MISS AXTELL'S STORY.
"Alice Axtell was my sister. Eighteen years ago last August-time she was here.
"There has been beauty in the Axtell race; in her it was radiant. It would have been truth to say, 'She is beautiful.'
"I said that it was August-time,—the twenty-seventh day of the month. Alice and I had been out in the little bay outside of Redcliff beach, with your sister. You don't remember her: she was like you. Doctor Percival had given Mary a boat, taught her to row it, and she had that afternoon given Alice a first lesson in the art. The day went down hot and sultry; we lingered on the cooler beach until near evening. We saw clouds lying dark along the western horizon, and that voiceless lightnings played in them. Then we came home. The air was tiresome, the walk seemed endless; still Alice and Mary lingered at the gate of your father's house to say their last words. The mid-summer weariness was over us both, as we reached home. We came up to this room,—our room then. Alice said,—
"'I think I shall go to bed, I'm so tired.'
"She closed the blinds. As she did so, a crash of thunder came.
"'We're going to have a thunder-shower, after all,' she said; 'how quickly it is coming up! Come and see.'
"I looked a moment out. Jet masses of vapor were curling up amid the stars, blotting out, one by one, their brightness from the sky. Alice was always timid in thunder-storms. She shuddered, as a second flash pealed out its thunder, and crept up to me. I put my arms around her, and rested my cheek against her head. She was trembling violently.
"'Lie down, Allie; let me close the other blinds; don't look out any longer.'
"Our mother came in.
"'I came to see if the windows were all down,' she said; 'it will rain in a moment'; and she hurried away, and I heard her closing, one after another, the windows that had been all day open.
"Alice lay for a long time quietly. The storm uprose with fearful might; it shook the house in its passing grasp, and I sat by this table, listening to the music wrought out of the thunderous echoes.
"'Couldn't we have a window open?' Alice asked; 'I feel stifled in here'; and she went across the room and lifted the sash before I was aware.
"I looked around, when I heard the noise. The same instant there came a blinding, dazzling light; then, that awful vacuous rattle in the throat of thunder that tells it comes in the name of Death the destroyer.
"'Oh, Allie, come away!' I screamed.
"In obedience to my wish, she leaned towards me; but, oh, her face! I caught her, ere she fell, even. I sent out the wings of my voice, but no one heard me, no one came. I could not lift her in my arms, so I laid her upon the floor, and ran down.
"'Go to Alice,—the lightning!' was all I could say, and it was enough.
I heard groans before I gained the street.
"My pale, silent sister was stronger than the storm which flapped its wings around me and threatened to take me to its eyry; but it did not; it permitted me to gain Doctor Percival's door. I was dazzled with the lightning, only my brain was distinct with 'its skeleton of woe,' when I found myself in your father's house.
"I could not see the faces that were there. I asked for Doctor Percival. Some one answered, 'He is not come home. What has happened?' and Mary ran forward in alarm.
"'It is lightning! Oh, come!' was all that I could utter; and with me there went out into the pouring rain every soul that was there when I went in.
"'She is dead; there is nothing to be done.'
"Three hours after the stroke, these words came. Then I looked up. Alice, with her little white face of perfect beauty, lay upon that bed. Thunder-storms would never more make her tremble, never awake to fear the spirit gone. It was Doctor Percival from whom these fateful words came. I had had so much hope! In very desperation of feeling, I strove to look up to his face. My eyes were arrested before they reached him.
"'By what?' did you ask?"
Her long silence had incited me to question, and she turned her face to me, and slowly said,—
"By the Lightning of Life.
"Two sisters, in one night,—one unto Death, the other unto Life. Beside Doctor Percival was standing one. I do not know what he was like, I cannot tell you; but, believe me, it is solemnly true, that, that instant, this human being flashed into my heart and soul. I saw, and felt, and have heard the rolling thunder that followed the flash to this very hour. It was very hard, over my Alice. If I had only been she, how much, how much happier it would have been!—and yet it must have been wiser. She could not have endured to the end. She would have failed in the bitterness of the trial.
"My Alice! I am devoutly thankful that you are safe in heaven!"—and for a moment the hands were lifted up from the treasured packet; they closed over it, and she went on.
"Alice was wrapped up in earth. In the moment when the first fold of the clod-mantle, that trails about us all at the last, fell protectingly over her, I was in that condition of superlative misery that cries out for something to the very welkin that sends down such harsh hardness; and I hurried my eyes out of the open grave, only to find them again arrested by the same soul that had stood beside Doctor Percival and Alice in her death. They said something to me, kinder than ever came out of the blue vault, and yet they awoke the fever of resistance. I would have no thought but that of Alice. What right had any other to come in then and there?
