The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, No. 58, August, 1862

The reverberations from my fallen tear scarce were dead in my ears when I heard footsteps coming. I called,–

"Aaron!"

Aaron's own true voice answered me,–

"Where are you, Anna?"

"In the tower. Open the door, please."

"Give me the lantern," Sophie said, "whilst you open the door."

I, thoughtlessly taking the key, had left nothing by which to draw it out. Aaron worked away at it, right vigorously, but it would not yield.

"Can't you come down and push?" timidly asked Sophie, creeping round the corner, in view of tombstones.

"It's very dark inside; I can't," I said; and so Aaron went on, pulling and prying, but not one inch did the determined door yield.

Out of the darkness came an idea. I came in with the key,–why not they? and, calling loudly, I bade them watch whilst I threw it from the window. In the lantern's circle of light it went rushing down; and I'm sorry to tell that in its fall it grazed an angel's wing of marble, striking off one feather from its protecting mission above a sleeping child.

The door was opened at last; at last a circle of light came into this inverted well, and arose to me. Can you imagine, any one, I ask, who is of mortal hue and mould,–can you imagine yourself deep down in a well, such a one as those living on high lands draw their water from, holding on with weary fingers to the slimy mosses, fearing each new energy of grasping muscle is the last that Nature holds in its store for you; and then, weary almost unto death, you look up and see two human faces peering above the curbstone, see the rope curling down to you, swinging right before your grasp, and a doubt comes,–have you life enough to touch it?

So, could I get down to them, to the two friendly, anxious faces that peered up at me? You who have no imaginary fears, who never press the weight of all your will to weigh down eyelids that something tells you, if uplifted, would let in on the sight a something nameless, come from where you know not, made visible in midnight darkness, can never know with what a throbbing of heart I went weakly down. If I did not know that the great public opinion becomes adamant after a slight stratum of weakness, I would say what befell me when Sophie's fingers, tired with stitching, clasped mine.

Aaron and Sophie were not of the questioning order of humanity, and I was left a few moments to my own way of expressing relief, and then Aaron locked the tower as usual, and we went away. He, I noticed, put the key in his pocket, instead of delivering it to me, self-constituted its rightful owner.

"Will you give me my key?" I said, with a timid tenacity in the direction of my right.

"Not enough of the dreary, ghoul-like place yet, Anna? And to give us such an alarm upon your arrival-day!"

The key came to me, for Aaron would not keep it without good reason.

It was around the bright, cheerful tea-table that Sophie asked,–

"Why did you not come down, Anna? Did you choose staying up so late?"

"No, Sophie,"–and I looked with my clear brown eyes as fearlessly at them both as when I had listened to reason in the morning,–"I shut the door when I went up, and afterwards, when I would have come down, I felt afraid invisible hands were weaving in the blackness to seize me. I believe it would have killed me to come out, after I had been an hour up there."

"And you don't mind confessing to such cowardice?" asked Sophie, evidently slightly ashamed of me.

"I never did mind telling the truth, when it was needful to speak at all. I don't cultivate this fear,–I urge reason to conquer it; but when I have most rejoiced in going on, despite the ache of nerve and brain, after it I feel as if I had lost a part of my life, my nature doesn't unfold to sunny joys for a long time."

"'Tis a sorry victory, then!" said Aaron.

"You won't mind my telling you what it is like?"

"Certainly not."

"It's like that ugly point in theology that hurt you so, last autumn; and when you had said a cruel Credo, you found sweet flowers lost out of your religion. I know you missed them."

"Oh, Anna!"

"Don't interrupt me; let me finish. It's like making maple-sugar: one eats the sugar, calling it monstrous sweet, and all through the burning sun of summer sits under thin-leaved trees, to pay for the condensation. The point is, it doesn't pay,–the truest bit of sentiment the last winter has brought to me."

"Is this Anna?" asked the minister.

"Yes, Aaron, it is I, Anna."

"You're not what you were when last here."

"Quite a different person, Sir. But what is your new sexton's name?"

"That is more sensible. His name is Abraham Axtell."

"What sort of person is he?"

"The strangest man in all my parish. I cannot make him out. Have you seen him?"

"No. Is there any harm in my making his acquaintance?"

