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

Miss Lettie called me to her. She wished to say something to me only. I bent my head to listen.

"I am ill," she said,—"better just now, but I feel that it will be weeks before I shall leave this place; it is good for me to be here, but this troubles me,—I don't like to think that I must take care of it; will you guard it sacredly for me?—and the letter of last night, add it to the others."

She gave me a small package, carefully closed, and I saw that it was sealed.

From her manner, I fancied it was to be known to me alone, and, concealing it, I said,—

"I will keep it securely for you."

Sophie came playfully up, and said,—

"Now, Anna, I'm empress here; no secret negotiations to overthrow my power."

"I'm just going to say good-bye to Miss Axtell," I said, "for I am going home to-morrow;" and I told her of the letter from father, that I had received.

Sophie got up a charming storm of regret and wrath, neither at my father for sending for me, nor at myself for going, but for the mysterious third personality that created the need for my departure.

Miss Lettie seemed to regret my coming absence still more than Sophie.

"I wanted you so much," she said; "if I had only had you long ago, life would have been changed," she whispered again, as Sophie turned to listen to some pretty nonsense that the grave minister poured into her ears through those windings of softly purplish hair.

"Will you make me one promise, only one?" said Miss Axtell.

I hesitated,—for promises are my religious fear, I do not like to make promises. They are like mile-stones to a thunder-storm. They note distances when the spirit is anxious only to cycle time and space.

She looked so earnest, so persuasive, that I yielded, and said that "consistency should be my only requirement."

"It is not so immensely inconsistent, my Anemone; it is only that I want you to come back again. Two weeks will satisfy your father. Will you come to me on the twenty-fifth of March?"

"What for?" with my awkward persistency in questioning, I asked.

"Why, because I want to see you,—I wish you to write a letter for me,—and more than all, I want an advocate."

I, smiling at the triplet of occasions, promised to come, if consistent.

Sophie was going home. She came up to drop a few last cheery words, to fall into the coming hours of night.

"You see how you've spoiled me by kindness, Mrs. Wilton," Miss Lettie said. "I presume still further: I would like to see old Chloe; it is a long, long time since I've seen her. Would you let her come?" Sophie said that "it would renew Chloe's youth; she certainly would send her."

Good-byes were spoken, and we went down. Mr. Axtell was still treading the hall below. He thanked Sophie for her kindness to Miss Lettie, shook hands genially with Aaron, looked at me, and we were gone.

I carried Miss Lettie's message to Chloe. She lifted up those great African orbs of hers as she might have done to the Mountains of the Moon in her native land.

"Now the heavens be praised!" said the honest soul,—"what for can that icy lady want to see old Chloe?"

I had carried the message under cover of one from my own heart. I knew that Chloe had lived with my mother until she died. I knew that she must know something regarding Mary, my sister, to whom, in all my life, I had scarcely given one thought, who died ere I was wise enough to know her. And so I began by asking,—

"Am I like my sister who died, Chloe?"

She brought back her eyes from gazing upon the lunar mountains.

"I don't know's you are 'xactly; but somehow you did look like her, up-stairs to-day, when you had them white things tied on your head."

"Were you here when she died?" I asked.

"Oh, yes!"—old Chloe closed her eyes,—"it is one of the blessed things Chloe's Lord will let her 'member, up there;" and Chloe wiped her eyes, in memoriam.

"I don't remember her," I said.

"No, how should you? you were wee little then."

"What made her die, Chloe?"

"I reckon 't was because the angels wanted her more 'n me, Miss Anna."

"Was she sick, Chloe?"

"How queer you questions, Miss Anna! Of course she was sick; she drooped in the August heat; they didn't think she was very sick; the master gave her some medicine one night, and left her sleeping, quiet as a lamb, and before morning came she went to heaven."

"Who was the master, Chloe?"

"Why, you is getting stupid-like, child! Honey darling, don't you know that Master Percival, your father, was my master ever so many years?"—and she began notating them upon her fingers.

I interrupted the mathematical calculation by telling Chloe that three people were waiting for their tea.

"Two of 'em is my dear childers," said Chloe,—who never would accept Aaron, even with all his goodness, into her heart; and she moved about with accelerated velocity in her daily orbit.