"September came. Its days brought my sorrow to me ever anew. The early dew baptized it; the great sun laid his hot hand upon its brow and named it Death, in the name of the Mighty God; and the evening stars looked down on me, rocking Alice in my soul, and singing lamentful lullabies to her, sleeping, till such time as Lethean vapors curled through the horizon of my mind, and hid its formless shadows of suffering.
"Mary Percival was Alice's best friend; as such, she came to comfort and to mourn with me. One day, it was the latest of September's thirty, Mary lured me on to the sea-shore, and into her small boat once more. Little echoes of gladness sprang up from the sea; voices from Alice's silence floated on the unbroken waves.
"'You look a little like yourself again; I'm so glad to see it!' Mary said. 'There comes Mr. McKey. I wonder what brings him here.'
"I looked up, and saw, slowly walking on to the point at which Mary was securing her boat, the possessor of the existence that had come into mine. There was no way for me to flee, except seaward; and of two suicides I chose the pleasanter, and I stayed.
"'Who is it, Mary?' I had time to question, and she to answer.
"'It is Bernard McKey; he has come to study medicine in papa's office; he came the night Alice died.'
"He was too near to permit of questioning more, and so I stood upon the seashore and saw my fate coming close.
"Mary simply said, 'Good evening,' to him, followed by the requisite introductory words that form the basis of acquaintance.
"'I think Miss Axtell and I scarcely need an introduction,' he said; nevertheless he looked the pleasure it had strewed into his field, and guarded it, as a careful husbandman would choicest seed.
"He asked the style of question which monosyllables can never answer, to which responding, one has to offer somewhat of herself; and all the time of that sombre autumn, there grew from out the chasm of the lightning-stroke luxuriant foliage. I gave it all the resistance of my nature, yet I knew, as the consumptive knows, that I should be conquered by my conqueror. It was only the old story of the captive polishing chains to wear them away; and yet Mr. McKey was simply very civil and intentionally kind, where he might have been courteously indifferent. Abraham was away when Bernard McKey came to Redleaf. For more than twelve months this terrible something had been working its power into my soul. Yet we were not lovers,"—and Miss Axtell made the pronunciamiento as if she held the race mentioned in utmost veneration. "Day by day brought to me new reasons why Bernard McKey must be unto me only a medical student in Doctor Percival's office, and the stars sealed all that the day had done; whilst no night of sky was without a wandering comet, whereon was inscribed, in letters that flashed every way, the sentence that came with the lightning-stroke; even storms drowned it not; winter's cold did not freeze it. Verily, little friend, I know that God had put it into Creation for me, and yet there seemed His own law written against it"; and Miss Axtell's tones grew very soft and tremulously low, as she said,—
"Mr. McKey had faults that could not, existing in action, make any woman happy: do you think happiness was meant for woman?"
She waited my answer in the same way that she had done when she was ill and asked if I liked bitters concealed. She waited as long without reply. The pause grew oppressive, and I spanned it by an assurance of individual possessive happiness.
"Anemones never know which way the wind blows, until it comes down close to the ground," she said; "but souls which are on bleak mountain-summits must watch whirlwinds, poised in space, and note their airy march. So I saw, clearly cut into the rock of the future, my own face, with all the lines and carvings wrought into it that the life of Bernard McKey would chisel out, and I only waited. I might have waited on forever, for Mr. McKey had not cast one pebbly word that must send up wavy ripples from deep spirit-waters; he only wandered, as any other might have done, upon the shore of my life, along its quiet, dewy sands, above its chalk-cliffs, and by the side of its green, sloping shores. He never questioned why rose and fell the waves; he never went down where 'tide, the moon-slave, sleeps,' to find the foundations of my heart's mainland. I had only seen him standing at times, as one sees a person upon a ship's deck, peering off over Earth's blue ocean-cheek, simply in mute, solemn wonder at what may be beyond, without one wish to speed the ship on.
"It might have been forever thus, but Abraham came home. He is my brother, you know. If he made me suffer, he has been made to suffer with me. Bernard McKey was Doctor Percival's favorite. He made him his friend, and was everything to him that friend could be. I cannot tell you my story without mention of my brother, he has been so woven into every part of it. An unaccountable fancy for the study of medicine developed itself in his erratic nature soon after he came home; and he relinquished his brilliant prospects and devoted himself to the little white office near Doctor Percival's house, with Bernard McKey for his hourly companion. The two had scarce a thought in common: one was impulsive, prone to throw himself on the stream of circumstance, to waft with the wind, and blossom with the spring; the other was the great mountain-pine, distilling the same aroma in all atmospheres, extending fibrous roots against Nature's granite, whenceever it comes up. How could the two harmonize? They could not, and a time of trial came. We knew, before it came, why Doctor Percival's little white office held Abraham so many hours in the day. It was because the Mountain-Pine found in the moss of Redleaf the sweet Trailing-Arbutus."
