lighted by the feeble, old, fading moon.
"Have you any idea where she would go?" he asked.
"She may be in the house," I said; "why not look?"
"No; I found the front-door unfastened. I thought Katie might have forgotten it, when I went to see. She has gone out, I know."
He looked for the wrappings she might have put on, searching, as he did so, for the small lamp that always was placed beside the larger one upon the table. It was gone. It had been there at four o'clock, when I put wood on the fire.
"Where would she carry a lamp?" Mr. Axtell asked, as he went on, searching, in known places, for articles of apparel that were not in their wonted homes. Having found them, he went out hurriedly, went to his own room, came out thence a moment after, with boots on his feet in place of the slippers he had frightened me with, and an overcoat across his arm. He did not seem to see me, as I stood waiting in the hall.
"Where are you going?" I asked of him, but he did not answer. He went straight on by me, and down, out of the house, closing the great hall-door after him with a force that shook the walls.
I went into the deserted room, put down the window-sash that he had left open, laid more wood upon the dying embers, caught up Miss Axtell's shawl, and, throwing it over my head, started down the stairs. It was pitch-dark, not even moonlight, there. I went back for a lamp: the only one was the heavy bronze, in the lone room. Mr. Axtell's door was open. He had left a light. I went in and took it up, with a box of matches lying near, and once more started down the stairs. How full of trembling I was! yet not afraid: there was a life, perhaps, to save. I opened the heavy oaken door. The wind put out my light. I did not need it longer. The shred of moon, hanging prophetic of doom, let out its ghastly whiteness to ghost the village.
Kino did not bark. The wind came down the street from churchward, whence I had heard the stroke of the village-clock. Ten minutes past five: it would be morning soon. I listened. The wind brought me footsteps, going farther and farther on: or was it the fluttering of my own garments that I heard? "I will know," I thought; and I ran a little way, then listened again. They seemed less far than before, but still going on. I ran again, farther than at first. I saw a figure before me, but, oh, so far! It seemed that I should never catch it. I tried, and called. I might as well have shouted to my father, miles away; for the wind carried my voice nearer to him than to Mr. Axtell, hurrying on. Where would he go? I tried to keep him in sight. He turned a corner, and the wind tormented me; it was almost a gale that blew, and I had the shawl to hold over my head. I came to the corner that he had turned: it was near the parsonage,—only two or three houses away. There was less of wind. I went on, half-breathless with the intensity of the effort I made to breathe. The stars looked cold. I was near the church-yard. First the church,—then the place of graves,—after that, the long, sloping garden, and the parsonage higher up. I passed by the last house. I drew near to the church. How fearful! I stopped. It was only a momentary weakness: a life was concerned; it was no place for idle fears. I crept on, shivering with the cold, and the night, and the loneliness, and the awful thought that the Deity was punishing me for having gone, in imagination, down to the cradle of His dead, by sending me out this night among graves. I heard the church-windows rattling coarse, woody tunes; but I tried not to hear, and went past. A low paling ran along the interval between the church and the parsonage-garden. I had crossed the street when I came up to the church; now I moved along opposite this fearful spot. The paling was white. I listened. No sound. A shadow from a tall pine-tree fell across a part of the paling. Therein I thought I saw what might be Mr. Axtell, leaning on the fence. I went a little of the distance across the street. Whatever it was, it stirred. I ran back, and started on, thinking to gain the parsonage. The figure—it was Mr. Axtell—came after me. As soon as I knew, for he called, "Lettie," I stopped and turned toward him.
"It isn't your sister," I said.
"You, Miss Percival? Why are you out?" and he seemed anxious. He said, "You are suffering too much from the 'strange people.'"
How could he mention my hasty words at such a time? and I remembered the unforgiving face that I had touched a fathom deep under the hard ground.
"I'm glad I've found you," I said. "Have you the church-key?"
He told me that he had. I said,—
"Come and open it."
"What for?" and he still peered over among the tombstones, as if expecting to find Miss Lettie there.
"It is not there that she would go, I think; come quickly with me," I said.
We walked to the church-entrance, hastily. He searched for the key. He hadn't it. I put my hand out, and touched it in the door.
"See here! I'm right!" and as I spoke, I drew a match across the stone step. The wind put out the flame. I guarded the second one with my shawl, and lighted the lamp.
"Open quickly, before I lose it," I said.
He did, and we went in,—in through the vestibule, where I first had seen this man, tolling the bell for his mother's death,—up the aisle, where I had gone the day I saw the thirsty, hungry, little mouse. I felt afraid, even with this strong man, for I did not know where I was going. We drew near the pulpit,—the pulpit in which Aaron preached.
"She is not here," Mr. Axtell said; and he looked about the empty pews, feebly lighted from my small flame.
He started forward as he spoke.
"Don't leave me," I said; and I put my hand within his arm.
What we saw was a change in the pulpit, an opening, as if some one had destroyed the panelled front of it.
"Come," I said; and I drew near, and put the lamp through the opening, showing a few stone steps; perhaps there were a dozen of them; at least, they went down into undefined darkness.
"What is this, Miss Percival?"