"What an absurd question!" said Sophie.

"You are quite at liberty to get as many words out of him as he will give, which I warn you will be very few," said the sexton's friendly pastor.

"Is he in need of the small salary your church must give its sexton?" I asked.

"The strangest part of the whole is that he won't take anything for his services; and the motive that induces him to fight the spiders away is past my comprehension. He avoids Sophie and me."

So much for my thread of discovery: a very small fibre, it is true,–a church-sexton performing the office without any reward of gold,–but I twisted it and twirled it round in all the ideal contortions plausible in idealic regions, and fell asleep, with the tower-key under my pillow, and the rising moon shining into my room.

I awoke with my secret safely mine,–quite an achievement for one in no wise heroic; but I do delight in sole possessions.

There is the sun, a great round bulb of liquid electricity, open to all the eyes that look into the sky; but do you fancy any one owns that sun but I? Not a bit of it! There is no record of deed that matches mine, no words that can describe what conferences sun and I do hold. The cloudy tent-door was closed, the sun was not "at home" to me, as I went down to life on the second day of March, 1860.

Sophie seemed stupid and commonplace that morning. Aaron had a headache, (that theologic thorn, I know,) and Sophie must go and sit beside him, and hold the thread of his Sunday's discourse to paper, whilst with wrapped brow and vision-seeing eyes he told her what his people ought to do.

Good Sophie! I forgave her, when she put sermons away, and came down to talk a little to me. It is easy to forgive people for goodness to others, when they are good to one's self just afterwards.

"Do you know any Herbert in Redleaf?" I ventured to ask, with as careless a tone as I knew.

"No, Anna;–let me think;–I thought I knew,–but no, it is not here. Why?"

"It doesn't matter. I thought there might be a person with that name.–Don't you get very tired of this hum-drum life?"

"But it isn't hum-drum in the least, except in bee-time, and on General-Training days."

"Oh, Sophie! you know what I mean."

"Well, I confess to liking a higher development of intellectual nature than I find in Redleaf, but I feel that I belong to it, I ought to be here; and feeling atones for much lack of mind,–it gets up higher, nearer into the soul. You know, Anna, we ought to love Redleaf. Look across that maple-grove."

"What is there?"

"Chimneys."

"Well, what of them?"

"There was smoke in them once,–smoke rising from our father's fires, you know, Anna."

"But so long ago, one scarcely feels it."

"Only sixteen years; we remember, you and I, the day the fires were put out."

"Yes, I remember."

"Don't you think we ought to love the place where our lives began, because our father lived here too?"

"It's a sorry sort of obligation, to ought to love anything."

"Even the graves, out there, in the church-yard?"

"Yes, even them. I would rather love them through knowing something that some one tenant of them loved and suffered and achieved than to love them merely because they hold the mortal temples that once were columns in 'our family.' The world says we ought to love so much, and our hearts tell us we ought to love foolishly sometimes, and I say one oughtn't to love at all."

"Anna! Anna!"

"I haven't got any Aaron, Sophie, to teach me the 'ought-tos.'"

There was a morsel of pity outgleaming from Sophie's eyes, as she went to obey a somewhat peremptory call. She needn't have bestowed it on me; I learned not to need it, yesterday.

Satisfied that the tower wouldn't give me any more information, and that the visit of "the two" was the last for some time to come, I closed down my horizon of curiosity over the church-steeple, a little round, shingly spire with a vane,–too vain to tell which way the wind might chance to go.

Ere Sophie came back to me, there was a bell-stroke from the belfry. She hurried down at the sound of it.

"Will you come with me, Anna? Aaron wants to know who is dead."

"Who rings the bell?"

"The sexton, of course."

We were within the vestibule before he had begun to toll the years.

A little timidly, Sophie spoke,–

"Mr. Wilton wishes to know who has died."

The uncivil fellow never turned an inch; he only started, when Sophie began to speak. I couldn't see his face.

"Tell Mr. Wilton that my mother is dead, if he wishes to know."

Sophie pulled my sleeve, and whispered, "Come away!"–and the man, standing there, began to toll the years of his mother's life.

"Don't go," I said, outside; "don't leave him without saying, 'I am sorry': you didn't even ask a question."

"You wouldn't, if you knew the man."