She asked me if I knew the flower; and when I answered her with my words of love of it, she said, "she had always thought it was one of Eden's own bits of blossomry, that, missing man from the hallowed grounds, crept out to know his fate, and, finding him so forlornly unblest, had sacrificed its emerald leaves, left in the Garden, and, creeping into mosses, lived, waiting for man's redemption. We used to call Mary 'The Arbutus,' and it was pleasant to see the great rough branches of Abraham's nature drooping down, more and more, toward the pink-and-white pale flower that looked into the sky, from a level as lofty as the Pine's highest crown. Abraham goes out to search for the type of Mary every spring"; and rising, she brought to me the waxen buds that were yet unopened.
I took them in my hands, with the same feeling that I would have done a tress of Mary's hair, or a fragment that she had handled. I think Miss Axtell divined this feeling; for she cautiously opened the door leading into her brother's room, and finding that he was not there, she bade me "come and see." It was Mary's portrait that once more I looked upon; framed in a wreath of the trailing-arbutus, it was hanging just where he could look at it at night, as I my strange tower-key.
We went back. Miss Axtell closed the sash; she was looking weary and pale. I was afraid she would suffer harm from the continued recital. She said "No," to my fear,—that "it must all be spoken now, once, and that forever,"—and I listened unto the story's end.
"One year had passed since Alice's death before Abraham's coming. Another had almost fled before the eventful time when I began to feel the weight of my cross. I know not how it came to Abraham's knowledge that Bernard McKey felt in his soul my presence. I only know that he came home one night, with a storm of rage whitening his lips and furrowing his forehead. He came up here, where I was sitting. I had watched his figure coming through tree-openings from Doctor Percival's house, and mingled with the memories of the fair young girl whom I had seen dead by lightning were fears for Mary Percival. For several days she had been ill, and I knew that Abraham felt anxious; therefore I did not wonder at his hasty coming in and instant seeking of me. He came quite close. He wound his face in between me and the darkening sky; he whispered hoarsely,—
"'Do you care for him?'
"'What is it, Abraham?' I asked, startled by his words and manner, but with not the faintest idea of the meaning entering in with his words.
"'Bernard McKey, is he anything to you?'
"'You've no right to question me thus,' I said.
"'And you will not answer me?'
"'I will not, Abraham.'
"The next morning Abraham was gone. He had not told me of his intended absence. He had only left a note, stating the time of his return.
"It was a week ere he came. Mary had not improved in his absence, yet no one deemed her very ill.
"I dreaded Abraham's coming home, because he had left me in silent anger; but how could I have replied to his question otherwise than I did? No one, not Mr. McKey himself, had asked me; and should I give him, my brother, my answer first?
"Lazily the village-clock swung out the hours that summer's afternoon.
The stroke of three awakened me. I had not seen Mary that day.
"'I would go and see her,' I decided.
"'She was sleeping, the dear child,' Chloe said. 'She would come and tell me when she was awake, if I would wait.'
"I said that I would stay awhile, and I wandered out under the shade of the great whispering trees, to wait the waking hour.
"I remember the events of that afternoon, as Mary and Martha must have remembered the day on which Lazarus came up from the grave unto them.
"The air was still, save a humming in the very tree-tops that must have been only echoes tangled there, breezes that once blew past. The long grape-arbor at the end of the lawn looked viny and cool. I walked up and down under the green archway, until Chloe's words summoned me.
"Mary was 'better,' she said; 'a few days, and she should feel quite strong, she hoped'; but she looked weary, and I only waited a little while, until her father and mother came in, and then I went.
"Mr. McKey was sitting in the door of the little white office. He came out to meet me ere I had reached the street,—asked if I was on my way home.
"I said 'Yes,' with the lazy sort of languor born of the indolence of the hour.
"'Have you energy enough for a walk to the sea-shore?' he asked.
"It had been my wish that very day. I had not been there since Mary's illness. I hesitated in giving an answer. Abraham would be home at sunset.
"'Don't go, if it is only to please me,' he said.
"'I am going to please myself,' I answered; 'only I wish to be at home on Abraham's coming.'
"That afternoon, Bernard McKey for the first time told me of himself, and what the two years in Redleaf had done for him. One month more, and he should leave it. He put into words the memory of that first look across the dead. He talked to me, until the sea lost its sunlight sheen,—until I no longer heard its beat of incoming tide,—until I forgot the hour for Abraham's coming. It was he who reminded me of it. Once more we paced the sands, already sown with our many footsteps, that the advancing waters would soon overwhelm. After that we went village-ward. The gloaming had come down when we reached home.