"I don't know,—I have never seen it before; but I think it leads to the tower. You will find her there. Come!" and I went down the first step, with a feeling far stronger than the prisoner's doomed to step off into interminable depths, in that Old-World castle famous for wrongs to mankind,—for I knew my danger: he does not, as he comes to the last step, from off which he goes down to a deep, watery death.
Mr. Axtell was aroused. He took the lamp from my unsteady hand, and, bidding me come back, went down before me. At the foot we found ourselves in a stone passage-way. It seemed below the reach of rains, and not very damp. Once I hit my foot against a stone, and fell. As Mr. Axtell turned back to see if I was hurt, he let the light fall distinctly on the ground. I saw a letter. He went on. I groped for it, one moment, then found it, and put it, with the torn piece of envelope to which it might belong, within my pocket. We came, at last,—a long distance it seemed for only a hundred feet,—to steps again. There were only three of them. Mr. Axtell held the lamp up; there was an opening. I shaded the light immediately, and whispered,—
"She's up there, I'm sure. Don't alarm her."
"How can I help it?" he asked.
I had as little of wisdom on the point as he; but I heard a noise. I saw a glimmer of light, as I looked up; then it was gone. I put my head through the opening, then reached down for the lamp. I held it up, and called,—
"Miss Axtell!"
No answer.
"We shall have to go up," her brother said.
I entered the tower, the place I had so loved before,—and now seemed destined to atone for my love by suffering.
"Don't let the light go out, Mr. Axtell," were all the words spoken; and we went up the long, winding stairway.
At the top stood Miss Axtell, fixed and statue-like, with fever-excited eyes. She looked not at us, but far away, through the rough wood inside, through the stone of the tower: her gaze seemed limitless.
"Come, Lettie! come, sister! come home with me," her brother said.
She heeded not; the only seeming effect was a convulsion of the muscles used in holding the lamp. I ventured to take it from her.
"Where did you find it?" she asked, in determined tones; "will you tell me now?"
"Whom is she speaking to?" asked Mr. Axtell.
I answered,—
"Yes, Miss Axtell, it was in here."
"Where is the rest?" and her beautiful eyes were coruscant.
I handed to her the last of the trophies of my first visit. She seized it eagerly.
"Don't do that," said Mr. Axtell, as she lighted it from the lamp he held. But she was not to be stayed; she held it aloft until the fire came down and touched her fingers; then she dropped it, burning still, down to the stone floor, far below.
She seemed helpless then; she looked as she did when a few hours before she had said, "I want some one to help me."
"Oh!—I've—lost—something!" and she tolled the words out, as slowly as the notes of the passing bell.
"What is it, Lettie? Come home; the day is breaking"; and Mr. Axtell put his arm about her.
I thought of the letter that I had picked up in the passage-way.
"What have you lost, Miss Axtell? Is it anything that I could find for you?" and I laid my hand upon hers, as the only method of drawing away her eyes from their terrible immutation of expression.
"You? No, I should think not; how could you? you only found a piece of it."
"What is this?" I asked; and I held up the letter: the superscription was visible only to herself.
What a change came over her! Soft, dewy tears melted in those burning eyes, and sent a mist of sweet effluence over her face. Mr. Axtell was still supporting her; she did not touch the letter I held; she reached out both of her hands, bent a little toward me,—for she was much taller than I am,—took my cold, shivering face in those two burning hands, and touched my forehead with her lips.
"God has made you well," she said; "thank Him."
She did not ask for the letter. I put it whence I had taken it. She evidently trusted me with it.
"Abraham, I'm sick," she said; and she laid her head upon his shoulder, passively as an infant might have done.
Her strength was gone; she could no longer support herself, and the day was breaking. Mr. Axtell, strong, vigorous, full-souled man as I knew him to be, looked at me, and his look said, "What am I to do with her?"
I answered it by throwing off the shawl and putting it upon the floor where we were standing, and saying,—
"Let her rest here, until I come."
I took the still burning lamp and went down,—down through the entrance into the deep, walled passage-way, on, step after step, through this black tunnel, built, when, I knew not, or by whom; but I was brave now. I had won the trust of a soul: it was light unto my feet. I reached the twelve stone steps leading into the church. I ran lightly up them, and, stooping, crept into this still house of God. Silence held the place. The next reign would be that of worship. Is it thus in the church-yard, after the silence of Death,—the long waiting, listening for the slowly gathering voice of praise, that, one fair day in time, time, shall transfuse the reverent souls, until the voice of the dew God sends down shall be heard dropping on the grassy sod, and welcomed as the prelude to the archangel's grand semibreve that will usher in the sublime Psalm of Everlasting Life?
Wait on, souls! it is good to wait the voice of the Lord God Almighty, who holdeth the earth in the hollow of His hand,—His hand, that we may feel for, when the way is dark, whose living fibres thrill both heart and soul. Yes, God's hand is never away from earth. I reached out anew for it in that dismal pathway through which I had come, and it guided me into this quiet, peaceful place, full of morning rays.
