Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 by Various

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862

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He lifted up his one usable hand in agony.

"We wait until we die, before going there," I said; "I am alive, don't
you see?"

"Alive, and not dead? you! whom I killed eighteen years ago, have you
come to reproach me now? Oh, I have suffered, even to atonement, for it!
You would pardon, if you only knew what I have suffered for you."

Surely delirium had returned. I urged the poor man to take the contents
of the glass.

He promised, upon condition of my forgiveness,--forgiveness for having
killed me, who never had been killed, who was surely alive. Jeffy had
come in again, and had listened to the pleading.

"Why don't you tell him yes, Miss Anna? He doesn't know a word he's
sayin'. It'll keep him quiet like; he's like a baby," he whispered, with
a covert pull at my dress by way of impressment.

And so, guided by Chloe's boy, I said, "I forgive."

"Why don't you go, if you forgive me? I don't like to keep you here,
when you belong up there"; and he pointed his words by the aid of his
available hand.

I knew then _why_ Miss Axtell had loved this man: it was simply one of
those cruel, compulsory offerings up of self, that allure one, in open
sight of torture, on to the altar. Oh, poor woman! why hath thy Maker
so forsaken thee? And in mute wonder at this most wondrous wrong, that
crept into mortal life when the serpent went out through Eden and
left an opening in the Garden, I forgot for the while my present
responsibility, in compassionate pity for the pale, beautiful lady in
Redleaf, into whose heart this man had come,--unwillingly, I knew, when
I looked into his face, and yet, _having come, must grow into its Eden,
even unto the time that Eternity shadows;_ and I sent out the arms of my
spirit, and twined them invisibly around her, who truly had spoken when
she said, "I want you," with such hungry tones. God, the Infinite,
has given me comprehension of such women, has given me His own loving
pity,--in little human grains, it is true, but they come from "the
shining shore." "Miss Axtell does want me," I thought; "she is right,--I
am gladness to her."

"Will you go?" came from the invalid.

"A woman, loving thus, never comes alone into a friend's heart,"
something said; "you must receive her shadow"; and I looked at the
person who had said, "Will you go?"

There are various words used in the dictionary of life, descriptive
of men such as him now before me. They mostly are formed in syllables
numbering four and five, which all integrate in the one word
_irresistible_: how pitifully I abhor that word!--every letter has a
serpent-coil in it. "Love thy neighbor even as thyself." It is good that
these words came just here to wall themselves before the torrent that
might not have been stayed until I had laid the mountain of my thought
upon the sycophantic syllabication that the world loves to "lip" unto
the world,--the false world, that, blinded, blinds to blinder blindness
those that fain would behold. There is a crying out in the earth for
a place of torment; there are sins for which we want what God hath
prepared for the wicked.

"Are you going?"--and this time there was plaintive moaning in the
accents.

"You must take him in, too," my spirit whispered; and I acted the "I
will" that formed in the mental court where my soul sat enthroned,--my
own judge.

"Oh, no, I am not going away," I said; "I am come to stay with you,
until some one else comes."

A certain resignment of opposition seemed to be effected. I knew it
would be so,--it is in all such natures,--and he seemed intent upon
making atonement for his imaginary wrong, since I would stay.

"Mary, I didn't mean to kill you," he said; "I wouldn't have destroyed
your young life; oh! I wouldn't;--but I did! I did!"

"You make some strange mistake; you ought not to talk," I urged,
surprised at this second time being called Mary.

"Yes, I guess 'twas a mistake,--you're right, all a mistake,--I didn't
mean to kill you; but I did _him_, though. Oh! I wanted to destroy
him,--_he hadn't any pity, he wouldn't yield_. But it's _you_, Mary,
_you_ oughtn't to hear me say such things of _him_."

"I am not Mary, I am Miss Percival; and you may tell me."

"I beg pardon, I had no right to call you Mary; but it is there, now, on
your tomb-stone in the old church-yard,--Mary Percival,--there isn't any
Miss there. Do they call you Miss Percival in heaven?"--and he began to
sing, deep, stirring songs of rhythmic melody, that catch up individual
existences and bear them to congregated continents, where mountains sing
and seas respond, amid the _encore_ of starry spheres.

O Music! if we could but divine thee, dear divinity, thou mightst be
less divine! then let us be content to be divinized in thee!--and I was.
I let him sing, knowing that it was in delirium; and for the moment my
wonder ceased concerning Miss Axtell's love for Herbert.

