The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, No. 60, October, 1862

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.