I did not stop to think all this; I felt it; for feeling is swifter than thought. Thought is the tree; feeling, the blossom thereof. I closed the panelling behind me, leaving the church as it had been on the day when, I saw the little hungry mouse treading sacred places. I went down the aisle; and as I passed by the hempen rope in the vestibule that so often had set the bell a-ringing, a longing came to do it now, to tell the village-people, by voice of sacred bell, that there was a new-born worship come down from Heaven. But I did not. I hurried on, and went out, locking the door after me. The March morning was cold. I missed the shawl I had left. My hair was as much astir as Aaron's had been one morning, not long before, and I truly believe there was as much of theology in it. No one was abroad. People sleep late on Sunday mornings. The east was blossoming into a magnificent sunflower.
Looking at myself, as I began my walk, I laughed aloud. I was still carrying a lighted lamp,—for the wind, like the village-people, slept at sunrise. I comforted myself by thinking of a predecessor somewhat famous for a like deed, and bent upon a like errand. The man that I searched for I should surely find, and honest, too; for it was Aaron.
The parsonage was cruelly inhospitable. No door was left unfastened. I knocked at a window opening on the veranda. I gave the signal-knock that Sophie and I had listened and opened to, unhesitatingly, for many years. It needed nothing more. Instantly I heard Sophie say,—"That's Anna's knock"; and immediately thereafter the curtain was put aside, and Sophie's precious face and azure eyes peeped out. She looked in amazement to see me thus, and in one moment more had let me in.
"Wake Aaron," I said, without giving her time to question me.
"He is awake. What has happened? Is Miss Axtell dying?" she questioned.
"No," I said; "but I want to speak to Aaron, directly. I'm going to my room one moment."
I went up. The tower-key was hanging where I had left it. I took it down, and made myself respectable by covering up my breezy hair with a hood, with the further precaution of a cloak. I had not long to wait for Aaron's coming; but it was long enough to remind me to carry some restorative with me. Aaron came.
"Miss Axtell is very ill," I said; "she is quite wild, and left the house in the night. She's up in the church-yard tower. Will you help her brother take her home, as soon as you possibly can?"
"How strange!" were his only words; and as I went the garden way, Aaron started to arouse his horse from morning sleep.
"No one need to know the church entrance," I thought; and as I went in, I tried to close down the heavy stone, which fitted in so well, that it seemed, like all the others, built to stay.
I could not stir it. Perhaps Aaron would not look, when he came in; but doubting his special blindness, I asked Mr. Axtell to put it back. He seemed to comprehend my meaning. I took his place beside Miss Axtell. She was no longer wilful or determined. Her strength was gone. Her head drooped upon my shoulder, and when I held a spoon, filled with the restorative that I had brought, to her lips, they opened, and she took that which I gave, mechanically. Her eyelids were down. I looked at the fair, beautiful face that lay so near to my eyes. It was full of the softest pencillings; little golden sinuosities of light were woven all over it; and the blue lines along which emotion flies were wonderfully arrowy and sky-like in their wanderings, for they left no trace to tell whence they came or whither led. I heard the heavy, ponderous weight let fall. It was the same sound as that which I heard on that memorable night. Miss Axtell shivered a little; or was it but the effect of the concussion?
The brother came up; he looked down, kindly at me, lovingly at his sister.
"Shall I relieve you?" he asked.
I folded my arm only a little more tightly for answer, and said,—
"Mr. Wilton will be here soon; he is getting the carriage, to take your sister home."
"I will go and help him, if you don't mind being left"; and he looked inquiringly.
"There's no danger. I shall not fall asleep," I said.
"She's harmless now, poor child! If we can only get her back safely!" And with these words he left me again.
Sophie came up soon, quite fearless now. She brought a variety of comforting things, among them a pillow. Miss Axtell was too much exhausted to open her eyes, or speak. I thought two or three times that she had ceased to breathe. What if she should die here? They came. She was lifted up, and borne down to the carriage, that waited outside the graveyard. Helpless ones are carried in often: never before (it might be) had one been taken thence. And still the village-people seemed to be buried in rest.
Sophie and I walked on, whilst slowly the carriage proceeded to the gable-roofed, high-chimneyed house, that arose, well defined and clear, in the early sunlight. Smoke was rising from the kitchen-fire. Sophie and I went in, just as the carriage stopped. She waited to receive the invalid, whilst I went up to see if the absence had been discovered. It was but little more than an hour since Mr. Axtell and I had gone out. Evidently there had been no visitors. The wood that had been put on the fire before I left had gone down into glowing coals that looked warm and inviting. I kneeled and stirred them to a brighter glow, and put on more wood, my fingers very stiff the while. I drew back the curtains from the bed, smoothed the pillows, and the disorder occasioned by our hasty exodus, and went down. Aaron and Mr. Axtell had carried the poor invalid to the library, and laid her upon the sofa there, but it was very cold. The fire was not yet built.
There was a sound of some one coming from the kitchen-way. Mr. Axtell looked at me. "You know how to keep a secret," he said, and motioned me in the direction whence came the sound, I hurried out, closing the door, and met Katie running up to know "what had happened?"
I sent her back on some slight pretext, and followed whither she went. I heard the cook mumblingly scolding about "noises in the night, dogs barking and doors shutting, she knew; such a house as it was, with people dying, getting sick, and putting every sort of a bothersome dream into a quiet body's head, that wanted to rest, just as she worked, like a Christian." And all the while she went on making preparations for a future breakfast.