This while, Jeffy stood speechless, transfused into melody. Whence came
this love of Africans for harmonious measure? Oh, I remember: the scroll
of song whereon were written the accents of the joyed morning-stars,
when they grew jubilant that earth stood create, was let fall by an
angel upon Afric's soil. No one of the children of the land was found of
wisdom sufficient to read the hieroglyphs; therefore the sacred roll was
divided among the souls in the nation: unto each was given one note from
the divine whole.

"Jeffy must have received a semi-breve as his portion," I thought, for
he was rapt in ecstasy.

"Oh, sing again!" he said, unconsciously, when, exhausted, the invalid
reached the shore of Silence,--where he did not long linger, for he
changed his song to lament that he could not reach his ship, that would
sail before he could recover; and he made an effort to rise. He fell
back, fainting.

It seemed a great blessing that at this moment the housekeeper
introduced the person Doctor Percival had sent.

That night, and for many after, it seemed, my father looked extremely
anxious. I did not see the patient again until the eventful twenty-fifth
of March was past.

Two days only was I permitted for my visit. Would Miss Axtell expect me?
or had she, it might be, forgotten that she had asked my presence?

My father had not forgotten the obligation of the ring of gold; he made
allusion to it in the moment of parting, and I felt it tightening about
me more and more as the miles of sea and land rolled back over our
separation; and a question, asked long ago and unanswered yet, was
repeated in my mental realm,--"Canst thou bind the sweet influences of
the Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion?" and I said, "I will not
try."

It was evening when I arrived at the parsonage. Sophie was full of sweet
sisterly joy on seeing me, and of surprise when I told her what had
occurred in our father's house. It was so unprecedented, this taking in
a stranger whose name and home were unknown; for I could not tell Sophie
my conviction that father had discovered who the patient was.

"Miss Axtell is almost well." Sophie gave the information before I found
time to ask. "She pleases to be quite charming to me. I hope she will be
equally gracious to you." And so I hoped.

From out the ark of the round year God sends some day-doves of summer
into the barren spring-time, to sing of coming joys and peck the buds
into opening. One of His sending brooded over Redleaf when I walked
forth in its morning-time to redeem my promise.

"Miss Percival! I'm so glad!"

Katie showed me into the room that once I had been so much afraid of.
She did not long leave me there.

"Miss Lettie would like to see you in her room."

Sophie was right. She is almost well.

"Come!" was the sole word that met my entering in; then followed two
small acts, supposed to be conventionalities. Isn't it good that all
suppositions are _not_ based upon truth? I thought it good then. I hope
I may away on to the dawning of the new life.

This was my first seeing of Miss Axtell in her self-light. She said,--

"This is the only day that I have been down in time for
breakfast,"--she, who looked as if the fair Dead-Sea fruits had been all
of sustenance that had dropped through the leaden waves for her; and
an emotion of awe swept past me, borne upon the renewal of the
consciousness that I had been made essential to her.

"I knew that you would come," she continued. "Oh! I have great
confidence in you; you must never disappoint me,--will you?"--and,
playfully, she motioned me to the footstool where she had appointed me a
place on the first night when she told me of her mother, dead.

I assured her that I should. I must begin that moment by mentioning the
time of my visit's duration.

"How long?" and there was import in the tone of her voice.

"I must be at home to-morrow morning."

"No reprieve?"

I answered, "None,"--and turned the circlet of obligation upon my
finger.

"I am glad you told me; I like limits; I wish to know the precise moment
when my rainbows will disband. It's very nice, meeting Fate half-way;
there's consolation in knowing that it will have as far to go as you on
the return voyage."

I smiled; a little inward ripple of gladness sent muscle-waves to my
lips. She noticed it, and her tone changed.

"I see, I see, my good little Anemone! You don't know how exultant it
is to stand alone, above the forest of your fellows,--to lift up your
highest bough of feeling,--to meet the Northland's fiercest courser that
thinks to lay you low. Did you ever turn to see the expression with
which the last leap of wind is met, the peculiar suavity of the bowing
of the boughs, that says as plainly as ever did speaking leaves, '_You
have left me myself_'? You don't understand these things, you small
wind-flower, that have grown sheltered from all storms!"

"One would think not, Miss Axtell, but"--and I paused until she bade me
"Go on."

"Perhaps it is vanity,--I hope not,--but it seems to me that I have a
mirror of all Nature set into the frame of my soul. It isn't a part of
myself; it is a mental telescope, that resolves the actions of all the
people around me into myriads of motives, atomies of inducement, that I
see woven and webbed around them, by the sight-power given. Besides, I
am not an anemone,--oh, no! I am something more substantial."

