The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, No. 61, November, 1862

I arose to walk around to the headstone and see.

"No," he said. "Will you listen to me a little while?"

"If you'll sing for me."

"Sing for you?"—and there was a world of reproach in his meaning. "Is this a place for songs? or am I a man to sing?"

"Why not, Mr. Axtell? Aaron told me that you could sing, if you would; he has heard you."

"I will sing for you," he said, "if, after I am done, you choose to hear the song I sing."

I thought again of Miss Lettie, and put the question, once unheeded, concerning her.

"She is better. Your sister is a charming nurse."

A long quiet ensued; in it came the memory of Dr. Eaton's interest in the young girl's face.

"Is Mr. Axtell an artist?" I asked, after the silence.

"Mr. Axtell is a church-sexton," was the response.

"Cannot he be both sexton and artist?"

"How can he?"

"You have a strange way of telling me that I ought not to question you,"

I said, vexed at his non-committal words and manner.

He changed the subject widely, when next he spoke.

"Have you the letter that you picked up last night?" he asked.

"Yes, Mr. Axtell."

"Give it to me, please."

"Did Miss Lettie commission you to ask?"

"She did not."

"Then I cannot give it to you."

"Cannot give me my sister's letter?"

"It was to me that it was intrusted."

"And you are afraid to trust me with it?"

"I am afraid to break the trust reposed in myself."

Again the black roll of silent thunder gloomed on his brow; as once his sister's eyes had been, his now were coruscant.

"Do you refuse to give it to me?" he demanded.

"I do," I said, "now, and until Miss Lettie says, 'Give.'"

"You've learned the contents, I presume," he said, with untold sarcasm.

"Woman's curiosity digs deeply, when once aroused."

"You've been taught of woman in a sad school, I fear. I'll forgive the faults of your education, Mr. Axtell. Have you any more remarks to me? I'm waiting."

"Do you know the contents of the letter that made Lettie so anxious?"

"You accused me before questioning formerly, or I should have given you truth. I have no knowledge of what is in the letter."

He had resumed his former position, leaning against the monument, where I had mine. He changed it now, drawing nearer for an instant, then went to the side of the grave that he had asked me concerning, kneeled there, laid two hands above it, and said,—

"Letty was right, Miss Anna. God has made you well,—made you after the similitude of her who sleeps underneath this sod. Will you forgive my rudeness?"

And he looked down as I had done, ere he came, into the tangled, matted fibres, then out into the great all-where of air, as if some mysterious presence encompassed him.

Very lowly I said,—

"Forgiveness is of God;" and I remembered the vision that came in my dream. The little voice that steals into hearts crowded with emotions, and tells tiny nerves of wish which way to fly, went whispering through the niches of my mind, "Tell the dream."

Mr. Axtell went back to his monumental resting-place. I said,—

"I have had a wonderful dream to-day;" and I began to tell the opening thereof.

The first sentence was not told when I stopped, suddenly. I could not go on. He asked me, "Why?" I only re-uttered what I felt, that I could not tell it.

"Oh! I have had a dream," he said,—"one that for eighteen years has been hung above my days and woven into my nights,—a great, hopeless woof of doom. I have tried to broider it with gold, I have tried to hang silver-bells upon the drooping corners thereof. I have tried to fold it about me and wear it, as other men wear sorrows, for the sun of heaven and the warmth of society to draw the wrinkled creases out. I have striven to fold it up, and lay it by in the arbor-vitae chest of memory, with myrrh and camphor, but it will not be exorcised. No, no! it hangs firm as granite, stiff as the axis of the sun, unapproachable as the aurora of the North. Miss Percival, could you wear such a vestment in the march of life?"

"Your dream is too mystical; will you tell me what it has done for you?

As yet, I only know what you have not done with it."

"What it has done for me?"—and he went slowly on, thinking half aloud, as if the idea were occurring for the first time.

"It touched me one soft summer day, before the earth became mildewed and famine-stricken. I was a proud, wilful Axtell boy; all the family traits were written with a white-hot pen on me. My will, my great high will, went ringing chimes of what I would do through the house where I was born, where my mother has just died, and I swung this right arm forth into the air of existence, and said, 'I will do what I will; men shall say I am a master in the land.'

