"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.