"'Abraham must have been an hour here,' I thought, as alone I went in.
"He met me in the hall.
"'Where have you been, Lettie?' was his greeting.
"'On the sands.'
"'Not alone?'
"'No, Abraham; Bernard McKey has been with me.'
"'By what right?' he demanded, with that mighty power of voice that is laid up within him for especial occasions.
"'By the right that I gave him, by the right that is his to walk with me,' I said; for I grew defiant, and felt a renewal of strength, enough to tell Abraham the truth.
"Don't start so, Anemone," she said to me. "You think defiance unwomanly, and so do I; but it was for once only, and I felt that my brother had no right to question me.
"But one word came from his lips, as he confronted me there, with folded arms; it was,—
"'When?'
"'This very afternoon, Abraham.'
"Mother came out at the moment. She saw the cloud on Abraham's brow even in the dim light. She asked, 'What is it?' and Abraham answered us both at the same time.
"He had been to the home of Bernard McKey. He proved to my mother's utmost satisfaction that her daughter had no right to care for one like Bernard McKey. He did not know the right that came on that night almost two years before. He saw that his proofs were idle to me; but he said 'he had another, one that I would accept, for I was an Axtell.'
"'Yes, Abraham, I am an Axtell, and I shall prove my right to the name, come what will'; and without waiting to hear more, I glided into the darkness up-stairs.
"For a long time I heard mother and Abraham talking together; it seemed as if they would never cease. At last, mother sent up to know if I was not coming to take my tea. I had forgotten its absence till then. I went down. A half-hour later, during which time a momentous mist of silence hung over the house, I heard steps approaching. You know that it was summer time, and the windows were all thrown open, after the heat of the day. I had been wondering where every one was gone. I recognized both of the comers, as their footsteps fell upon the walk, but I heard no words. Oh, would there had been none to come! I heard Abraham go on up the stairs, and knew that he was searching for me. I knew who had come in with him, and I arose from my concealment in the unlighted library, and went into the parlor. It was Mr. McKey who sat there.
"'What is it?' I asked,—for a gnome of ill was walking up and down in my brain, as we had walked on the sands so few hours before.
"'What is it? I don't know,' he said. 'Your brother asked me to come over for a few minutes.'
"Evidently Abraham had not shown him one coal of the fire that burned under his cool seeming. That is the way with these mountain pine-trees: one never knows how deep into volcanic fires their roots are plunged.
"'Something has happened,' I whispered. 'Whatever comes, bear it bravely.'
"He laughed, a low, rippling laugh, like the breaking up of ever so many songs all at once; and the notes had not floated down to rest, when mother and Abraham came in. Mr. McKey arose to greet my mother. She stood proudly erect, her regal head unbending, her eyes straight on, into an endless future, in which he must have no part,—that I saw. Whatever he discerned there, he, too, stood before her and my brother. Abraham handed me a letter, saying, 'Read that, for your proof.'
"And I read. The letter bore the signature of Bernard McKey. The date was the night of Alice's death. The words descriptive of the scene chiselled into my brain were on that fair paper-surface; and there were others, words which only one man may write to one woman. I read it on to the end.
"'You are right, Abraham,' I said, 'and I thank you for my proof'; and without one word for the pale, handsome face that stood beseechingly between me and the great future, through which I gazed, I went forth alone into the starry night. Anywhere, to be alone with God, leaving that trio of souls in there; and as I fled past the windows, I heard my mother speak terrible words to one that was, yes, even then, myself. Some angel must have come down the starry way to guide me; for, without seeking it, without consciousness of whither I fled, I found myself near the old church, where, from the day of my solemn baptism within its walls, I had gone up to the weekly worship. I crept up close to the door. In the shadow there no one would see me; and so, upon the hard stones, I writhed through the anguish of the fire and iceberg that made war in my heart.
"Then came unto me the old inheritance, the gift of towering pride; and I said unto myself, 'No one shall think I sorrow; no one shall know that an Axtell has sipped from a poisoned cup; no one shall see a leaf of myrtle in my garden of life'; and from off the friendly granite steps that had received me in my hour of bitterness, I went back to my home.
"What, could have happened there, that I had not been missed? Father was absent from Redleaf. Bernard McKey was coming down the walk. I hid in the shrubbery, and let him pass. Oh, would that I had spoken to him, then, there! It would have saved so much misery on the round globe!
"But I did not. I stood breathless until he entered Doctor Percival's house; then I waited a moment to determine my own course; I wanted to gain my room undiscovered. I saw the same figure come out; I knew it by the light that the open door threw around it; and a moment later, in the still air,—I knew the sound, it was the unlocking of the little white office. Then I stole in, and fled to my refuge. No one had discovered my absence.