"My father sent me away from home for education. I walked with intrepid mind through the course where others halted, weary, overladen, unfit for burden.

"To gain the valedictory oration was one goal that I had said I would attain to. I did. That was nineteen years ago. I came home in the soft, hot, August-time. It was the close of the month. The moon was at its highest flood of light. I was at the highest tide of will-might. That night, if any one had told me I could not do that which I had a wish to accomplish, I would have made my desire triumphant, or death would have been my only conqueror. Oh! it is dreadful to have such a nature handed down from the dark past, and thrust into one's life, to be battled with, to be hewn down at last, unless the lightning of God's wrath cleaves into the spirit and wakes up the volcano, which forever after emits only fire and sulphur. There's yet one way more, after the lightning-stroke comes,—something unutterable, something that canopies the soul with doom, and forever the spirit tries to raise its wings and fly away, but every uplifting strikes fire, until, singed, scorched, burnt, wings grow useless, and droop down, never more to be uplifted."

Mr. Axtell drooped his arms, as if typical of the wings he had described. Borne away by the excitement of his words, he stood straight up against the far-away sky, with the verdure of Norway-evergreens soothingly waving their green around him. There was a magnificence of mien in the man, that made my spirit say—

"The Deity made that man for great deeds."

He glanced down at the grave once more, and resumed:—

"I came home that August night. The prairie of Time rolled out limitless before my imagination. I built pyramids of fame; I laid the foundation of Babel once more, in my heart,—for I said, 'My name shall touch the stars,—my name! Abraham Axtell!' It is only written in earth, ground to powder, to-day."

"An atom of earth's powder may be a star to eyes vast enough to see the fulness that dwells therein, until to angelic vision our planet stands out a universe of starry suns, each particle of dust luminous with eternities of limitless space between," I said, as he, pausing, stooped, and stirred the crisp grass, to outline his name there.

"All things are possible," he murmured, "but the rending of my mantle of doom."

He looked from the tracing of his name to the west.

"The sun is going down once more," he said, and bowed his head, as one does, waiting for pastoral benediction. His eyes were fixed now, as I had seen his sister's held, but his lips poured out words.

"The moonlight sheened the earth, hot and heavy and still, that night. My father, mother, and Lettie were in the home where you have seen sorrow come. Up from the sea came the low, hollow boom of surges rising over the crust of land.

"'To the sea, to the sea, let us go!' I cried; 'it is the very night to tread the hall of moonbeams that leads to palace of pearls!'

"My mother was weary; she would have stayed at home, but I was her pearl of price; she forgot herself. You know the stream that comes down from the mountain and empties into the ocean. It was in that stream that my boat floated, and a long walk away. Lettie left us. Just after we started, I missed her, and asked where she had gone.

"'You'll see soon,' replied my mother; and even as I looked back, I saw Lettie following, with a shadow other than her own falling on the midsummer grass. She did not hasten; she did not seek to come up with us. My mother was walking beside me.

"Thus we came to the river, at the place where it wanders out into the ocean. I saw my boat, my River-Ribbon, floating its cable-length, but never more, and undulating to the throbs of tide that pulsated along the blue vein of water, heralding the motion of the heart outside. We stopped there. The moon was set in the firmament high and fast, as when it was made to rule the night. The hall of light, lit up along the twinkling way of waters, looked shining and beckoning in its wavy ways of grace, a very home for the restless spirit. I wanted to thread its labyrinth of sparkles; I wanted to cool my wings of desire in its phosphorescent dew. I said,—

"'I am going out upon the sea.'

"My mother seemed troubled.

"' Abraham, the boat is unsafe; the water comes through. See! it is half full now'; and she pointed to where it lay in the stream, lined with a mimic portraiture of the endless corridor of moonlight that went playing across the bit of water it held.

"'This is childish, this is folly,' I thought, 'to be stayed on such a spirit mission by a few cups of water in a boat! What shall I ever accomplish in life, if I yield thus?—and without waiting to more than half hear, certainly not to obey, my father's stern 'Stay on shore, Abraham,' I went down the bank, stepped into a bit of a bark, and pushed it into the stream, where my boat was now rocking on the strengthened flow of ocean's rise.