What could Mr. Axtell have meant by saying that he had killed Mary, who, Chloe had assured me, died peaceably in her father's house? After disturbing the equilibrium of thought-realm, and nearly giving my mind a new axis of revolution, I decided to think no more of it. I could not, would not, believe that Abraham Axtell had gone up any Moriah of sacrifice, and been permitted to let fall the knife upon his victim. His life must have been a dream, an illusion; he only wanted awakening to existence. And the memory of my Sabbath-morning's vision dwelt with me, and the voice that speaketh, filling the soul "as a sea-shell is with murmuring," said, "Your finger will awaken him." And I looked down at my two passive hands, and asked, "Which one of them?" And the murmuring voice startled me with the answer, "Two are required,—one of reconciliation, the other of forgiveness." Whereupon I lifted up the ten that Nature gave, and said, "Take them all, if need be."–

"Tea is ready," said Aaron, peeping in, his face alive with satisfied muscles, playing too merry a tune of joy, I thought, for a grave minister.

"Sophie's a magician," I thought for the thousandth time, as, for the millionth, Aaron looked at her sitting so demurely regal at his spread table.

"What would these two good people say," I asked myself, in thinking, "if they knew all that I have learned in my visit, not yet a week long?"—and I ran up and down in the scale of semibreves and minims that I had heard, with the one long, sweet trill transfusing life on earth into heavenly existence, and I felt very wingy, very much as if I could take up the tower, standing high and square out there, and carry it, "like Loretto's chapel, through the air to the green land," where my spirit would go singing evermore. I could not tell what my joy was like: not unto anything that I had seen upon the earth; under the earth I had not yet been; only once above it, and they were calmly celestial there. I was turbulently joyous, and so I winged a little while around Sophie and Aaron, hummed a good-night in Chloe's ears, and found that the canny soul was luxuriating in the idea that the icy lady was to be thawed into the acceptance of sundry confections which she was basketing to carry with her when I went out.

"Call me early," I said; "you know I leave at seven o'clock."

"I shall be up ever so early, Miss Anna; never fear for Chloe's sleeping late to-morrow in the morning; you get ever so much,—'nuff for Chloe and you too; good-night, honey!"—and Chloe went on her mission, whilst Aloes and Honey went up-stairs, past Aaron's study, and into a room where the mysterious art of packing must be practised for a little.

I thought of the "breadths of silver and skirts of gold" that I had seen the Day pack away; and, inspired with the thought, fell to folding less amberous raiment, until, my duty done, I pressed the cover down, and locked my treasures in, for the journey of the morrow. Then I took out my sacred gift to guard, and, laying it before me, looked at it. It was of dimensions scarcely larger than the moon,—that is, extremely variant and uncertain: to one, a planet, larger than Jupiter, moons and all; to another, scarcely more than a bridal ring. So my packet was of uncertain size: undoubtedly the tower was packed away in it, Herbert too,—and I couldn't help agreeing with my thought, and confessing that this was a better form for conveyance than that I so lately had planned; so I put it safely away, with myself, until the day should come. The day-star had arisen in my heart. Would it ever go down? Not whilst He who holdeth the earth in the hollow of His hand hath me there too. Reaching out, once more, for the strong protective fibres that had so blessed me, I wandered forth with it into the land whose mural heights are onychites and mocha-stones of mossy mystery.

How long I might have lingered there I know not,—so delicious was the fragrance and so fair the flowers,—had not Chloe's voice broken the mocha-stones, scattering the mosses like autumn-leaves.

"Honey, I thought I'd waken ye,—the day is just cracking," said Chloe, at the door, and she asked me to open it one moment.

When I had done so, there she stood, just as I had seen her when I bade her good-night,—save that her basket was void of contents.

"Master Abraham didn't know you was going home," Chloe said, "or he'd have told you good-bye; and I guesses he sent what he didn't tell, for he asked me to give you this."