"Which I mean to do. You go on. I'll wait upon the step till he is done, and then I'll talk to him."

"I wouldn't, Anna. But I must hurry. Aaron will go up at once."

Dutiful little wife! She went to send her headaching husband half a mile away, to offer consolation, unto whom?

I sat upon the step until he had done. The years were not many,–half a score less than the appointed lot.

Would he come out? He did. I heard him coming; but I would not move. I knew that I was in his way, and wanted him to have to speak to me. I sat just where he must stand to lock the door.

"Are you waiting to see me?" he asked. "Is there anything for the sexton to do?"

I arose, and turned my face toward him.

"I am waiting to see if I can do anything for you. I am your minister's wife's sister."

What could have made him shake so? And such a queer, incongruous answer he gave!

"Isn't it enough to have a voice, without a face's coming to torment me too?"

It was not the voice that spoke in the tower yesterday. It was of the kind that has a lining of sentiment that it never was meant by the Good Spirit should be turned out for the world to breathe against, making life with mortals a mental pleurisy.

"I hope I don't torment you."

"You do."

"When did your mother die?"

"There! I knew! Will you take away your sympathy? I haven't anything to do with it."

"You'll tell me, please, if I can do anything for you, or up at your house. Do you live near here?"

"It's a long way. You can't go."

"Oh, yes, I can. I like walking."

He locked the door, and dropped the key when he was done. I picked it up, before he could get it.

A melodious "Thank you," coming as from another being, rewarded me.

"Let me stop and tell my sister, and I'll go with you," I said, believing that he had consented.

The old voice again was used as he said,–

"No, you had better not"; and he quickly walked on his way.

Completely baffled in my expectation of touching this strange being by proffers of kindness, I turned toward the parsonage. Aaron was already gone on his ministerial mission.

"What strange people one does find in this world!" said Sophie, as I gave her the history of my defeat. "Now this Axtell family are past my comprehension."

"Ah! a family. I didn't think him a married man."

"Neither is he."

"Then what is the family?"

"The mother, a sister, and himself."

"Do you know the sister?"

"Just a little. She is the finest person in mind we have here, but wills to live alone, except she can do deeds of charity. I met her once in a poor farmer's house. The man had lost his wife. Such a soft, sweet glamour of comfort as she was winding in and out over his sorrow, until she actually had the poor fellow looking up with an expression that said he was grateful for the good gift Heaven had gained! She stopped as soon as I went in. I wish she would come out in Redleaf."

"And the mother?"

"A proud old lady, sick these many years, and, ever since we've been here, confined to her room. I've only seen her twice."

"And now she's dead?"

Sophie was silent.

"Who'll dig her grave?"

One of my bits of mental foam that strike the shore of sound.

"Anna, how queer you are growing! What made you think of such a thing?"

"I don't think my thoughts, Sophie."

But I did watch the church-yard that day. No one came near it, and my knitting-work grew, and my mystery in the tower was as dark as ever, when at set of sun Aaron came home.

"There is a sorry time up there," he said. "The old lady died in the night, and Miss Lettie is quite beside herself. Doctor Eaton was there when I came away, and says she will have brain-fever."

"Oh, I hope not!" said Sophie.

"Who is there?" I asked.

"No one but Abraham. I offered to let Sophie come, but he said no."

"That will never do, Aaron: one dead, and one sick in the house, and only one other."

"Of course it will not, Sophie,–I will go and stay to-night," said I.

"You, Anna? What do you know of taking care of sick people?"

"I? Why, here, let me take this,"–and I picked up Miss Nightingale's new thoughts thereon. "Thus armed and fortified, do you think they'll ask other reference of their nurse?"

"It's better for her than going up to stay in the tower; and they are in need, though they won't say it. Let it be, Sophie."

And so my second night in March came on. A neighbor's boy walked the way with me, and left me at the door.

"I guess you'll repent your job," he said, as I bade him good-night.

"Mr. Axtell will not send me back alone," I thought; and I waited just a little, that my escort might get beyond call before I knocked.

It was a solemn, great house under whose entrance-porch I stood. Generation after generation might have come, stayed, and gone, like the last soul: here last night,–to-night, oh! where?