"The night went by. I did not sleep. I did not weep,—oh, no! it was not a case for tears; there are some sorrows that cannot be counted out in drops; a flood comes, a great freshet rises in the soul, and whirls spirit, mind, and body on, on, until the Mighty Hand comes down and lifts the poor wreck out of the flood, and dries it in the sun of His absorption.
"It was morning at last. Slowly up the ascent, to heights of glory, walked the stars, waving toward earth, as they went, their wafting of golden light, and sending messages of love to the dark, round world, over which they had kept such solemn watch,—sending them down, borne by rays of early morning; and still I sat beside the window, where all through the night I had suffered. My mother and Abraham had sought to see me, but I had answered, with calm words, that I chose to be alone; and they had left me there, and gone to their nightly rest."
Miss Axtell hid her face a little while; then, lifting it up, she went to the window so often mentioned, beckoned me thither, pointed to the house where my life had commenced, to a door opening out on the eastern side, and said,—
"I wish you to look at that door one moment; out of it came my doom that midsummer's morning. Light had just gained ascendency over darkness, when I saw Chloe come out. I knew instantly that something had happened there. The poor creature crept out of the house,—I saw her go,—and kneeling down behind that great maple-tree, she lifted up her arms to heaven, and I heard, or thought I heard her, moaning. Then, whilst I watched, she got up, looked over at our house, from window to window; once more she raised her hands, as if invoking some power for help, and went in.
"I brushed back the hair that my fingers had idly threaded in unrest, looked one moment, in the dim twilight of morning, to see what changes my war-fare had wrought, then, cautiously, breathlessly, for fear of awakening some one, I went out. The night-dew lay heavy on the lawn. I heeded it not. I knew that trouble had come to Doctor Percival's house. I went to the door that Chloe had opened. No one seemed awake; deep stillness brooded over and in the dwelling. Could I have been mistaken? Whilst I stood in doubt whether to go or stay, there came a long, sobbing moan, that peopled the dwelling with woe.
"It came from Mary's room. Thither I went. There stood Doctor and Mrs.
Percival beside Mary, and she—was dead.
"I shudder now, as I did then, though eighteen years have rolled their wheels of misery between,—shudder, as I look in memory into that room again, and see your father standing in the awful grief that has no voice, see your mother lifting up her words of moaning, up where I so late had watched the feet of stars walking into heaven. I don't know how long it was, I had lost the noting of time, but I remember growing into rigidness. I remember Bernard McKey's wild, wretched face in the room; I remember hearing him ask if it was all over. I remember Abraham's coming in; I felt, when through his life the east-wind went, withering it up within him. I do not know how I went home. I asked no questions. Mary was dead; she had gone whither Alice went. It seemed little consolation to me to ask when or how she died.
"Father came home that day. Mother forgot me for Abraham: love of him was her life. Father did not know, no one had told him, the events of the night before; he thought me sorrowing for Mary, and so I was; my grief seemed weak and small before this reality of sorrow.
"It was late in the day, and I was trying to get some sleep, when Chloe sent a request to see me. I had not seen her since I knew why she had hid her suffering behind the tree in the morning. I saw that she had something to say beside telling me of Mary; for she looked cautiously around the room, as if fearing other ears might be there to hear.
"'Oh! oh! Miss Lettie,' she said, 'I stayed with Miss Mary last night. I must have gone to sleep when she went away; but I'm afraid, I'm afraid it wasn't the sickness that killed her.'
"'What then? what was it, Chloe?' I asked, whilst the tears fell fast from her eyes.
"'Doctor Percival gave her some medicine just afore he went to bed, and she said she was "very sick"; she said so a good many times, Miss Lettie, afore I went to sleep.'
"'You don't think it was the medicine that killed her?'—for a horrible thought had come in to me.
"'I hope not, but I'm afraid'; and with a still lower, whispering tone, and another frightened look about the room, Chloe took from under her shawl a small cup. She held it up close to me, and her voice penetrated with its meaning all the folds of my thought,—'Chloe's afraid Miss Mary drank her death in here.'
"'Give it to me,' I said; and I snatched at the cup. Catching it from her, I looked into it. The draught had been taken; the sediment only lay dried upon it.
"'You think so, Chloe? How could it have been? You say Doctor Percival gave it to her?'