When Chloe was gone, I opened the small package. It was a pretty casket, made of the margarite of the sea. Within it lay a faded, fallen, fragmentary thing. At first, I knew not what it could be. It was the althea-bud that grew in the summer-time of eighteen years ago, that had been Mary's,—and my heart beat fast as I looked upon the silent voicefulness that spake up to me, and said, "To you, who have restored him to himself, he offers the same tribute;" and I lifted up the iridescent, flashing cradle of margarite, and reverently touched the ashes of althea it held with my lips. Afterwards they were salt,—whether with the saltness of the sea the bud had been baptized in, or of the tears that I let fall, I knew not.

I folded up my good-bye from Mr. Axtell in the same precious package that was his sister's, and, side by side, the two journeyed on with me.

* * * * *

It was seven of the clock on Monday morning when she who said the naughty words, and the grave minister, came out to say farewell to me. The day's great round was nearly done ere I met my father's flowery welcome.

"My Myrtle-Vine, I knew you'd come," said Dr. Percival; and his long gray hair floated out to reach me in, and his eyes, wherein all love burned iridescent, drew me toward his heart.

My father put his arms around me, and said the sweetest words of welcome that ever are spoken.

"How I've missed you, Anna!" as he drew me toward his large arm-chair, and folded me, his latest child, to his heart.

As thus we were sitting in the silence of the heart that needs no language, little Jeffy, my ebony-beauty boy, darted his black head in, and reposing it for one instant against the scarcely lighter-hued mahogany of the door, jingled out, in shells of sound,—

"He's mighty fur'ous. It's real fun. I guess you'd better come right up, Dr. Percival;" and the ebon head darted off, without one word for me.

Why was it that this little omission of Jeffy's, the African boy, should create a vacancy? Oh! it is because Nature made me so exacting. I wanted everybody to welcome me.

I lifted my head from my father's shoulder, and asked, in some dismay,—

"What is it, father?"

"I've gotten myself in trouble, Anna. I've let chaos into my house. I wanted you to help me."

"What is it? what has happened?" I hastened to inquire.

"Only a hospital patient that I was foolish enough to bring away. I heartily wish that he was back again," said my father; and he put me from him to go, in obedience to the summons.

I was about to follow him, but he waved me back as I went into the hall, and he went on. I heard the ring of a low, frenzied laugh, as I began unwrapping from my journey. My casket of treasures I had committed to bands for keeping. Now I laid it down, and, folding up my protective robes, I had just gone to try my father's easy-chair, alone, when Jeffy's ebon head struck in again.

"I didn't see ye afore, Miss Anna. I'so mighty glad you've come;" and Jeffy atoned for his former omission by his present joy.

"How is he?" I questioned Jeffy, as if I knew all the antecedents of the case perfectly.

"Oh, he's jolly to-night. I think Master Percival might have let me stay to see the fun;" and Jeffy's eyes rolled to and fro in their orbits, as if anxious to strike against some wandering comet.

"Is tea over?" I asked.

"No, miss. Master said he'd wait for you. I'll go and tell that you're here;" and Jeffy took himself off, eager for action.

He was not long gone.

"It's all ready, waiting a bit for master. He can't come down just this minute," said Jeffy. "Look a here, Miss Anna,—isn't it vastly funny master's bringing a crazy man here? They say down in the kitchen, that as how it wouldn't 'a' been, if you'd been home. It's real good, though. It's the splendidest thing that's happened. Wait till you see him perform. Ask him to sing. It's frolicky to hear him."

The boy went on, and I did not stop him. I was as anxious for information as he to impart it. When he paused for breath, in the width of detail that he furnished, I asked,—

"When was this stranger brought here?"

"Three days ago, Miss Anna, I hope he'll stay forever and ever;" and Jeffy darted off at a mellifluous sound that dropped down from above.

"There! he has thrown the poker at the mirror again, I do believe," said another voice in the hall, and I recognized the housekeeper.

Staid Mrs. Ordilinier came in to greet me, with the uniform greeting of her lifetime. I verily believe that she has but one way of receiving. Electricity and bread-and-butter would meet the same recognitory reception.

"Did you hear that noise, Miss Anna?" she said, as another sound came, that was vastly like the shivering of glass.

"What was it, Mrs. Ordilinier?"

I gave her the question to gain information. I sought it,—but she, not disposed to gratify me at the moment, slowly ascended to ascertain the state of mirrors above. She met my father's silver hairs coming down. He did not say one word to her. He met me in the hall, took me back to the room, and, reseating me in my olden place, put his hand upon my head, and said,—

"This must help me, Anna."