"I came to the boat, bailed out the water with a tin cup that lay floating inside, and calling back to land, 'Go home without me; do not wait,' I took the oars, and in my River-Ribbon, set free from its anchorage, I commenced rowing against the tide. I looked back to the bank I was fast leaving. I saw figures standing there.

"'They'll go home soon,' I said, and I turned my eyes steadfastly toward the sheeny track, all crimpled and curled with fibrous net-work, and rowed on.

"It was a glorious night,—a night when one toss of a mermaid's hair, made visible above the waters, as she flew along the track I was pursuing, would have been worth a life of rowing against this incoming tide.

"You have never tried to row, Miss Anna. You don't know how hard it is to push a boat out of a river when the sea sends up full veins to course the strong arms she reaches up into the land."

For one moment, as he addressed me, his eyes lost their rapt look; they went back to it, and he to his story.

"I saw the fin of a shark dancing in the waves. Sharks were nothing for me. I did not look down into my boat. No, men never do; they look beyond where they are. They're a sorry race, Miss Anna.

"The shark went down after some bit of prey more delicious than I. My will would have been hard for him to manage. I forgot the shark. I forgot the figures standing, waiting on the shore that I had left, ere Lettie and the shadow that walked with her, whatever it was, had come to it. I forgot everything but the phosphorescent dew that would cool my spirit, athirst for what I knew not, ravenous for refreshment, searching for manna where it never grew. The plaudits of yesterday were ringing in my ears, the wavelets danced to their music, my oars kept time to the vanity measure of my beating mind. Still I was not content. I wanted something more. A faded flower, an althea-bud, was still pendent from my coat. I had taken it out from the mass of flowers with which I had been honored. I noticed it now. The moon dewed it over with its yellowness. 'An offering to the sea-nymphs!' I said, and I cast it forth into the wide field. It did not go down, as I had fancied it would. No, it went on, whither the movement of the ceaseless dance of motion carried it. I leaned upon my oars and watched it until it went out of the illuminated track. I was now in the bay, outside the river. I looked once more shoreward. I had threaded the curve of the stream, and could not see around the point. No living human thing was in sight. I was alone with Nature in the night, when she looks down glories, and spreads out fields where we long to walk, and our footsteps are fast in clay. I was not far from shore; it lay dark behind me; it was only before that I could see. As I paused in my rowing to watch the althea-bud set afloat, I heard a tiny splash in the waters.

"'A school of fish flashing up a moment,' I thought, and did not further heed it."

The man looked as if he were now out at sea. He turned his head the least bit: the effect against the sky was fine. He had an attitude of watching and listening.

"I saw an object before me moving on the waters. I looked down. The water was rising in my own boat. I could not heed it just now.

"'In a moment,' I thought, 'I would stop to bail it out.'

"It was a boat that I saw. It moved on so swiftly,—the chime of the oars, tiny oars they were, was so sweetly, softly musical, the very drippling drops fell so like globules of silver, that I forgot my mission. I held my oars and waited. At last—how long it seemed!—I saw the boat come into the bridge of light. I saw fair, golden hair let loose to the sea-breezes that began to blow. I saw two hands striving with the oars. I saw the owner of the hair and of the hands, a young girl, sitting in that boat, coming right across the way where I ought to be going. "'Does she mean to stay me?' I said, and even then my will rose up.

"I bent to the oars; but whilst I had watched her, my boat had been rapidly filling. I was forced to stay. My feet were already in the waves. Right across my pathway she came, close up to my filling boat.

"Her eyes were in the shadow, the moon being behind, but her voice rang out these words:—

"'Mr. Axtell, you're committing a great sin. You're putting your own life in peril. You're killing your mother. I have come to stay you. Will you come on shore?'

"I only looked at her. When I found voice, it was to ask,—

"'Who are you?'

"'Who I am doesn't matter now. Drowning men mustn't ask questions'; and, putting one oar within my boat, now more than half filled, she drew her own to its side, and said,—"'Come in.'

"'Conquered by a woman,' I thought. 'Never!'—and I began to search for the cup, that I might give back to the sea its intruding contents.

"I had left it in the other boat.

"'Conquered by thine own sin,' said the young girl, still holding fast to my boat.