"She said that 'Mr. Abraham had been in to see her a little while,—only a few moments. Something was the matter with him. Miss Mary talked, just a few words; what they were she did not hear,—she was in the next room,—only, when he went away, she heard her say, "Don't do it; you may be wrong, and then you'll be sorry as long as you live"; and then Mr. Abraham shut the door heavy-like and was gone. Afterwards Doctor Percival came up,—said Miss Mary must sleep, she had more fever; asked her so many kind questions, and was just going down to go to the office for something to give her, when he met Master McKey coming in. I heard my master ask him to go for it. And I doesn't know anything more, Miss Lettie. I came to tell you.'
"I asked her 'if she had told any one else? if any one had seen the cup?'
"She said, 'No'; and I made her promise me that she would never mention it, never speak of it to any living soul.
"She promised, and she has kept her promise faithfully to this day."
I thought, at this pause in the story, of Chloe's hiding chloroform from me.
"I had myself seen Bernard McKey go out to the office that night. Had he given poison to Mary Percival? And with the question the hot answer came, 'Never!—he did not do it!'
"Chloe went, leaving the cup with me.
"I knew that I must see Bernard. How? The household were absorbed in Abraham. His condition perilled his reason. Doctor Percival came over every hour to see him, and I was sure that his hair whitened from time to time. It was terrible to hear Abraham declaring that he had killed Mary,—that he might have granted her request. And as often as his eyes fell upon me, his words changed to, 'It was for you that I did it,—for my sister!' And whilst all sorrowed and watched him, I sought my opportunity. 'It would never come to me,' I thought, 'I must go to it'; and under cover of looking upon the face of Mary, I went out to seek Bernard.
"We met before I reached the house; we should have passed in silence, had I not spoken. It was the same hour as that in which we had come from the sands the night before. What a horrible lifetime had intervened! I said that 'I had some words for him.' He stood still in the air that throbbed in waves over me. He was speechlessly calm just then.
"'I expected no words after my judgment,' at length he said,—for I knew not how to open my terrible theme; 'will you tell me on what evidence you judge?'
"What a trifle then seemed any merely human love in the presence of
Death! I was almost angry that he should once think of it.
"'It is something of more importance than the human affection with which you play,' I said. 'It is a life, the life of Mary Percival, that last night went out,—and how? Was it by this cup?'—and I handed the cup to him.
"He looked simple amazement, as he would have done, had it been a rock or flower; he did not offer to take it,—still I held it out.
"'Will you examine the contents,' I asked, 'and report to me the result?'
"'Certainly I will, Miss Axtell,' he said; and with it he walked to the office.
"I watched him through the window. I saw him coolly apply various tests.
The third one seemed satisfactory.
"He came to the door. I was very near, and went in
"'This is nothing Miss Mary had,—it is poison,' he said.
"He was innocent; I knew it in the very depth of my soul. How could I tell him the deed his hand had done? But I must, and I did. I told him how Chloe had brought the cup to me. When I had done, he said,—
"'You believe this of me?'
"I answered,—
"'The cup is now in your hand; judge you of its work'; and I told him how I had seen him come out the night before,—that I was in the shrubbery when he went to the office.
"The words of his answer came; they were iron in my heart, though spoken not to me.
"'O my God, why hast Thou let me do this?' he cried, and went past me out of the little white office,—out, as I had done, into the open air, in my sorrow, the night before.
"I would not lose sight of him; I followed on; and, as I went, I thought I heard a rustling in the leaves. A momentary horror swept past me, lest some one had been watching,—listening, perhaps,—but I did not pause. I must know how, where, Bernard would hide his misery. It was not quite dark; I could not run through the night, as I had done before; I must follow on at a respectable pace, stop to greet the village-people who were come out in the cool of the evening, and all the while keep in view that figure, hastening, for what I knew not, but on to the sands, whilst those whom I met stayed me to ask how Mary Percival died. I passed the last of the village-houses. There was nothing before me now but Nature and this unhappy soul. I lost sight of him; I came to the sands; I saw only long, low flats stretching far out,—beyond them the line of foam. The moon was not yet gone; but its crescent momently lessened its light. I went up and down the shore two or three times, going on a little farther each time, meeting nothing,—nothing but the fear that stood on the sands before me, whichever way I turned. It bent down from the sky to tell me of its presence; it came surging up behind me; and one awful word was on its face and in its voice. I remember shutting my eyes to keep it out; I remember putting my fingers into my ears to still its voice. I was so helpless, so alone to do, so threadless of action, that—I prayed.
"People pray in this world from so many causes,—it matters not what or how; the hour for prayer comes into every life at some time of its earthly course, whether softly falling and refreshing as the early rain, or by the north-wind's icy path. Mine came then, on the sands; my spirit went out of my mortality unto God for help,—solely because that which I wanted was not in me, not in all the earth.
