The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 - Various
"Oh!--I've--lost--something!" and she tolled the words out, as slowly as
the notes of the passing bell.
"What is it, Lettie? Come home; the day is breaking"; and Mr. Axtell put
his arm about her.
I thought of the letter that I had picked up in the passage-way.
"What have you lost, Miss Axtell? Is it anything that I could find for
you?" and I laid my hand upon hers, as the only method of drawing away
her eyes from their terrible immutation of expression.
"You? No, I should think not; how could you? you only found a piece of
it."
"What is this?" I asked; and I held up the letter: the superscription
was visible only to herself.
What a change came over her! Soft, dewy tears melted in those burning
eyes, and sent a mist of sweet effluence over her face. Mr. Axtell was
still supporting her; she did not touch the letter I held; she reached
out both of her hands, bent a little toward me,--for she was much taller
than I am,--took my cold, shivering face in those two burning hands, and
touched my forehead with her lips.
"God has made you well," she said; "thank Him."
She did not ask for the letter. I put it whence I had taken it. She
evidently trusted me with it.
"Abraham, I'm sick," she said; and she laid her head upon his shoulder,
passively as an infant might have done.
Her strength was gone; she could no longer support herself, and the day
was breaking. Mr. Axtell, strong, vigorous, full-souled man as I knew
him to be, looked at me, and his look said, "What am I to do with her?"
I answered it by throwing off the shawl and putting it upon the floor
where we were standing, and saying,--
"Let her rest here, until I come."
I took the still burning lamp and went down,--down through the entrance
into the deep, walled passage-way, on, step after step, through this
black tunnel, built, when, I knew not, or by whom; but I was brave now.
_I had won the trust of a soul_: it was light unto my feet. I reached
the twelve stone steps leading into the church. I ran lightly up them,
and, stooping, crept into this still house of God. Silence held the
place. The next reign would be that of worship. Is it thus in the
church-yard, after the silence of Death,--the long waiting, listening
for the slowly gathering voice of praise, that, one fair day in time,
time, shall transfuse the reverent souls, until the voice of the dew God
sends down shall be heard dropping on the grassy sod, and welcomed as
the prelude to the archangel's grand semibreve that will usher in the
sublime Psalm of Everlasting Life?
Wait on, souls! it is good to wait the voice of the Lord God Almighty,
who holdeth the earth in the hollow of His hand,--His hand, that we may
feel for, when the way is dark, whose living fibres thrill both heart
and soul. Yes, God's hand is never away from earth. I reached out anew
for it in that dismal pathway through which I had come, and it guided me
into this quiet, peaceful place, full of morning rays.
I did not stop to think all this; I felt it; for feeling is swifter than
thought. Thought is the tree; feeling, the blossom thereof. I closed the
panelling behind me, leaving the church as it had been on the day when,
I saw the little hungry mouse treading sacred places. I went down the
aisle; and as I passed by the hempen rope in the vestibule that so often
had set the bell a-ringing, a longing came to do it now, to tell the
village-people, by voice of sacred bell, that there was a new-born
worship come down from Heaven. But I did not. I hurried on, and went
out, locking the door after me. The March morning was cold. I missed the
shawl I had left. My hair was as much astir as Aaron's had been one
morning, not long before, and I truly believe there was as much of
theology in it. No one was abroad. People sleep late on Sunday mornings.
The east was blossoming into a magnificent sunflower.
Looking at myself, as I began my walk, I laughed aloud. I was still
carrying a lighted lamp,--for the wind, like the village-people, slept
at sunrise. I comforted myself by thinking of a predecessor somewhat
famous for a like deed, and bent upon a like errand. The man that I
searched for I should surely find, and honest, too; for it was Aaron.
The parsonage was cruelly inhospitable. No door was left unfastened. I
knocked at a window opening on the veranda. I gave the signal-knock that
Sophie and I had listened and opened to, unhesitatingly, for many years.
It needed nothing more. Instantly I heard Sophie say,--"That's Anna's
knock"; and immediately thereafter the curtain was put aside, and
Sophie's precious face and azure eyes peeped out. She looked in
amazement to see me thus, and in one moment more had let me in.
"Wake Aaron," I said, without giving her time to question me.
"He is awake. What has happened? Is Miss Axtell dying?" she questioned.
"No," I said; "but I want to speak to Aaron, directly. I'm going to my
room one moment."