I looked up at the sombre roof, dropping a little way earthward from the sides. Mosses hung from the eaves. Not one sound of life came to me as I stood until the neighbor's boy was out of sight. I knocked then, a timid, tremulous knock,–for last night's fear was creeping over me. The noise startled a dog; he came bounding around the corner with a sharp, quick bark.

I am afraid of dogs, as well as of several other things. Before he reached me the door opened.

A little maid stood within it. Fear of the dog, scarce a yard away, impelled me in.

"Away, Kino! Away, I say! Leave the lady alone!"

Kino went back to his own abode, and I was closed into the hall of this large, melancholy house. The little maid waited for some words from me. Before I found any to bestow, the second door along the hall opened, and the voice that had been so uncivil to me in the morning said,–

"What aroused Kino, Kate?"

"This lady, Sir."

The little Kate held a candle in her hand, but Mr. Axtell had not seen me. Strange that I should take a wicked pleasure in making this man ache!–but I know that I did, and that I would have owned it then, as now, if I had been accused of it.

"What does the lady want?"

"It is I, who have come to stay with your sister. Mr. Wilton says she's sick."

"She's sick, that's true; but I can take care of her."

"And you won't let me stay?"

"Won't let you? Pray tell me if young ladies like you like taking care of sick people."

"Young ladies just like me do, if brothers don't send them away."

Did he say, "Brothers ar'n't Gibraltars"? I thought so; but immediately thereafter, in that other voice, out of that other self that revolved only in a long, long period, came,–

"Will you come in?"

He had not moved one inch from the door of the room out of which he had come; but I had walked a little nearer, that my voice might not disturb the sick. The one lying dead, never more to be disturbed, where was she? Kate, the little maid, said,–

"It is in there he wants you to go."

Abraham Axtell stood aside to let me enter. There was no woman there, no one to say to me, in sweet country wise,–"I'm glad you're come,–it's very kind of you; let me take your things."

I did not wait, but threw aside my hood, the very one Sophie had lent me to go into the tower, and, taking off my shawl and furs, I laid them as quietly away in the depths of a huge sofa's corner as though they had hidden there a hundred times before.

"I think I scarcely needed this," I said, putting upon the centre-table, under the light of the lamp, Miss Nightingale's good book,–and I looked around at a library, tempting to me even, as it spread over two sides of the room.

He turned at my speaking; for the ungrateful man had, I do believe, forgotten that I was there.

He took up the book, looked at its title, smiled a little–scornfully, was it?–at me, and said of her who wrote the book,–

"She is sensible; she bears the result of her own theories before imposing their practice upon others; but," and he went back to the thorn-apple voice, "do you expect to take care of my sister by the aid of this to-night?"

"It may give me assistance."

"It will not. What does Miss Nightingale know of Lettie?"

Well, what does she? I don't know, and so I had to answer,–

"Nothing."

"That doctor is here," said Kate, at the door.

"Are you coming up, too?" he asked, as he turned suddenly upon me, half-way out of the room.

"Certainly!"–and I went out with him.

Up the wide staircase walked the little maid, lighting the way, followed by the doctor, Mr. Axtell, and Anna Percival.

Kate opened the door of a room just over the library, where we had been.

The doctor went in, quietly moving on toward the fireplace, in which burned a cheery wood-fire. In front of it, in one of those large comfort-giving, chintz-covered, cushioned chairs, sat Miss Axtell; but the comfort of the chair was nothing to her, for she sat leaning forward, with her chin resting upon the palm of her right hand, and her eyes were gone away, were burning into the heart of the amber flame that fled into darkness up the chimney. Hers was the style of face which one might expect to find under Dead-Sea waves, if diver could go down,–a face anxious to escape from Sodom, and held fast there, under heavy, heavy waters, yet still with its eyes turned toward Zoar.

Now a feverous heat flushed her face, white a moment before, when we came in; but she did not turn away her eyes,–they seemed fixed, out of her control. The doctor laid his hand upon her forehead. It broke the spell that bound her gaze. She spoke quite calmly. I almost smiled to think any one could imagine danger of brain-fever from that calm creature who said,–

"Please don't give me anything, Doctor Eaton; believe me, I shall do better without."