"What was 't now that ye heard? Kate, you're easy enough at hearing o' noises in the broad daylight: I wish 't ye would be as harksome at night."
"Hush, Cooky!" said Katie; "Miss Percival is here."
I went up to Cooky and soothed her, told her that I had heard the dog barking too, and that I thought that I did hear something like the shutting of a door in the night. Cooky rewarded my efforts at sympathy by expressing gladness "that there was one sensible person in the house that had ears fit for Christian purposes."
"Don't mind her, Miss Percival," Katie said; "she's cross because I wakened her too early; she'll get over it when she has had her breakfast"
I gave Katie something to do, telling her to make coffee for Miss Axtell as soon as possible; and with a few more words, meant to be conciliating to Cooky, I took up the glass Katie brought me, and went back.
They had carried Miss Axtell up-stairs. Sophie was taking her wrappings off. How carefully she had guarded herself, even in her illness, for the walk! and now, all the nerve of fever gone, she lay as white and strengthless as she had done in the tower. I went for Doctor Eaton, on my own responsibility.
"He would come in a few minutes," was the message to me.
Sophie said "that she would stay, for I must go home."
As she said so, a little wavering cloud of doubt went across her forehead, eclipsing, for a moment, its light; then all was bright again.
"What is it?" I asked. "Something for Aaron, I know."
Sophie looked the least bit like a rather old child asking for sugar-candy; but she said,—
"Just you tie his cravat for him, there's a good sister; don't forget; that's all. After that you may go to sleep, and sleep all day. You look as if you needed it."
She came to say one more forgotten thing,—
"Just see that Aaron gets a white handkerchief: he's fond of gay colors, you know. Two Sundays ago, when I wasn't looking, he carried off to church one of Chloe's turbans, and deliberately shook out the three-cornered article, and never knew the difference till his face told him it was cotton instead of silk."
I promised extra caution on the second point, and had just closed the lower door—Aaron was already holding the gate open for me—when the softly purplish bands of hair came again into the wind.
"One thing more, Anna: do see what he takes for a sermon. The text is in the fifth chapter of First Thessalonians. He will certainly pick up a Fast-day or a Thanksgiving sermon, if you don't put the right one into his hands."
"Hasn't he two sermons on the same chapter?" I asked.
"Yes, half a dozen. You'll know the one for to-day; I wrote it for him the day he had the headache; the text is"—and there was a little moment of thought; then she said—"'Who died for us, that, whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with him.' Aaron's waiting; don't keep him; good bye!" and she was closed in.
I felt faint and weary, now that there was no more to be done. The village-people were awake. Village-sounds were abroad in the Sunday atmosphere, vibrant with holiness. The farmers stopped in their care for their animals, and spent a moment in innocent wonder of the reason why their pastor should be abroad thus early.
Chloe's turban welcomed us first, then Chloe's self. Breakfast, that morning, had a rare charm about it for me. I felt that I had a right to it; in some wise it was a breakfast earned. Aaron looked melancholy; his coffee was not charmful, I knew; the chemical changes that sugar and milk wrought were not the same as when Sophie presided over the laboratory of the breakfast-tray. I am not an absorbent, and so I reflected Aaron's discomfort. He was disposed to question me for a reason for Miss Axtell's aberration. I was not empowered to give one, and was fully determined to impart no information until such time as I could with honor tell all. Aaron desisted after a while, and changed interrogation for information.
"We're to have a new sexton," he said.
"Why, Aaron?" I asked,—and, in my surprise, put sugar, destined for my coffee, into a glass of water.
"Because Abraham Axtell has resigned."
"When?"
"This very morning."
"He will be sexton until you find another, will he not?"
"For one week only," he said.
I remembered that my pocket held the church-key. I could not send it to him without exciting question. Aaron would surely ask how I came by it, if I trusted him to restore it. So, sleepy, weary, I sat down at the window from which Sophie and her sister Anna had watched the strange man digging in the frosty earth,—sat down to my last watching, waiting to see Mr. Axtell come up to ring the first bell.
I found I was an hour too early; so I went and talked to Chloe a little, scattered crumbs for the first-come birds and corn for the chickens, and looked down the deep, deep well, with its curb lichened over, into the dark pupil of water, whose iris is never disturbed, unless by the bucket that hung in such gibbety repose on the lofty extreme of the great sweep, that creaked dismally, uttering a pitiful cry of complaint. If it hadn't been Sunday, I would have coaxed Aaron to pour some oil on its turbulence; but since Sunday it was, I was to be content to let it screech on. It was not a "sheep fallen into a pit," only a disturbed well-sweep. Do well-sweeps feel, I wonder? Why not? Mr. Axtell asked how I knew that the dead cannot hear.
Aaron came out in search of me. He had been assiduously trying to make a ministerial disposition of his cravat, until it was creased and wrinkled beyond repair.
"I did not know that you put on the paraphernalia of pastorhood so early," I said, "or I would have come in."
"I shall be very thankful, if you'll give me a respectable appearance," he said, which I faithfully tried to do.
I gave him the sermon and the proper handkerchief, then left him to his hour of seclusion before service, when even Sophie never went nigh.
