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

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862

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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,--

"You'll take me in, won't you?"

"Come," was the only spoken word.

The room was not cheery; he felt it, and said,--

"You see what the effect is when my Myrtle-Vine is off my walls;" and he
tossed aside books and papers that had evidently been astray for days,
and lay now in his way.

Papa took a key (he wears it too, it seems: that is even more than I do
with my tower's) from a tiny chain of gold about his neck, and unlocked
the door connecting this silent room with his own. He went in, leaving
me outside. He lighted a candle and left it burning there. He came, took
my hand, and, with the leading whereby we guide a child, conducted me in
thither. Then he went out and left me standing, bewildered, there.

I had anticipated something wonderful. What was here? It was a silent
room. The carpet had a river-pattern meandering over its dark-blue
ground: it must have been years since a broom went over it. Strange
medley of furniture was here. I looked upon the walls. Pictures that
must have come from another race and generation hung there. There were
many of them. One side of the room held one only. It was a portrait. I
remembered the original in life. "My mother," I exclaimed. In the room's
centre, surrounded by various articles, was the very boat that I knew
Mary Percival had guided out to sea to save Abraham Axtell. Two tiny
oars lay across it. The paint was faded; the seams were open; it would
hold water no longer. A sense of worship filled me. I looked up at the
portrait. My mother smiled: or was it my fancy? Fancy undoubtedly; but
fancies give comfort sometimes. I looked again at the boat. On its
stern, in small, golden letters, was the name, "Blessing of the Bay,"
the very name given to the first boat built after the Mayflower's keel
touched America's shore. "The name was a good omen," I thought. An
armchair stood before the portrait. A shawl was spread over it. I lifted
up the fringe to see what the shawl covered. Papa had come in.

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