"I stooped down to see if the figure I sought was outlined on the rim of sky that brightened at the sea's edge: it was not there, not seaward. I tried to call: the air refused the weight of my voice; it went no farther than the lips, out of which it quivered and fell: I could not call. I took the dark tide-mark for my guide, and began searching landward. I went a little way, then stopped to look and listen: no sight, no sound. The long sedge-grass gave rustling sighs of motion, as I passed near, and disturbed the air for a moment. A night-bird uttered its cry out of the tall reeds. The moon went down. The tide began to come in; with it came up the wind. The memory of Alice, of Mary, walked with and did not leave me, until I gained the little cove wherein Mary's boat lay secure. The tide had not reached it. Mary's boat! I remember thinking—a mere drop of thought it was, as I hurried on, but it held all the animalcules of emotion that round out a lifetime—that Mary never more would come to unloose the bound boat, never more in it go forth to meet the joys that wander in from unknown shores. I saw the boat lying dark along the water's edge. 'I would run down a moment,' I thought, 'run down to speak a word of comfort, as if it were a living thing.'
"Mary's boat was not alone; it had a companion. I thought it was
Bernard. I drew near and spoke his name. Doctor Percival answered me.
I do not think that he recognized my voice. He turned around with a
startled movement, for I was quite close, and asked, 'Who is it?'
"I did not answer. I turned and fled away into the darkness, across the sands, that answer no footsteps with echoes. It was a comfort to feel that he was out there, between me and the boundless space of sea.
"When I draw near the confines of Hereafter's shore, I think I shall feel the same kind of comfort, if some soul that I knew has gone out just before me; it will cape the boundary-line of 'all-aloneness.'"
Miss Axtell must have forgotten that she was talking to me, as she retraced her steps and thoughts of that night, for, with this thought, she seemed to "wander out into silence."
Katie brought her back by coming up to say that "Mr. Abraham was waiting to know if she would go out a little while, it was so fine."
Miss Axtell said that "she would not go,—she would wait."
Katie went to carry the message. Miss Axtell wandered a little. Between her words and memories I picked up the thread for her, and she went on before me.
"I took the direction of the village-pier, when I fled from Doctor Percival. An unusual number of boats had come in. I heard noises amid the shipping. At any other time I should have avoided the place. Now I drew near.
"Two men were slowly walking down the way. I heard one of them ask, 'Do you know who it is?'
"The other replied, 'No, I never saw him before; we had better watch him; he went on in a desperate way. I've seen it before, and it ended in'——
"He did not finish, although I was thirsting for the words; they both seemed arrested suddenly, then started on, and I watched whither they went.
"There was now no light, save that of the stars. I could scarcely keep them in sight. I went nearer,—hid myself behind one of the posts on the pier. They had gone upon one of the boats,—that which lay farthest down the stream. It was Bernard that they watched. I found him with my eyes before they reached where he stood. A boy came singing from his daily work; he passed close beside me, and, as he went, he beat upon the post with a boat's oar. I waited until I could come from my hiding-place without his seeing; then I went after him. I sent him for 'the gentleman that had gone down there,' telling him to say that 'a lady wished to see him.'
"Bernard came. I told him that I had been searching for him on the sands,—that I wanted to talk to him; and he and I walked on again, village-ward, as we had done on the last night. It was very hard to begin, to open the cruel theme,—to say to this person, who walked with folded arms, and eyes that I knew had no external sight, what I thought; but I must. When I had said all that I would have said to any other human soul, under like darkness, he lighted up the night of his sin with strange fires. He poured upon his family's past the light hereditary. Abraham had been true in his statements. Bernard McKey was not well-born. He told me this: that his father had been a destroyer of life; that God had been his Judge, and had now set the seal of the father's sin into the son's heart. Oh, it was fearful, this tide of agony with which that soul was overwhelmed! He pictured his deed. Abraham had found out the crime of his father, had cruelly sent it home on his own head, had said that a murderer's son could never find rest in the family of Axtell, had sent him forth, with hatred in his heart, to work out in shadow the very deed his father had wrought in substance, to destroy Mary Percival, the child of his best friend, and to strike from off the earth Abraham's arch of light. It was wonderful: a chance, a change, had killed Mary.
"Doctor Percival had that very afternoon, while we were gone, wrought changes in the little white office; hence the fatal mistake. Bernard had gone in, taken up a bottle from the very place where the article wanted had stood for two years, poured its contents into the cup, carried it in, and no hand stayed him. He was too blinded by suffering to see for himself. Doctor Percival's hand gave the draught, and Mary was dead. What should be done?
"'What shall I do? What would you have me to do?' asked Bernard.