Half-past nine of the clock came. It was the time for the ringing of the first bell. No sexton appeared. I looked far down the street, having walked to the corner of the church for the purpose. Perhaps Mr. Axtell was searching for the key. What if I should ring the bell? I had wished to, still earlier in the morning. No one would see me go in.
The third time I entered within the church. The bell-rope swayed to and fro with a mimic oscillation; a sort of admonitory premonition of what it must shortly do ran up its fibres. I had left the entrance into the place devoted to worship open. I closed it now. There was nothing very alarming in standing there. The floor was oaken and old; the walls were gray, and seamed with crevices; there were steps, at either extreme, leading into galleries,—one for the choir, two for happy children excluded by numbers from the straight family-pews, right under Aaron's gray eyes, that saw everything, except the few items that Sophie must watch for him, such as neckties, handkerchiefs, and sermons.
There was a smooth place on the rope. The roughness had been worn away by contact of human hands. Abraham Axtell's hands—the same that covered his face before the young girl's picture, that digged the grave, and so gently soothed his sister that very morning—had worn it smooth. It was out of my reach, too high up for me to attain unto; and so I held it tightly lower down. The ungrateful rope was very prickly; it hurt me, but I held fast, and slowly, surely drew it down. Too slowly; there was not sound enough to frighten a bird out of the belfry, had one been there to listen; but Aaron, on his knees within his study, praying for the gift of healing, that he might restore sick souls, would hear. Once more I drew the rope, with a tiny persistence that was childish, amusing. A baby-tone came to me from the bell, accustomed to other things. I had gained courage from the two attempts; it grew rapidly; and soon, out into the people's homes, the sounding strokes were ringing, clear, sonorous, and true. I had never noticed how long a time the "first bell" rang. It was the last Sunday morning's service of the sexton. He might be expected to linger a little in the net-work of memory; and thus, anxious to do my duty well, I rang on.
The neighbor's boy opened the door and put his head inside; and then he opened his eyes wondrously wide at me, and, frightened, ran away. I left my bell to tone itself to silence, with little sighing notes, like a child sobbing itself into sleep, and called after him. The rough boy came to me. I asked "if he would do me a favor." He said, "of course he would."
"I wish you to build the church-fires; and don't tell any one that you saw me ringing the bell."
"If you tell me not to, I sha'n't," was his laconic reply.
I went home, my latest duty done. I saw, far down the willow-arched street, Mr. Axtell coming.
With closed blinds, and room of silence, I ought to have found rest; but I did not. I heard Aaron go out. I trusted that he had got the proper sermon. I heard the second bell ring. It was so near, how could I help it? I heard the congregation singing. Triumphant joy was the impression that the song brought to my darkened room. I thought of the letter that was in my pocket. It did not please me to feel that it was out of my keeping. I took it thence, and held it in my hands. It had no envelope. It was written upon soft, white paper, and was addressed to some one: to whom I would not see. Not if my happiness depended upon it, would I sacrifice the trust reposed in me. Holding the letter thus, a face came to memory. It was the third face of the three that had been painted in anthracite. I could not tell where I had known it in life. It did not seem as if it belonged to mortal time. I got up, opened the blinds for a moment, and looked in the glass. I saw myself,—and yet,—yes, there was a similitude to that I saw in memory; and then that strange, sad seeming of soul-sense, that says, "Such as you are, you have been somewhere for ages," overwhelmed and sent shakings of solemn ague to me.
"I'm getting ill," I thought; "I'll have no more of this."
I looked at a bottle of chloroform standing conveniently near, took it up, and drew out the stopper. Lifting it to the light, I looked at it. Quiet and calm and peaceful it reposed, unconscious of ill done or to be done by itself. It was so innocent that I could not let it sin by hurting me. I gazed again at my reflection in the glass, and a sudden intuition taught me a startling truth.
It may have been, nay, must have been, the innocence born of the lucent chloroform, reflected in my own face; but I was certain that the mirror and the Axtell house contained two pictures that were the one like the other. I smiled at the fancy. The illusion, if illusion it was, fled. The picture on the wall never smiled from out the canvas. I took dark winding-cloths and bound them about my head, covering the hair and forehead, all the while watching the effect produced in the mirror. The result was somewhat striking, it is true, but not of the agreeable style. I unbound my frontlet, taking off the black phylactery, whose memorable sentence, written in white letters, had been visible to myself alone. A contrast suggested itself to me. I would try white; and so I materialized the suggestion, and stood looking the least bit in the world like a nun, bound about with my white vestments, and had obtained only one very unsatisfactory glimpse of the effect produced upon the sensitive heart of quicksilver, when I found that that subtile heart responded to influences other than mine. What I discovered was another face, not in the most remote degree like mine,—as different as it could possibly be,—a face belonging to the carboniferous strata of the human ages. Had it been imitating me? Its race are eminent for imitative genius. A queer sort of a nun it was, wearing neither black nor white, but high tropical hues. Repose of being did not belong to this face. It darted around, and looked into my eyes.
"Goodness o' mercy Miss Anna, what ails thee's little head? is it quite turned with being up o' nights? Lie down, little honey! let old Chloe bathe it for thee." And Chloe hummed around the room like a bee; she folded up the petals of light that I had unbudded when I wanted to see what manner of face I had. Strange fancy it is that the extra fairy gives to mortals, this breaking up of roses and dolls and joys, to find what is in them!