"And then we shall have you sick on our hands, Abraham and I. What should we do with you?"

"I'll try not to trouble you," she said,–"but I would rather you left me to myself to-night"; but even as she spoke, a quick convulsion of muscles about her face told of pain.

Doctor Eaton had not seen me, for I stood in the shadow of the bed behind him.

"Who will stay with your sister tonight?" he asked Mr. Axtell.

Mr. Axtell looked around at me, as if expecting that I would answer; and I presented myself for the office.

"You look scarcely fit," was the village-physician's somewhat ungracious comment; and his eyes said, what his lips dared not,–"Who are you?"

"I think you'll find me so, if you try me."

Miss Axtell had gone away again, and neither saw nor heeded me.

"Will you come below?"–and the doctor looked at me as he went out.

I followed him. In the library he shut the door, sat down near the table, took from his pocket a small phial containing a light brown powder, and, dividing a piece of paper into the minute scraps needful, made a deposit in each from the phial, and then, folding over the bits of paper, handed them to me.

"Are you accustomed to take care of sick persons?" he asked.

"Not much; but I am a physician's daughter. I have a little experience."

"Are you a visitor here?"

"No,–at the parsonage."

A pair of quick gray eyes danced out at me from under browy cliffs clothed with a ledge of lashes, in an actually startling manner. I didn't think the man had so much of life in him.

"You're Mrs. Wilton's sister, perhaps."

"I am."

"Give her one of these every half-hour, till she falls asleep."

"Yes, Sir."

"Don't let her talk; but she won't, though. If she gets incoherent,–says wild things,–talks of what you can't understand,–send for me; I live next door."

"Is this all for her?"

"Enough. Do you know her?"

"I never saw her until to-night."

"The brother? Monstrous fellow."

"Until to-day."

"Look up there."

"Where?"

"On the wall."

"At what?"

There were several paintings hanging there.

"The face, of course."

"I can't see it very well."

Shadows were upon it, and the lampshade was on.

"Then I'll take this off"; and Doctor Eaton removed the shade, letting the light up to the wall.

"A young girl's face," I said.

The doctor was looking at me, and not at the painting there. A little bit of confusion came,–I don't know why.

"Do you like it?" I ventured.

"I like it? I'm not the one to like it."

"Somebody does, then?"

"Of course. What did he paint it for, if he didn't like it?"

"I do not know of whom you are talking, at all," I said, a little vexed at this information-no-information style.

"You don't?" in a voice of the utmost astonishment.

"No. Is this all, for the sick lady? I think I ought to go to her."

"Of course you ought. It's a sad thing, this death in the house"; and Doctor Eaton picked up his hat, and opened the door.

Kate was waiting in the hall.

"Mr. Abraham thinks you'd better look in and see if it's well to have any watchers in there, before you go," she said.

"Well, light me in, then, Katie. You wait in there, if you please, Miss," to me; and I saw the two go to the front-room on the right.

A waft of something, it may have been the air that came out of that room, sent me back from the hall, and I shut the door behind me. It was several minutes before they came back. In the interim I had taken a long look at the face on the wall. It seemed too young to be very beautiful, and I couldn't help wishing that the artist had waited a year or two, until a little more of the outline of life had come to it; yet it was a sweet, loving face, with a brow as low and cool as Sophie's own, only it hadn't any shadow of an Aaron on it. I didn't hear the door open, I hadn't heard the sound of living thing, when some one said, close to me, as I was standing looking up at the face I've spoken of,–

"What are you doing?"

It was Mr. Axtell, and the voice was a prickly one.

"Is there any harm?" I said. "I'm only looking here,"–pointing to where my eyes had been before. "Who painted it?"

"An unknown, poor painter."

"Was he poor in spirit?"

"He is now, I trust."

A man that has variant voices is a cruel thing in this world, because one cannot help their coming in at some one of the gates of the heart, which cannot all be guarded at the same moment. "Poor in spirit?" "He is now, I trust." I felt decidedly vexed at this man before me for having such tones in his voice.

"Can I go up to Miss Axtell now?" I asked.

"In a moment, when Kate has shown Doctor Eaton out."

I picked up my powders and my illustrious book, and waited.

Kate came.

"The doctor says there's no need," she said, in her laconic way.