"It will, papa; what is it?"

"I've a crazy man up-stairs. He can't do very much harm, for he is badly injured."

"How?" I asked.

"Railroad accident. Four days ago, locomotive and two passenger-cars off the track, down forty feet upon the rocks and stones, and all there was of a river," my father replied, with evident regret that the company had been so unfortunate, as well as his individual self.

"Who is it?" was my next question.

"Don't know, darling; haven't the least idea. He has the softest brown, curling hair of his own, with a wig over it. Can't find out his name, or anything about him. I like him, though, Anna. He's like somebody! used to know. I brought him here from the hospital, several days ago, but he hasn't given me much peace since, and the people down below think I'm as crazy as he; but I cannot help it; I will not turn him out now."

"Of course you wouldn't, father. We'll manage him superbly. I'll chain him for you."

My father rose up, comforted by my words, and said "it was time for tea." We went down. I was the Sophie of Aaron's home, at my father's table.

"Papa," I said, as if introducing the most ordinary topic of conversation, "what was the occasion of sister Mary's death? She was only seventeen. How young to die!"

My father sighed, and said,—

"Yes, it was young. She had fever, Anna. One of those long, low fevers that mislead one. I did not think she would die."

"Was Mary engaged to be married, father?"

Dr. Percival looked up at his daughter Anna with the look that says, "You're growing old," although she was twenty-three, and never had gone so far in life as his eldest daughter at seventeen.

"She was, Anna."

"To whom, father?"

"Perhaps you've seen him, Anna. I hear that he is come home. His name is Axtell,—Abraham Axtell."

I told my father of the first words,—where we had found him, tolling the bell,—and of his mother's death, and his sister's illness.

"Incomprehensible people!" was my father's sole ejaculation, as he went to look after the deranged patient.

I occupied myself for an hour in picking up the reins of government that I had thrown down when I went to Redleaf. Looking into "our room," and not finding father there, I went on, up to my own room. A warm, welcoming fire burned within the grate. I thought, "How good father is to think for me!" and with the thought there entered in another. It came in the sudden consciousness that the room was prepared for some one else than me. I glanced about it, and saw the strange, wild man, with eyes all aglow, looking at me from out the depths of my wonted place of rest. No one else was in the room. I turned around to leave, but, dropping my precious box of margarite, I stooped to pick it up.

"It is a good harbor to sail into. I'm content," said the voice from the corner, before I could escape.

I met father coming in.

"Why, how is this?" he said to me.

"You didn't tell me you had given up my room," I said.

"Didn't I? Well, I forgot. We couldn't take him higher."

"Is he so much hurt?" I asked.

"Three broken bones," my father replied. "It will be weeks, it may be months, before he will be well;" and he sighed hopelessly at the good deed, which, being done, pressed so heavily. "Don't look so sadly about it, Myrtle-Vine," he added; "take my room, if you like."

"That was not my thought," I said. "I do not mind the change of room."

The visit to Redleaf, which I had made to dawn in my horizon, was eclipsed by three broken bones, that suddenly undermined the arch of consistency.

Soothingly came the words that were spoken unto me. My father was all-willing to relinquish his cherished room,—his for sixteen years, and opening into that mysterious other room,—to give it up to me, his Myrtle-Vine; and a momentary pang that any interest in existence should be, except as circling around him, flew across the future, "the science whereof is to man but what the shadow of the wind might be,"—and I looked up into his eyes, and, twining his long white hair around my fingers, for a moment felt that forever and forever he should be the supreme object of earthly devotion. In my wish to evince the sentiment in action, I requested permission to assist in the care of the hospital patient.

"Oh, no, Anna! he is too wild now. When the excitement of the fever is gone, then will be your time."

Another of those many-toned, circling peals of laughter came from my room. My father went in. I went past the place that mortal eyes were not permitted to fathom, and, for the first time in my life, was curious to know its contents, and why I had never seen the interior thereof, I had grown up with the mystery, until I had accepted it, unquestioning, as a thing not for my view, and therefore out of recognition. It was as far away from me as the open sea of the North, and might contain the mortal remains of all the navigators of Hope that ever had wandered into the sea of Time for him who so holily guarded it.