I was pleased to have Chloe come in, to take charge of me. I had gone a little way beyond my own proper realm, and it was grateful to feel my centrifugal tendencies overcome by this sable centripetency of force, that took off my strange habitings,—only the paraphernalia of headache to her. Pillowing the head supposed to be tormented with pain, Chloe went about to remedy the evil by drowning it in lavender-water. I let her think what she pleased, and bravely lifted up the mount of my head, like Ararat of old unto the great deluge; but she would not let me talk as I pleased. Chloe was half a century old, with a warm, affectionate, red heart under her black seeming; and it pulsated around me now, as I lay there, under her care, in absolute quiet, hushed to content by her humming ways and words.
The second hymn of the church-service was sending its voice of worship up unto the Lord of all the earth, and Chloe and I, two of the children of that Lord, upon His earth, were awed by it. "The neighbor's boy must have left a window open," I thought. The fruitage of song blossomed on, the petalled notes withered and fell, and Chloe garnered in her harvest from the field, with a quaintly expressed regret that she "wasn't in the meadows of the land of Canaan, where taller songs were growing."
"Never mind, Chloe," I said; "the hymns of earth are very sweet; you can wait a little longer, can't you?"
"Don't you talk, child; you'll make your head ache again. Yes, old Chloe is willing to wait; there's honey and sugar left on the ground for her to find, only she's old now, she can't stoop to pick it up as well as she could once."
"What do you mean, Chloe?"
"Didn't I tell ye you mustn't talk, Miss Anna? Don't be trying to trouble yourself with old Chloe's meanings: they haven't any understanding in them for other people to find out."
"Why not, Chloe?"
"Thee's talking again, Miss Anna. It's the Lord's thoughts that are given to black Chloe, and she hasn't anything to dress them up in but her own, poor, old, ragged words, that a'n't fit to use any way; so Chloe'll wait until she gets something better to make 'em 'pear to belong to the Lord that owns 'em"; and Chloe still soothingly bathed my head, which I think was aching all the while, only I should not have found it out, if she had not told me it.
"I want to ask you a question, Chloe."
"Well, just one, honey!"
"Am I much like—do I look as my mother used to?"
"Blessed child! no, no more 'n I do; only ye've both got white faces from the good Lord, and He didn't please to give Chloe anything better than a black one."
"What did she look like?"
"Thee's not to talk one word more. Chloe must go and look after Master Aaron's dinner; he doesn't like husks to feed on. Mistress Percival was like an angel, when the Lord took her from the earth. I'm afraid old Chloe wouldn't know her now, she's been so long with Seraphim and Cherubim in the Great City with the light of the Celestial Sun shining in her face. I'm afraid Chloe wouldn't dare to speak to her, if she was to meet her in the shining street of the New Jerusalem."
"She would know you, though, Chloe."
"There isn't any night there, Miss Anna; she couldn't see me; I'm black and wicked"; and Chloe dropped something upon my hand. It was a tear from her great eyes.
"Your soul will be white, Chloe. Christ will make it so."
"Well, well, honey, don't you trouble yourself 'bout my soul. The Lord made it, and I guess He'll take care of it, when it gets free from the earth"; and Chloe went down to look after a fragment of the very earth she was anxious to escape from.
I heard this child of "Afric's golden sands" singing a song to soothe her soul among the dinner-deeds that she was enacting. Then I thought me of the earth lying in the hollow of God's hand, and in some way I wished that I might get in-between the earth and the Holding Hand, and a wisp of the sweet hymn, "Nearer to Thee, my God," floated out from my heart's voice, almost with music in it. And the wishing words melted into an air of prayer. I felt the mighty Hand around me. I put myself fearlessly into the loving depths thereof, engraved with lines of life, and slept securely there. Did the divine fingers draw me a little more closely, and press the lines engraven on the Hand into my soul, and leave an impression of dreams there? I felt myself going swiftly on and up through a skyey gradient, and the soft, balmy air, displaced by my passing through, fell back into its own place with pearly music. I wanted to open my eyes and see where I was going; but I could not. I was passive in action, active in thought only. Then, the music growing fainter and fainter as the atmosphere became more celestially rarefied, I felt the supporting Hand going away from me. One after another the fingers loosened their hold, and yet I did not feel that I was falling. It was gone, and I floated on. With its absence came the wish for action. My eyes were unloosed, and I looked up. Far above me I saw the Hand that had brought me up hither. It had gone on before, and was waiting my coming. I made an effort to reach it.
A voice came; and clouds, rosy, ambient, such as angels hang around the pavilion of the sun, were unfolding their glory-woven webs and weaving me in. "It is good to be here," I whispered to my spirit's inmost sense of hearing; and the voice that I heard spake these words unto me:—
"You have been brought up hither to learn your mission upon the earth to which you go."
Old, prophetic, syllabic sounds, lisped in the place whence I had come, were given unto me, and I answered,—
"Speak, Lord, for Thy servant heareth!"
Then a rushing wind of sound filled my ears, and I saw the flashing of a wing of angel in among the cumulosity of clouds, and it made an opening into an ethereous region beyond. An oval, azurous picture was before me, set in this rolling, surging frame of ambient gold and silver glory.
