Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 by Various

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"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.

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.

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