"We were come to the church on our way. I stayed my steps, and thought of the letter that Abraham had given me; it came up for the first time since I knew of Mary's death. But I did not allude to it. I could not acknowledge, even to him, that I knew another had received the words that should have been spoken only to me; and sincerely I told him that he must go away, at once and for always,—that the deed his hand had unknowingly done must be borne in swift, solemn current through his life,—that he must live beside it until it reached the ocean to come: it could do no good to reveal it; it could arouse only new misery; it seemed better that it should be written on marble and in memory that 'God took her.'
"He took up the silence that came after my words, and filled it with an echoing question:—
"'If I go out, and bear this deed, as you say bear it, in silence and in suffering, will you,—you, to whom God has given a good inheritance, who know not the rush and roar of any evil in your soul, whose spring rises far back in ancestral natures,—will you stand between me and all this that I must bear? Will you be my rock, set here, in this village? May I come back at times, and tell you how I endure? If you will promise me this, I will go.'
"Why should he come to me? why not to the other one, to whom he told of Alice's death two years ago? He did not know that pride was the ever vernal sin of my race, that I had it to battle with. But I conquered, and promised I would help him, since it was all I had to do. A few more words were spoken; he was to write to me when he would come; and we parted, there, at the old church-door,—he promising to live, to try and make atonement for his sin,—I to hold his deed in keeping, alone of all the world, save Chloe, and in her I had trust. I did not see him again: he left the following day.
"You remember that I heard a rustling in the shrubbery, when Bernard fled from the office. It was my mother, watching me. She had seen and heard sufficient to convince her of what had been done. Mothers are endowed with wonderful intuitive perception. Abraham had been her one love from his childhood. Now came a strife in her nature. Bernard McKey had wronged Abraham, had taken the light out of his life, and a great longing for his punishment came up. How should it be effected? She believed that open judgment would awaken resistance in me,—that I would stand beside him then, in the face of all the world, and recompense him for his punishment,—I, an Axtell, her daughter. So she came to me with a compromise. She told me that she had heard what had been said,—that she knew the deed, had seen the cup,—that Abraham, knowing the act, would never forgive it, though done, as she acknowledged, in error; and she, my mother, to save the family, made conditions. Her knowledge should remain hers only, if Bernard McKey should remain such as he now was to me,—never to be more.
"'An easy condition,' I thought, 'since the letter Abraham gave'; and I said the two words to my mother,—
"'I promise.'
"'My daughter,' was her only answer; and she touched her child's forehead with two burning lips, and went away to watch Abraham through the night,—watch him tread the dark way, without Mary.
"Where now was the Mountain-Pine? higher than the Arbutus?
"Our mother had her trial. When she heard Abraham reproaching himself with having brought on a return of fever by refusing Mary's wish, of having been the means of her death, I know her heart ached to say, 'It was not you, Abraham, it was Bernard McKey who killed her.' But no, she did not; family pride towered above affection, and she was true to her promise, true to the last. She died with the secret hers.
"Bernard McKey's absence was much wondered at, although it began only one month earlier than the appointed time. Doctor Percival mourned his going as if he had been his son; he spoke to me of it. Mary was buried. I remember your little face on her burial-day; it was bright, and unconscious of the sad scene"; and Miss Axtell now sought to look into it, but it was not to be seen. I think she must have forgotten, at times, that it was to Mary's sister that she was telling her story. She waited a little, until I asked her to "tell me more."
"The face of that Autumn grew rosy, wrinkled, and died upon Winter's snowy bed; and yet I lived, and Abraham, and Bernard McKey perhaps,—I knew not. The year was nearly gone since Mary died, and no ray of knowledge had come from him. Every day I re-read those words written to some fair woman-soul, until after so many readings they began to take root in my heart. I found it out one day, and I began vigorously to tear them up. It was on the evening of the same day that Abraham came home: he had been away for several weeks. He left, with intentional seeming, a paper where I should see it; he had read with almost careless eyes what mine fell upon, for he believed that Bernard McKey was forgotten by me; he had kindly forborne to mention his name, since that one night wherein all our misery grew. I found there what I believed to be his death: the name and age were his own; the place was nothing,—he might be anywhere. My mother saw it, and a gladness, yes, a gladness came into her face: I watched its coming up. She thought she might now tell Abraham; but no, I held her to the promise. It had but two conditions: mine was to be perpetual; hers must be so.
"After that I grew pitiful for the poor heart that must have been made sorrowful by these words that never more would come into it, and so I picked up the trembling little roots that had been cast out, put them back into the warm soil, and let them grow: they might join hers now, for together they could twine around immortal bowers; and, as they grew, a great longing came up to go out and find this woman-soul who had drawn out such words from lips sealed forever. But no chance happened: no one came to our quiet village from the remote town in which she was when these words, that now were become mine, were penned."