"It is not for me to see in there," I thought; and I shut my eyes.
The voice that I had heard before spake once more:—
"Learn what thy God would have thee to do. Look up!"
Obeying the mighty behest, I beheld, and an ovaline picture, painted in the artistry of heaven, let down from the crystalline walls, that I might not see, and held fast by a cord of gold, safe in an angel's keeping, God had sent for me to look upon.
It was not such as masters of earth toil to paint. It was a living group that I saw.
Four figures stood there.
The first one was the face that I had just asked Chloe the semblance of. Loving past expression's power. The love emitted from those eyes brought tears into mine, and I heard one of them go dropping down, down into the cloudy deep below, as one day I had heard one falling elsewhere, on a cold stone.
Two hands were wafted out towards me, and the lips were just parted, as if waiting for coming words. I looked and listened, a little blinded by the glory and my tears.
"Go forth, dear child, to the work thy God appoints for thee to do!"
I looked up a little higher, just over the face of my mother, and, in holiest benediction, the Hand that had brought me up hither was laid upon her head. One stood beside her, leaning upon her shoulder. I recognized the face of the mysterious young girl.
"Will you do something for me on the earth, whence I have been called?" she asked.
The mighty voice that rang amid the clouds bade me "Answer." And tremulously, as if my poor earth-words had no place in the exceeding brightness, I gave an "I will."
"Comfort you the one afflicted. Tell him to look no longer into my grave. Let him not wander beside the marble foam that surges up from the Sea of Death, for that the Lord hath prepared another way for his footsteps. Lead him a little while on the earth, and then"——
I know not what more she would have spoken, for the Hand closed her lips. I sought my mother's face. It was gone. Another came forward. I felt involuntarily for the cold Hand that one night wandered under the sod in search of the face that now I saw in this picture let down from crystalline walls.
"I have a message for you," were the words I heard. "Tell her that I know what she would tell me: I have been made to know it here, where all things are clear: tell her that my forgiveness is as large as the heaven to which I have been permitted to enter in. Give her of the love that I did not when I might have done it."
The Hand was offered to her. Pleadingly, she looked up at it. For a moment my eyelids were heavy. When the weight was lifted, only one figure remained upon the celestial canvas. I could not see the countenance thereof: hands were clasped tightly over it.
"One more message the Lord permits for earth," said a touching, trembling, praying voice. "Say unto one sinning, that I have prayed unto the Christ that died for him,—that his mother is always praying for her son. Find out his sin, and solace his soul with the knowledge of my prayers."
The angel-wing that had cleaved the sky to let this picture in lifted her upon its pinions, and bore her through the azure, and I saw the great Hand open, as of one casting out many seeds upon the earth. Again an angel-wing swept its way among the clouds, and folds of opaline glow pavilioned the entrance into cerulean heights, and a solemn voice uttered these words out of the great All-Where around me:—
"I am the Lord thy God. I will show thee the way wherein I would have thee to walk. Rest thy soul in my love, and it shall satisfy thee."
With heart and soul and voice, my all of being cried out.—
"Only let Thy hand hold me!"
I awoke with one of those awful heart-exciting starts that come in sleep, such as a new planet might give when first projected into its orbit, before centrifugal and centripetal forces have time to exert their influences. I wonder what it is. Can it be a misstep, in the darkness, into the abyss between the land of waking and the land where there are nor years nor months nor days, where the soul abides in Lethe,—save when some wing troubles the waters for a little while?
I was wearied, with the weariness of one having come from long journeying. I closed my eyes again, and tried to sleep. Chloe looked in at me.
"Have you had a nice sleep, Miss Anna?" she asked, as I moved at her coming.
"I fear not, Chloe," I said; "my head doesn't behave nicely since I awoke. Bring me the bottle of chloroform: it's just there, upon the bureau."
Chloe went hurrying, bustling out of the room, and brought me the chloroform from some other part of the house.
"Where did you bring this from?" I asked; "do you use chloroform?"
"I've a horror of all pisons," said Chloe; "I didn't like to leave this near you; pisons is very bad for young people."
Smiling at Chloe's prudent fears for me, I inhaled a little of the friend, dangerous, and to be trusted only a little way, like the most of friends, and gave it back to Chloe. The honest woman restored it to her pocket in the presence of my two eyes. I had had enough of it, and I let her carry it away,—a victory she enjoyed, I knew, and it cost me nothing, save a smile at her idle fears for me. I did not know then that Chloe had, in her semi-century of life, found a reason for her dread of poisons, among which she evidently promoted chloroform to a high power in the field of active service.
I arose with a new feeling in my existence. I felt that I had been led into a strange avenue of life, constellated with the Southern Cross, which I had never yet seen. It was daylight now. I must await the coming of the hours when God maketh the darkness to curtain round the earth, that He may come down and walk in "the groves and grounds that His own feet have hallowed," that He may look near at what the children of men will to do. I must await this hour, when heaven will be thick with legions of starry eyes, that look down through the empyrean at their God walking among men.