"I see, very"; and before I could divine her intent, she had lifted up
my face in both her hands and held my eyes in her own intensity of gaze,
as, oh, long ago! I remember my mother to have done, when she doubted my
perfect truth.

Miss Axtell was engaged in looking over old treasured letters, bits of
memory-memoranda, when I arrived. She had laid them aside to greet me,
somewhat hastily, and a rustling commotion testified their feeling at
their summary disposal. Now she sat framed in by the yellow-and-white
foam, that had settled to motionlessness,--an island in the midst of
waves of memory.

"Did you bring my treasures?" were the first words, after investigating
my truth.

"They are safely here."

I gave the package.

She made no mention of former occurrences. She trusted me implicitly,
with that far-deep of confidence that says, "Explanation would be
useless; your spirit recognizes mine." She only said, drooping her regal
head with the slightest dip into motion,--

"I want to tell you a story; it is of people who are, some in heaven and
some upon the earth;--a story with which you must have something to do
for me, because I cannot do it for myself. I did not intend telling so
soon, but my disbanded rainbow lies in the future."

Before commencing, she wandered up and down the room a little, stopped
before the dressing-bureau, brushed back the hair, with many repetitions
of stroke, from the temples wherein so much of worship had been
gathered, smoothed down the swollen arches of veinery that fretted
across either temple's dome, looked one moment into the censers of
incense that burned always with emotionary fires, flashed out a little
superabundant flame into the cold quicksilver, turned the key, fastening
our two selves in, examined the integrity of the latch leading into the
dressing-room beyond, threw up the window-sash,--the same one that Mr.
Axtell had lifted to look out into the night for her,--asked, "should I
be cold, if she left it open?" looked contentment at my negative answer,
rolled the lounge out to where her easy-chair was still vibrating in
memory of her late presence, made me its occupant, reached out for the
package over which I had been guardian, pinioned it between her two
beautiful hands, laid it down one moment to wrap a shawl around me,
then, resuming it, sat where she had when she said, "I want to tell you
a story," and perhaps she was praying. I may never know, but it was many
moments before she made answer to my slight touch, "Yes, child, I have
not forgotten," and with face hidden from me she told me her story.

MISS AXTELL'S STORY.

"Alice Axtell was my sister. Eighteen years ago last August-time she was
here.

"There has been beauty in the Axtell race; in her it was radiant. It
would have been truth to say, 'She is beautiful.'

"I said that it was August-time,--the twenty-seventh day of the month.
Alice and I had been out in the little bay outside of Redcliff beach,
with your sister. You don't remember her: she was like you. Doctor
Percival had given Mary a boat, taught her to row it, and she had that
afternoon given Alice a first lesson in the art. The day went down hot
and sultry; we lingered on the cooler beach until near evening. We
saw clouds lying dark along the western horizon, and that voiceless
lightnings played in them. Then we came home. The air was tiresome, the
walk seemed endless; still Alice and Mary lingered at the gate of your
father's house to say their last words. The mid-summer weariness was
over us both, as we reached home. We came up to this room,--our room
then. Alice said,--

"'I think I shall go to bed, I'm so tired.'

"She closed the blinds. As she did so, a crash of thunder came.

"'We're going to have a thunder-shower, after all,' she said; 'how
quickly it is coming up! Come and see.'

"I looked a moment out. Jet masses of vapor were curling up amid the
stars, blotting out, one by one, their brightness from the sky. Alice
was always timid in thunder-storms. She shuddered, as a second flash
pealed out its thunder, and crept up to me. I put my arms around her,
and rested my cheek against her head. She was trembling violently.

"'Lie down, Allie; let me close the other blinds; don't look out any
longer.'

"Our mother came in.

"'I came to see if the windows were all down,' she said; 'it will rain
in a moment'; and she hurried away, and I heard her closing, one after
another, the windows that had been all day open.

"Alice lay for a long time quietly. The storm uprose with fearful might;
it shook the house in its passing grasp, and I sat by this table,
listening to the music wrought out of the thunderous echoes.

"'Couldn't we have a window open?' Alice asked; 'I feel stifled in
here'; and she went across the room and lifted the sash before I was
aware.

"I looked around, when I heard the noise. The same instant there came a
blinding, dazzling light; then, that awful vacuous rattle in the throat
of thunder that tells it comes in the name of Death the destroyer.