"'Not so easily, fairy, or whoe'er thou art,' I said; for I saw that her boat was well furnished with both bailing-bowl and sponge, and I reached out for them, saying, 'I'm going on the track, farther out.'

"She divined my intent, and quick as was my thought were her two hands; she cast both bowl and sponge into the sea.

"'Mr. Axtell,' she said; 'there's a power in the world greater than your own. The sooner you yield, the less you'll feel the thorns. Your mother, on the shore, is suffering agonies for you. Will you come into this boat, now?'

"The boats had floated around a little, and had changed places. I looked into her eyes; there was nothing there that said, 'I'm trying to conquer you.' There was something in them that I had never seen made visible on earth before,—something radiant, with a might of right, that made me yield. She saw that I was coming. I lifted my feet out of the inches of water that had nearly filled it, put my oars across her tiny boat, and, leaving my own River-Ribbon to its fate, I entered that wherein my preserver had come out. I took the oars from her passive hands; she went to the front of the boat and left me master of the small ship. I turned its prow homeward. My preserver sat motionless, her eyes in the moon, for aught of notice she took of me. I was going toward the river; she bade me keep to the bay-shore, at the right. I obeyed. No more words were spoken until we were almost to land. I saw a little bulb afloat. The boat went near. I put out my oar and drew it in. It was the althea-bud that I had offered to the sea-nymphs.

"'The mermaids refuse my offering,' I said; 'will you accept it?'—and I handed it, dripping with salt-water, to the fairy who sat so silently before me.

"She took it, pointed to a little sheltered cove between two outstanding ledges of rock, and said,—

"'This is boatie's home,—see if you can guide her safely in.'

"The keel grated on the gravelly beach, the boat struck home. The young girl did not wait for me, she landed first, and, handing me a tiny key, said,—

"'Draw my boat up out of reach of the tide, make it fast, please,'—and she sped away into the dreamy darkness of the land, whose shadows the moon did not yet reach, leaving me alone on the shore.

"I obeyed her orders implicitly, and then followed. It was not far from this sheltered cove that I met those with whom I had come. My mother was sitting upon one of the sea-shore rocks, passive, but stony. The young girl had just been speaking to her, she must have been saying that 'I was come back,' but my mother had not heeded. It was only in sight that her reason came, but, oh! such a deluge of gladness came to her when she saw me!

"'I was dying,' she said; 'you've come back to save me, Abraham.'

"My father did not speak then, he lifted my mother from off the stone, and together we three walked home. Lettie lingered, the shadow with her. Was that the young girl? I could not quite discern."

Mr. Axtell stopped in his narration, walked out of the village of Dead

Percivals, and to his mother's new-made grave. He came back soon.

"Miss Percival," he said, "two days ago you said, 'it was the strangest thing that ever you saw man do, to dig his mother's grave.' It was a work begun long ago; the first stroke was that August night; it is nearly nineteen years ago. What do you think of it now?"

"As I thought then, Mr. Axtell."

He stood near me now. He went on.

"That young girl saved my life that night, Miss Percival. Ere we reached home, a violent, sudden thunder-storm came down, with wind and rain, and terrible strokes of lightning. We took shelter in another house than home. Lettie and my preserver followed."

Another long pause came, a gathering together of the forces of his nature, typical of the still hotness of the August night of which he spoke, and after the ominous rest he emitted ponderous words. They came like crackles of rattling electricity. I could taste it.

"Miss Percival, look at me one moment."

I obeyed.

"Do I look like a murderer?"

"I don't know."

"Don't turn your eyes away; do you know what certain words in this world mean?"

"Signal one, and I will answer."

He looked so leonic that I felt the least bit in the world like running away, but decided to stay, as he was just within my pathway of escape.

"Do you know what it is, what it means, when a human soul calls out from its highest heights to another mortal, 'Thou art mine'?"

I do not think he expected an answer, but I answered a round, full, truthful, "No."

"Then let it be the theme of thanksgiving," he said. "That fair young girl is here now. I feel her sacred presence. She does not save me from my imperious will.

"Do you know, Miss Percival," he suddenly resumed, "do you know that you are here with Abraham Axtell, a man who has destroyed two lives: one slowly, surely, through years of suffering; the other, oh! the other—by a flash from God's wrath, and for eighteen years my soul has cried out to her, 'Thou art mine,' and yet there is no response on earth, there can be none? Would you know the name of my preserver that night, come,"—and, bending down, he offered his hand to assist me in rising.