Is it wonderful that they tremble so, when He who saith, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay," seeth so much to awaken the eye that "never slumbereth nor sleepeth" to retribution? If angels tremble so, safe in heavenly heights, how ought poor sinful man to fear for himself, lest that vengeance overtake him, ere he have time to cry, "Have mercy!"
I took up the Holy Bible, and opened it, as I often had done before, with the belief at work within my heart, that whatsoever words my eyes first fell upon would be prophetic to me. I opened and read, "I must work the works of Him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work."
And I, kneeling, prayed, "Show me, my God, what Thou wilt have me to do, or to be! Work Thou within me! Let the one little atom of Thyself that Thou hast given into my keeping be so holily guarded, so sacredly kept, that, at the fast, it may come back a fibre of Thine own Self, and be received into the Great Existence that liveth forever and ever!"
I arose and walked forth into this newness of life, enveloped with a halo of the Divine effluence, in which I hoped forever to dwell,—or if forever had any meaning to me, it was in an existent now.
I passed through Aaron's study, and an awe of reverence led me to pause before the table where he had worked for so many days, worked to make God's salvation seem harmonious with man's free-will; and, in loving all suffering human kind, newness of love for Aaron and for his cool—browed wife came to me: not that I had not loved them long, but there come neap-tides into the oceans of emotion, and work solemnly, awfully, until great frothings from the storm lie all a-tremble on the coasts of the land whither our course tends in the daily, hourly round of life.
I'm very glad Aaron didn't come in just then. It is good to be with God alone, in deep emotions. It never was meant by the Good Spirit for man to behold what is in his brother-man. I think we'd all fly—as far apart as the Universe would give us leave. Just let the effervescence of one life o'erlip the cup and fall into another, and the draught would be a drink of electricity. Who would care to taste it? Not Aaron, I'm sure. And so I shook out this crispy lace of emotion that was rather choking in my throat, and went down to where Chloe watched the elements whence all this chemistry had been evolved.
"I thought ye'd be coming after somewhat to eat," Chloe said; "but I knew, if I asked you, you'd sure say,' No, honey'"; and she went about to "do me good," in her own way.
I heard the afternoon's latest hymn sung in the church whilst I waited. I saw the great congregation come out, and, with divided ways, go each homeward. Sophie had not returned. I wanted to hear from Miss Axtell. Last of all walked Aaron. With bent head and slow musingness of step, he came to his home. I met him at the entrance.
"Are you tired with preaching, Aaron?" I asked.
He looked up, at my unusual accost; and I think there must have been somewhat unwonted about me, he looked at me so long.
"No," he said, "I've had a pleasant field to-day: there are violets, even in my pathways, Anna."
"Sophie's a pansy," I said.
"Sophie's a Sharon rose," spake Aaron.
He looked inquiringly at me, and added,—
"And you, Anna?"
"An aloe, Aaron."
He smiled the least in the world, and said,—
"Had I been asked, instead of being the asker, I should have made answer, 'She's a Japan rose.'"
"Oh, Aaron, no fragrance! that's not complimentary."
"Crush the leaves of heliotrope in the cup, Anna."
I did not understand what he meant, then; perhaps I do not now: some figure of speech from the Orient, I fancy, with a glow of meaning about it visible only to poetic vision. I lost my way, blinded in seeking to penetrate the mystery, and was brought back to Redleaf by two welcome events: the cup Chloe brought, and the letter Aaron gave, with a beseeching of pardon for having forgotten to give it in the morning.
I read my letter, interluding it with little commas of sipping at the cup. It was from my father, very brief, but somewhat stirring. Here it lies before me now.
"My MYRTLE-VINE,—
"I want you at home. I am well; but that is no reason why I should not need your greenness on my walls. Come home, dear child, on the morrow. Do not fail me. You never have; 't would be cruel now, when spring is coming, the very time of hope. Waitingly,
"Your father,
"JULIUS PERCIVAL."
"What puts you in such a turmoil, Anna?" Aaron asked. "What has happened at home?"
I thought he had been duly attending to the state of his own inward hopes and fears, instead of mine. Slightly disconcerted by his gray eyes, the very same that disturb turbulent boys in church-time, I turned away from them, went to the door, and leaning against the side thereof, looking the while up at the sky, I answered,—
"I'm going home on the morrow, Aaron."
"Going home?" he repeated, as if the words had borne an uncertain import. "Pray tell me, what has occurred?"
"It pleases my father to have me there. He gives no reason."
"What will Sophie say? She's hardly seen you since you came, you've been so usefully employed. I hope you have not hurt yourself. I wish you were going back with brighter color in your cheeks."
"There is something in Nature besides mere coloring," I said, and looked for the answer.
It was better than I thought to get.
"What?" he asked.
"Two things, Aaron,—conception and form."
Aaron mused awhile.
"What gave you the idea?" he asked, his musing over.
"Sermons in granite," I answered; and I looked at the sunshine, the afternoon radiance that fell soothingly into the winter-wearied grass lying in the graveyard, waiting like souls for the warmth of love to enlife them.
Aaron said,—
"Sandstone and limestone you mean, Anna."
"Oh, no,—granite. I mean the Axtells."
"I'm glad you've found anything comprehensible enough to call a sermon in them," he answered. "Ill, dying, and in affliction, they are impenetrable to me." And Aaron turned away and went in.