"One far-away Indian-summery day, four years agone," "while yet the day was young," Dr. Percival, my father, had led an azure-eyed maiden in through the mysterious entrance, and shown unto her the veiled temple, its altar and its shrine, and she had come thence with the dew of feeling in her eyes and a purple haze around her brow, which she has worn there until it has tangled its pansy-web into an abiding-place, unto such time as the light is shut out forever, or the waves from the silver sea curl their mist up thither. I had much marvel then concerning the hidden mysteries; but Sophie so soon thereafter spake the naughty "I will," that the silent room forgot to speak to me. I have never heard sound thence since that morning-time.

"Why does not my father take me in? Am I not his child, even as Sophie?"

I asked these questions of Anna Percival, the while she stood at an upper window, and looked out over New York's surging lines of life. The roar of rolling wheels came muffled by distance and the shore of dwelling-places over which I looked. I counted the church-spires that threaded the vault of night a little of the upward way. How angels, that have lived forever in heaven, and souls just free from material things, must reach down to touch these towering masts, that tell which way the sails of spirit bend! These city churches, dedicated with solemn service unto the worship of the great I AM, the Lord God of Adam, the Jehovah Jireh of Israelites, the Holy Redeemer of Christians,—may the Lord of heaven and earth bless them every one! I looked forth upon them with tears. There never comes a time, in the busiest hurry of human ways, that I do not sprinkle a drop of love upon the steps as I pass,—that I do not wind a tendril of holy feeling up to height of tower or summit of spire for the great winds to waft onward and upward. God pity the heart that does not involuntary reverence to God's templed places, made sacred a thousand fold by every penitential tear, by every throb of devotion, by every aspiration after the divine existence, from which let down a little while, we wander, for what we know not! God doth not tell, save that it is to "love first Him, Sole and Individual," and then the fragments, the crumbs of Divinity that dwell in Man.

I had not lighted the gas. The street-lamps sent up their rays, making the room semi-lucent. I took out my tower-key. What matter, if I held the cold iron thereof to my lips awhile? there was no frost in the March air then. I sent my restless fingers in and out of the wards, prisoning them often therein. As thus I stood, with cheek pressed against the windowpane, looking out upon the city, set into a rim of darkness, from out of which it flashed its million rays, papa came up.

"I didn't say good-night," he said, coming in, and to the window where I was. "But how is this, Anna? what has happened to my child? "—and he pointed to shining drops that glistened on the window-glass.

They must have come from my eyes; I could not deny their authorship, and so I confessed to tears of gladness at seeing him once more.

He looked fondly down at me through the dim light. I asked him after the tenant of my premises. He shook his head as one does in great doubt, said "life was uncertain," and repeated several other axioms, that were quite apart from his original style, and excessively annoying to me.

"Papa," I said, "why not tell me truly? will this man recover?"

"'Man proposes, God disposes,' my child," he said.

"I don't dispute the general truth," I replied,—"but, particularly, is this man's life in danger?"

He began to quote somebody's psalm or hymn about "fitful fevers and fleeting shadows."

My father has a fine, rich, variant power of sound with which to charm such as have ears to hear, and Anna Percival has been so endowed. Therefore she listened and waited to the end. When it came, she looked up into her father's face and said,—

"Papa, I am not a child, to be coaxed into forgetfulness; why will you not trust me? I am older than Sophie was when you took her in where I have not been; why will you not make me your friend?"—and some sudden collision of watery powers among the window-drops, whether from accretion or otherwise, sent a glistening rivulet down to the barrier of the sash.

Papa folded his arms, and looked at me. I could not bear to be thus shut out. I said so.

"Could you bear to be shut in?" he thought, and asked it.

"I think I could. I could bear anything that you gave me; I could keep anything that you intrusted to my keeping."

Papa looked at me as one does at a cherished vine the outermost edges of which are just frost-touched; then he folded me to his heart. I felt the throbbings thereof, and mine began to regret that I had intruded into the vestibule of his sacred temple; but a certain something went whispering within me, "You can feed the sacred fire," and I whispered to the whispering voice, and to my father's ear,—