I went up. The tower-key was hanging where I had left it. I took it
down, and made myself respectable by covering up my breezy hair with a
hood, with the further precaution of a cloak. I had not long to wait for
Aaron's coming; but it was long enough to remind me to carry some
restorative with me. Aaron came.
"Miss Axtell is very ill," I said; "she is quite wild, and left the
house in the night. She's up in the church-yard tower. Will you help her
brother take her home, as soon as you possibly can?"
"How strange!" were his only words; and as I went the garden way, Aaron
started to arouse his horse from morning sleep.
"No one need to know the church entrance," I thought; and as I went in,
I tried to close down the heavy stone, which fitted in so well, that it
seemed, like all the others, built to stay.
I could not stir it. Perhaps Aaron would not look, when he came in; but
doubting his special blindness, I asked Mr. Axtell to put it back. He
seemed to comprehend my meaning. I took his place beside Miss Axtell.
She was no longer wilful or determined. Her strength was gone. Her head
drooped upon my shoulder, and when I held a spoon, filled with the
restorative that I had brought, to her lips, they opened, and she took
that which I gave, mechanically. Her eyelids were down. I looked at the
fair, beautiful face that lay so near to my eyes. It was full of the
softest pencillings; little golden sinuosities of light were woven all
over it; and the blue lines along which emotion flies were wonderfully
arrowy and sky-like in their wanderings, for they left no trace to tell
whence they came or whither led. I heard the heavy, ponderous weight let
fall. It was the same sound as that which I heard on that memorable
night. Miss Axtell shivered a little; or was it but the effect of the
concussion?
The brother came up; he looked down, kindly at me, lovingly at his
sister.
"Shall I relieve you?" he asked.
I folded my arm only a little more tightly for answer, and said,--
"Mr. Wilton will be here soon; he is getting the carriage, to take your
sister home."
"I will go and help him, if you don't mind being left"; and he looked
inquiringly.
"There's no danger. I shall not fall asleep," I said.
"She's harmless now, poor child! If we can only get her back safely!"
And with these words he left me again.
Sophie came up soon, quite fearless now. She brought a variety of
comforting things, among them a pillow. Miss Axtell was too much
exhausted to open her eyes, or speak. I thought two or three times that
she had ceased to breathe. What if she should die here? They came. She
was lifted up, and borne down to the carriage, that waited outside the
graveyard. Helpless ones are carried in often: never before (it might
be) had one been taken thence. And still the village-people seemed to be
buried in rest.
Sophie and I walked on, whilst slowly the carriage proceeded to the
gable-roofed, high-chimneyed house, that arose, well defined and clear,
in the early sunlight. Smoke was rising from the kitchen-fire. Sophie
and I went in, just as the carriage stopped. She waited to receive the
invalid, whilst I went up to see if the absence had been discovered. It
was but little more than an hour since Mr. Axtell and I had gone out.
Evidently there had been no visitors. The wood that had been put on the
fire before I left had gone down into glowing coals that looked warm and
inviting. I kneeled and stirred them to a brighter glow, and put on more
wood, my fingers very stiff the while. I drew back the curtains from the
bed, smoothed the pillows, and the disorder occasioned by our hasty
exodus, and went down. Aaron and Mr. Axtell had carried the poor invalid
to the library, and laid her upon the sofa there, but it was very cold.
The fire was not yet built.
There was a sound of some one coming from the kitchen-way. Mr. Axtell
looked at me. "You know how to keep a secret," he said, and motioned me
in the direction whence came the sound, I hurried out, closing the door,
and met Katie running up to know "what had happened?"
I sent her back on some slight pretext, and followed whither she went. I
heard the cook mumblingly scolding about "noises in the night, dogs
barking and doors shutting, she knew; such a house as it was, with
people dying, getting sick, and putting every sort of a bothersome dream
into a quiet body's head, that wanted to rest, just as she worked, like
a Christian." And all the while she went on making preparations for a
future breakfast.
"What was 't now that ye heard? Kate, you're easy enough at hearing o'
noises in the broad daylight: I wish 't ye would be as harksome at
night."
"Hush, Cooky!" said Katie; "Miss Percival is here."
I went up to Cooky and soothed her, told her that I had heard the dog
barking too, and that I thought that I _did_ hear something like the
shutting of a door in the night. Cooky rewarded my efforts at sympathy
by expressing gladness "that there was one sensible person in the house
that had ears fit for Christian purposes."