"'Oh, Allie, come away!' I screamed.

"In obedience to my wish, she leaned towards me; but, oh, her face! I
caught her, ere she fell, even. I sent out the wings of my voice, but no
one heard me, no one came. I could not lift her in my arms, so I laid
her upon the floor, and ran down.

"'Go to Alice,--the lightning!' was all I could say, and it was enough.
I heard groans before I gained the street.

"My pale, silent sister was stronger than the storm which flapped its
wings around me and threatened to take me to its eyry; but it did not;
it permitted me to gain Doctor Percival's door. I was dazzled with the
lightning, only my brain was distinct with 'its skeleton of woe,' when I
found myself in your father's house.

"I could not see the faces that were there. I asked for Doctor Percival.
Some one answered, 'He is not come home. What has happened?' and Mary
ran forward in alarm.

"'It is lightning! Oh, come!' was all that I could utter; and with me
there went out into the pouring rain every soul that was there when I
went in.

"'She is dead; there is nothing to be done.'

"Three hours after the stroke, these words came. Then I looked up.
Alice, with her little white face of perfect beauty, lay upon that bed.
Thunder-storms would never more make her tremble, never awake to fear
the spirit gone. It was Doctor Percival from whom these fateful words
came. I had had so much hope! In very desperation of feeling, I strove
to look up to his face. My eyes were arrested before they reached him.

"'By what?' did you ask?"

Her long silence had incited me to question, and she turned her face to
me, and slowly said,--

"By the Lightning of Life.

"Two sisters, in one night,--one unto Death, the other unto Life. Beside
Doctor Percival was standing one. I do not know what he was like, I
cannot tell you; but, believe me, it is solemnly true, that, that
instant, this human being flashed into my heart and soul. I saw, and
felt, and have heard the rolling thunder that followed the flash to this
very hour. It was very hard, over my Alice. If I had only been she, how
much, how much happier it would have been!--and yet it must have been
wiser. She could not have endured to the end. She would have failed in
the bitterness of the trial.

"My Alice! I am devoutly thankful that you are safe in heaven!"--and for
a moment the hands were lifted up from the treasured packet; they closed
over it, and she went on.

"Alice was wrapped up in earth. In the moment when the first fold of the
clod-mantle, that trails about us all at the last, fell protectingly
over her, I was in that condition of superlative misery that cries out
for something to the very welkin that sends down such harsh hardness;
and I hurried my eyes out of the open grave, only to find them again
arrested by the same soul that had stood beside Doctor Percival and
Alice in her death. They said something to me, kinder than ever came out
of the blue vault, and yet they awoke the fever of resistance. I would
have no thought but that of Alice. What right had any other to come in
then and there?

"September came. Its days brought my sorrow to me ever anew. The early
dew baptized it; the great sun laid his hot hand upon its brow and named
it Death, in the name of the Mighty God; and the evening stars looked
down on me, rocking Alice in my soul, and singing lamentful lullabies
to her, sleeping, till such time as Lethean vapors curled through the
horizon of my mind, and hid its formless shadows of suffering.

"Mary Percival was Alice's best friend; as such, she came to comfort and
to mourn with me. One day, it was the latest of September's thirty, Mary
lured me on to the sea-shore, and into her small boat once more. Little
echoes of gladness sprang up from the sea; voices from Alice's silence
floated on the unbroken waves.

"'You look a little like yourself again; I'm so glad to see it!' Mary
said. 'There comes Mr. McKey. I wonder what brings him here.'

"I looked up, and saw, slowly walking on to the point at which Mary was
securing her boat, the possessor of the existence that had come into
mine. There was no way for me to flee, except seaward; and of two
suicides I chose the pleasanter, and I stayed.

"'Who is it, Mary?' I had time to question, and she to answer.

"'It is Bernard McKey; he has come to study medicine in papa's office;
he came the night Alice died.'

"He was too near to permit of questioning more, and so I stood upon the
seashore and saw my fate coming close.

"Mary simply said, 'Good evening,' to him, followed by the requisite
introductory words that form the basis of acquaintance.

"'I think Miss Axtell and I scarcely need an introduction,' he said;
nevertheless he looked the pleasure it had strewed into his field, and
guarded it, as a careful husbandman would choicest seed.