I had no faith in this man's murderousness, whatever he might have done. He led me around to the head-stone of the grave which he had asked my knowledge of. Before I could see, he passed his hand across my eyes: how cold it was!

"When you see the name recorded here," he said, "you will know who saved me that August night, whom my terrible will destroyed, drinking her young life up in one fell cup."

His hand was withdrawn for one moment; my sight was blinded with the cold pressure on my eyes; then I read,—

MARY, DAUGHTER OF JULIUS AND MARY PERCIVAL,

DIED

AUGUST 30th, 1843,

AGED

17 YEARS.

"My sister," I said

"Your sister, whom I killed."

"Ere I was old enough to know her."

"Have you one drop of mercy for him who destroyed your sister?" he asked,—and his haughty will was suffused in pleading.

I thought of the third figure in the celestial picture, as it gazed upon the outstretched hand, and I said,—

"God hath not made me your judge; why should I refuse mercy?"

A flash of intuition came. The young girl, whose portrait was in the house of the Axtells, whose face had been next my mother's, who asked me to do something for her on the earth,—could they all be manifestations of Mary?

"Who painted the portrait in your house?" I asked.

"My will," he said; "I am no artist."

"Is it like Mary?"

"Yes."

"Then I have this day seen her."

He looked up, great tears falling from his eyes, and asked,—

"Where?"

I took him to the gallery of the clouds, and showed him my vision, and repeated the words spoken to me up there, the words for him only,—the others were full of mystery still. He held seemingly no part therein.

"Will a murderer's prayer add one ray of joy to the angel who has come out on the sea to save me,—me, twice saved, oh! why?"—and Mr. Axtell laid his hand upon my head in blessing.

"Twice saved," I said, "that the third salvation may be Christ's."

Solemnly came the "Amen" from his lips, tremulous as the bridge of light he had once passed over.

"Good-bye, Mr. Axtell; I shall fulfil Mary's wish for you, if you will let me;" and I offered him my hand for this second parting: the first had been when he went out alone to his mother's burial.

He looked at it, as he then had done, uncomprehending, and said only,—

"Will I let you?"

He gathered up the cushion, and carried it to the church. I closed the gate that shut in this silent city, and went to the parsonage.

* * * * *

The sun had gone down,—the night was coming on. I found Aaron pacing the verandah with impatient steps. He asked where I had been. I told him.

"It is very well that you are going so soon," he said,—"you are getting decidedly ghostly. Will you take a walk with me?"

I was thankful for the occasion. As might have been expected, Aaron chose the way that led to the solemn old house. I was amused.

"Where are you going?" I questioned.

"To inquire after our early-morning patient," he said.

"And not to see Mrs. Aaron Wilton?"

Aaron looked the least mite retributive, as he said,—

"Anna, there are mysteries in life."

"As, why Aaron was chosen before Moses," I could not help suggesting.

Sophie had had an opportunity of being Mrs. Moses, instead of Mrs. Aaron.

"Sophie's wise; you are not, Anna, I fear."

"Your fear may be the beginning of my wisdom, Aaron: I hope so."

With the exception of a return to the subject on which Aaron had questioned me at breakfast, and on which he elicited no further information from me, nothing of interest occurred until we were within the place that held Sophie's pearly self.

She had been a shower of sunshine, letting fall gold and silver drops through all the house. I saw them, heard their sweet glade-like music rippling everywhere, the moment that I went in.

Mr. Axtell was pacing the hall in the evening twilight, and the little of lamp-lustre that was shed into it.

He looked passively calm, heroically enduring, as we went past him. From his eyes came scintillations of a joy whose root is not in our planet.

He simply said,—

"Mrs. Wilton is with my sister; she will be glad to see you."

We went on. Sophie had made a very nest of repose in the sick-room. Miss Axtell looked so comfortable, so untired of life, so changed from the first glimpse I had had of her, when I thought her face might be such as would be found under Dead-Sea waves. There was no more of the anxious unrest. She spoke to Mr. Wilton, thanking him for the "good gift," she named Sophie, that he had lent to her.