"Don't mind her, Miss Percival," Katie said; "she's cross because I
wakened her too early; she'll get over it when she has had her
breakfast"
I gave Katie something to do, telling her to make coffee for Miss Axtell
as soon as possible; and with a few more words, meant to be conciliating
to Cooky, I took up the glass Katie brought me, and went back.
They had carried Miss Axtell up-stairs. Sophie was taking her wrappings
off. How carefully she had guarded herself, even in her illness, for the
walk! and now, all the nerve of fever gone, she lay as white and
strengthless as she had done in the tower. I went for Doctor Eaton, on
my own responsibility.
"He would come in a few minutes," was the message to me.
Sophie said "that she would stay, for I must go home."
As she said so, a little wavering cloud of doubt went across her
forehead, eclipsing, for a moment, its light; then all was bright again.
"What is it?" I asked. "Something for Aaron, I know."
Sophie looked the least bit like a rather old child asking for
sugar-candy; but she said,--
"Just you tie his cravat for him, there's a good sister; don't forget;
that's all. After that you may go to sleep, and sleep all day. You look
as if you needed it."
She came to say one more forgotten thing,--
"Just see that Aaron gets a white handkerchief: he's fond of gay colors,
you know. Two Sundays ago, when I wasn't looking, he carried off to
church one of Chloe's turbans, and deliberately shook out the
three-cornered article, and never knew the difference till his face told
him it was cotton instead of silk."
I promised extra caution on the second point, and had just closed the
lower door--Aaron was already holding the gate open for me--when the
softly purplish bands of hair came again into the wind.
"One thing more, Anna: _do_ see what he takes for a sermon. The text is
in the fifth chapter of First Thessalonians. He will certainly pick up a
Fast-day or a Thanksgiving sermon, if you don't put the right one into
his hands."
"Hasn't he two sermons on the same chapter?" I asked.
"Yes, half a dozen. You'll know the one for to-day; I wrote it for him
the day he had the headache; the text is"--and there was a little moment
of thought; then she said--"'Who died for us, that, whether we wake or
sleep, we should live together with him.' Aaron's waiting; don't keep
him; good bye!" and she was closed in.
I felt faint and weary, now that there was no more to be done. The
village-people were awake. Village-sounds were abroad in the Sunday
atmosphere, vibrant with holiness. The farmers stopped in their care for
their animals, and spent a moment in innocent wonder of the reason why
their pastor should be abroad thus early.
Chloe's turban welcomed us first, then Chloe's self. Breakfast, that
morning, had a rare charm about it for me. I felt that I had a right to
it; in some wise it was a breakfast earned. Aaron looked melancholy; his
coffee was not charmful, I knew; the chemical changes that sugar and
milk wrought were not the same as when Sophie presided over the
laboratory of the breakfast-tray. I am not an absorbent, and so I
reflected Aaron's discomfort. He was disposed to question me for a
reason for Miss Axtell's aberration. I was not empowered to give one,
and was fully determined to impart no information until such time as I
could with honor tell all. Aaron desisted after a while, and changed
interrogation for information.
"We're to have a new sexton," he said.
"Why, Aaron?" I asked,--and, in my surprise, put sugar, destined for my
coffee, into a glass of water.
"Because Abraham Axtell has resigned."
"When?"
"This very morning."
"He will be sexton until you find another, will he not?"
"For one week only," he said.
I remembered that my pocket held the church-key. I could not send it to
him without exciting question. Aaron would surely ask how I came by it,
if I trusted him to restore it. So, sleepy, weary, I sat down at the
window from which Sophie and her sister Anna had watched the strange man
digging in the frosty earth,--sat down to my last watching, waiting to
see Mr. Axtell come up to ring the first bell.
I found I was an hour too early; so I went and talked to Chloe a little,
scattered crumbs for the first-come birds and corn for the chickens, and
looked down the deep, deep well, with its curb lichened over, into the
dark pupil of water, whose iris is never disturbed, unless by the bucket
that hung in such gibbety repose on the lofty extreme of the great
sweep, that creaked dismally, uttering a pitiful cry of complaint. If it
hadn't been Sunday, I would have coaxed Aaron to pour some oil on its
turbulence; but since Sunday it was, I was to be content to let it
screech on. It was not a "sheep fallen into a pit," only a disturbed
well-sweep. Do well-sweeps feel, I wonder? Why not? Mr. Axtell asked how
I knew that the dead cannot hear.
Aaron came out in search of me. He had been assiduously trying to make a
ministerial disposition of his cravat, until it was creased and wrinkled
beyond repair.