"He asked the style of question which monosyllables can never answer, to
which responding, one has to offer somewhat of herself; and all the
time of that sombre autumn, there grew from out the chasm of the
lightning-stroke luxuriant foliage. I gave it all the resistance of my
nature, yet I knew, as the consumptive knows, that I should be conquered
by my conqueror. It was only the old story of the captive polishing
chains to wear them away; and yet Mr. McKey was simply very civil and
intentionally kind, where he might have been courteously indifferent.
Abraham was away when Bernard McKey came to Redleaf. For more than
twelve months this terrible something had been working its power into
my soul. Yet we were not lovers,"--and Miss Axtell made the
_pronunciamiento_ as if she held the race mentioned in utmost
veneration. "Day by day brought to me new reasons why Bernard McKey must
be unto me only a medical student in Doctor Percival's office, and the
stars sealed all that the day had done; whilst no night of sky was
without a wandering comet, whereon was inscribed, in letters that
flashed every way, the sentence that came with the lightning-stroke;
even storms drowned it not; winter's cold did not freeze it. Verily,
little friend, _I know that God had put it into Creation for me, and yet
there seemed His own law written against it_"; and Miss Axtell's tones
grew very soft and tremulously low, as she said,--

"Mr. McKey had faults that could not, existing in action, make any woman
happy: do you think happiness was meant for woman?"

She waited my answer in the same way that she had done when she was
ill and asked if I liked bitters concealed. She waited as long without
reply. The pause grew oppressive, and I spanned it by an assurance of
individual possessive happiness.

"Anemones never know which way the wind blows, until it comes down close
to the ground," she said; "but souls which are on bleak mountain-summits
_must_ watch whirlwinds, poised in space, and note their airy march. So
I saw, clearly cut into the rock of the future, my own face, with all
the lines and carvings wrought into it that the life of Bernard McKey
would chisel out, and I only waited. I might have waited on forever, for
Mr. McKey had not cast one pebbly word that must send up wavy ripples
from deep spirit-waters; he only wandered, as any other might have
done, upon the shore of my life, along its quiet, dewy sands, above its
chalk-cliffs, and by the side of its green, sloping shores. He never
questioned why rose and fell the waves; he never went down where 'tide,
the moon-slave, sleeps,' to find the foundations of my heart's mainland.
I had only seen him standing at times, as one sees a person upon a
ship's deck, peering off over Earth's blue ocean-cheek, simply in mute,
solemn wonder at what may be beyond, without one wish to speed the ship
on.

"It might have been forever thus, but Abraham came home. He is my
brother, you know. If he made me suffer, he has been made to suffer
with me. Bernard McKey was Doctor Percival's favorite. He made him his
friend, and was everything to him that friend could be. I cannot tell
you my story without mention of my brother, he has been so woven into
every part of it. An unaccountable fancy for the study of medicine
developed itself in his erratic nature soon after he came home; and he
relinquished his brilliant prospects and devoted himself to the little
white office near Doctor Percival's house, with Bernard McKey for his
hourly companion. The two had scarce a thought in common: one was
impulsive, prone to throw himself on the stream of circumstance, to waft
with the wind, and blossom with the spring; the other was the great
mountain-pine, distilling the same aroma in all atmospheres, extending
fibrous roots against Nature's granite, whenceever it comes up. How
could the two harmonize? They could not, and a time of trial came. We
knew, before it came, why Doctor Percival's little white office held
Abraham so many hours in the day. It was because the Mountain-Pine found
in the moss of Redleaf the sweet Trailing-Arbutus."

She asked me if I knew the flower; and when I answered her with my words
of love of it, she said, "she had always thought it was one of Eden's
own bits of blossomry, that, missing man from the hallowed grounds,
crept out to know his fate, and, finding him so forlornly unblest, had
sacrificed its emerald leaves, left in the Garden, and, creeping into
mosses, lived, waiting for man's redemption. We used to call Mary
'The Arbutus,' and it was pleasant to see the great rough branches of
Abraham's nature drooping down, more and more, toward the pink-and-white
pale flower that looked into the sky, from a level as lofty as the
Pine's highest crown. Abraham goes out to search for the type of Mary
every spring"; and rising, she brought to me the waxen buds that were
yet unopened.

I took them in my hands, with the same feeling that I would have done a
tress of Mary's hair, or a fragment that she had handled. I think Miss
Axtell divined this feeling; for she cautiously opened the door leading
into her brother's room, and finding that he was not there, she bade me
"come and see." It was Mary's portrait that once more I looked upon;
framed in a wreath of the trailing-arbutus, it was hanging just where he
could look at it at night, as I my strange tower-key.

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