"I did not know that you put on the paraphernalia of pastorhood so
early," I said, "or I would have come in."
"I shall be very thankful, if you'll give me a respectable appearance,"
he said, which I faithfully tried to do.
I gave him the sermon and the proper handkerchief, then left him to his
hour of seclusion before service, when even Sophie never went nigh.
Half-past nine of the clock came. It was the time for the ringing of the
first bell. No sexton appeared. I looked far down the street, having
walked to the corner of the church for the purpose. Perhaps Mr. Axtell
was searching for the key. What if I should ring the bell? I had wished
to, still earlier in the morning. No one would see me go in.
The third time I entered within the church. The bell-rope swayed to and
fro with a mimic oscillation; a sort of admonitory premonition of what
it must shortly do ran up its fibres. I had left the entrance into the
place devoted to worship open. I closed it now. There was nothing very
alarming in standing there. The floor was oaken and old; the walls were
gray, and seamed with crevices; there were steps, at either extreme,
leading into galleries,--one for the choir, two for happy children
excluded by numbers from the straight family-pews, right under Aaron's
gray eyes, that saw everything, except the few items that Sophie must
watch for him, such as neckties, handkerchiefs, and sermons.
There was a smooth place on the rope. The roughness had been worn away
by contact of human hands. Abraham Axtell's hands--the same that covered
his face before the young girl's picture, that digged the grave, and so
gently soothed his sister that very morning--had worn it smooth. It was
out of my reach, too high up for me to attain unto; and so I held it
tightly lower down. The ungrateful rope was very prickly; it hurt me,
but I held fast, and slowly, surely drew it down. Too slowly; there was
not sound enough to frighten a bird out of the belfry, had one been
there to listen; but Aaron, on his knees within his study, praying for
the gift of healing, that he might restore sick souls, would hear. Once
more I drew the rope, with a tiny persistence that was childish,
amusing. A baby-tone came to me from the bell, accustomed to other
things. I had gained courage from the two attempts; it grew rapidly; and
soon, out into the people's homes, the sounding strokes were ringing,
clear, sonorous, and true. I had never noticed how long a time the
"first bell" rang. It was the last Sunday morning's service of the
sexton. He might be expected to linger a little in the net-work of
memory; and thus, anxious to do my duty well, I rang on.
The neighbor's boy opened the door and put his head inside; and then he
opened his eyes wondrously wide at me, and, frightened, ran away. I left
my bell to tone itself to silence, with little sighing notes, like a
child sobbing itself into sleep, and called after him. The rough boy
came to me. I asked "if he would do me a favor." He said, "of course he
would."
"I wish you to build the church-fires; and don't tell any one that you
saw me ringing the bell."
"If you tell me not to, I sha'n't," was his laconic reply.
I went home, my latest duty done. I saw, far down the willow-arched
street, Mr. Axtell coming.
With closed blinds, and room of silence, I ought to have found rest; but
I did not. I heard Aaron go out. I trusted that he had got the proper
sermon. I heard the second bell ring. It was so near, how could I help
it? I heard the congregation singing. Triumphant joy was the impression
that the song brought to my darkened room. I thought of the letter that
was in my pocket. It did not please me to feel that it was out of my
keeping. I took it thence, and held it in my hands. It had no envelope.
It was written upon soft, white paper, and was addressed to some one: to
whom I would not see. Not if my happiness depended upon it, would I
sacrifice the trust reposed in me. Holding the letter thus, a face came
to memory. It was the third face of the three that had been painted in
anthracite. I could not tell where I had known it in life. It did not
seem as if it belonged to mortal time. I got up, opened the blinds for a
moment, and looked in the glass. I saw myself,--and yet,--yes, there was
a similitude to that I saw in memory; and then that strange, sad seeming
of soul-sense, that says, "Such as you are, you have been _somewhere_
for ages," overwhelmed and sent shakings of solemn ague to me.
"I'm getting ill," I thought; "I'll have no more of this."
I looked at a bottle of chloroform standing conveniently near, took it
up, and drew out the stopper. Lifting it to the light, I looked at it.
Quiet and calm and peaceful it reposed, unconscious of ill done or to be
done by itself. It was so innocent that I could not let it sin by
hurting me. I gazed again at my reflection in the glass, and a sudden
intuition taught me a startling truth.
It may have been, nay, must have been, the innocence born of the lucent
chloroform, reflected in my own face; but I was certain that the mirror
and the Axtell house contained two pictures that were the one like the
other. I smiled at the fancy. The illusion, if illusion it was, fled.
The picture on the wall never smiled from out the canvas. I took dark
winding-cloths and bound them about my head, covering the hair and
forehead, all the while watching the effect produced in the mirror. The
result was somewhat striking, it is true, but not of the agreeable
style. I unbound my frontlet, taking off the black phylactery, whose
memorable sentence, written in white letters, had been visible to myself
alone. A contrast suggested itself to me. I would try white; and so I
materialized the suggestion, and stood looking the least bit in the
world like a nun, bound about with my white vestments, and had obtained
only one very unsatisfactory glimpse of the effect produced upon the
sensitive heart of quicksilver, when I found that that subtile heart
responded to influences other than mine. What I discovered was another
face, not in the most remote degree like mine,--as different as it could
possibly be,--a face belonging to the carboniferous strata of the human
ages. Had it been imitating me? Its race are eminent for imitative
genius. A queer sort of a nun it was, wearing neither black nor white,
but high tropical hues. Repose of being did not belong to this face. It
darted around, and looked into my eyes.
"Goodness o' mercy Miss Anna, what ails thee's little head? is it quite
turned with being up o' nights? Lie down, little honey! let old Chloe
bathe it for thee." And Chloe hummed around the room like a bee; she
folded up the petals of light that I had unbudded when I wanted to see
what manner of face I had. Strange fancy it is that the extra fairy
gives to mortals, this breaking up of roses and dolls and joys, to find
what is in them!
I was pleased to have Chloe come in, to take charge of me. I had gone a
little way beyond my own proper realm, and it was grateful to feel my
centrifugal tendencies overcome by this sable centripetency of force,
that took off my strange habitings,--only the paraphernalia of headache
to her. Pillowing the head supposed to be tormented with pain, Chloe
went about to remedy the evil by drowning it in lavender-water. I let
her think what she pleased, and bravely lifted up the mount of my head,
like Ararat of old unto the great deluge; but she would not let me talk
as I pleased. Chloe was half a century old, with a warm, affectionate,
red heart under her black seeming; and it pulsated around me now, as I
lay there, under her care, in absolute quiet, hushed to content by her
humming ways and words.
The second hymn of the church-service was sending its voice of worship
up unto the Lord of all the earth, and Chloe and I, two of the children
of that Lord, upon His earth, were awed by it. "The neighbor's boy must
have left a window open," I thought. The fruitage of song blossomed on,
the petalled notes withered and fell, and Chloe garnered in her harvest
from the field, with a quaintly expressed regret that she "wasn't in the
meadows of the land of Canaan, where taller songs were growing."
"Never mind, Chloe," I said; "the hymns of earth are very sweet; you can
wait a little longer, can't you?"
"Don't you talk, child; you'll make your head ache again. Yes, old Chloe
is willing to wait; there's honey and sugar left on the ground for her
to find, only she's old now, she can't _stoop to pick it up_ as well as
she could once."
"What do you mean, Chloe?"
"Didn't I tell ye you mustn't talk, Miss Anna? Don't be trying to
trouble yourself with old Chloe's meanings: they haven't any
understanding in them for other people to find out."
"Why not, Chloe?"
"Thee's talking again, Miss Anna. It's the Lord's thoughts that are
given to black Chloe, and she hasn't anything to dress them up in but
her own, poor, old, ragged words, that a'n't fit to use any way; so
Chloe'll wait until she gets something better to make 'em 'pear to
belong to the Lord that owns 'em"; and Chloe still soothingly bathed my
head, which I think was aching all the while, only I should not have
found it out, if she had not told me it.
"I want to ask you a question, Chloe."
"Well, just one, honey!"
"Am I much like--do I look as my mother used to?"
"Blessed child! no, no more 'n I do; only ye've both got white faces
from the good Lord, and He didn't please to give Chloe anything better
than a black one."
"What did she look like?"
"Thee's not to talk one word more. Chloe must go and look after Master
Aaron's dinner; he doesn't like husks to feed on. Mistress Percival was
like an angel, when the Lord took her from the earth. I'm afraid old
Chloe wouldn't know her now, she's been so long with Seraphim and
Cherubim in the Great City with the light of the Celestial Sun shining
in her face. I'm afraid Chloe wouldn't dare to speak to her, if she was
to meet her in the shining street of the New Jerusalem."
"She would know you, though, Chloe."