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

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

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We went back. Miss Axtell closed the sash; she was looking weary and
pale. I was afraid she would suffer harm from the continued recital. She
said "No," to my fear,--that "it must all be spoken now, once, and that
forever,"--and I listened unto the story's end.

"One year had passed since Alice's death before Abraham's coming.
Another had almost fled before the eventful time when I began to feel
the weight of my cross. I know not how it came to Abraham's knowledge
that Bernard McKey felt in his soul my presence. I only know that
he came home one night, with a storm of rage whitening his lips and
furrowing his forehead. He came up here, where I was sitting. I had
watched his figure coming through tree-openings from Doctor Percival's
house, and mingled with the memories of the fair young girl whom I had
seen dead by lightning were fears for Mary Percival. For several days
she had been ill, and I knew that Abraham felt anxious; therefore I did
not wonder at his hasty coming in and instant seeking of me. He came
quite close. He wound his face in between me and the darkening sky; he
whispered hoarsely,--

"'Do you care for him?'

"'What is it, Abraham?' I asked, startled by his words and manner, but
with not the faintest idea of the meaning entering in with his words.

"'Bernard McKey, is he anything to you?'

"'You've no right to question me thus,' I said.

"'And you will not answer me?'

"'I will not, Abraham.'

"The next morning Abraham was gone. He had not told me of his intended
absence. He had only left a note, stating the time of his return.

"It was a week ere he came. Mary had not improved in his absence, yet no
one deemed her very ill.

"I dreaded Abraham's coming home, because he had left me in silent
anger; but how could I have replied to his question otherwise than I
did? No one, not Mr. McKey himself, had asked me; and should I give him,
my brother, my answer first?

"Lazily the village-clock swung out the hours that summer's afternoon.
The stroke of three awakened me. I had not seen Mary that day.

"'I would go and see her,' I decided.

"'She was sleeping, the dear child,' Chloe said. 'She would come and
tell me when she was awake, if I would wait.'

"I said that I would stay awhile, and I wandered out under the shade of
the great whispering trees, to wait the waking hour.

"I remember the events of that afternoon, as Mary and Martha must have
remembered the day on which Lazarus came up from the grave unto them.

"The air was still, save a humming in the very tree-tops that must have
been only echoes tangled there, breezes that once blew past. The long
grape-arbor at the end of the lawn looked viny and cool. I walked up and
down under the green archway, until Chloe's words summoned me.

"Mary was 'better,' she said; 'a few days, and she should feel quite
strong, she hoped'; but she looked weary, and I only waited a little
while, until her father and mother came in, and then I went.

"Mr. McKey was sitting in the door of the little white office. He came
out to meet me ere I had reached the street,--asked if I was on my way
home.

"I said 'Yes,' with the lazy sort of languor born of the indolence of
the hour.

"'Have you energy enough for a walk to the sea-shore?' he asked.

"It had been my wish that very day. I had not been there since Mary's
illness. I hesitated in giving an answer. Abraham would be home at
sunset.

"'Don't go, if it is only to please me,' he said.

"'I am going to please myself,' I answered; 'only I wish to be at home
on Abraham's coming.'

"That afternoon, Bernard McKey for the first time told me of himself,
and what the two years in Redleaf had done for him. One month more, and
he should leave it. He put into words the memory of that first look
across the dead. He talked to me, until the sea lost its sunlight
sheen,--until I no longer heard its beat of incoming tide,--until I
forgot the hour for Abraham's coming. It was he who reminded me of it.
Once more we paced the sands, already sown with our many footsteps,
that the advancing waters would soon overwhelm. After that we went
village-ward. The gloaming had come down when we reached home.

"'Abraham must have been an hour here,' I thought, as alone I went in.

"He met me in the hall.

"'Where have you been, Lettie?' was his greeting.

"'On the sands.'

"'Not alone?'

"'No, Abraham; Bernard McKey has been with me.'

"'By what right?' he demanded, with that mighty power of voice that is
laid up within him for especial occasions.

"'By the right that I gave him, by the right that is his to walk with
me,' I said; for I grew defiant, and felt a renewal of strength, enough
to tell Abraham the truth.

"Don't start so, Anemone," she said to me. "You think defiance
unwomanly, and so do I; but it was for once only, and I felt that my
brother had no right to question me.

"But one word came from his lips, as he confronted me there, with folded
arms; it was,--

"'When?'

"'This very afternoon, Abraham.'

"Mother came out at the moment. She saw the cloud on Abraham's brow even
in the dim light. She asked, 'What is it?' and Abraham answered us both
at the same time.

"He had been to the home of Bernard McKey. He proved to my mother's
utmost satisfaction that her daughter had no right to care for one like
Bernard McKey. He did not know the right that came on that night almost
two years before. He saw that his proofs were idle to me; but he said
'he had another, one that I would accept, for I was an Axtell.'

"'Yes, Abraham, I am an Axtell, and I shall prove my right to the name,
come what will'; and without waiting to hear more, I glided into the
darkness up-stairs.

"For a long time I heard mother and Abraham talking together; it seemed
as if they would never cease. At last, mother sent up to know if I was
not coming to take my tea. I had forgotten its absence till then. I went
down. A half-hour later, during which time a momentous mist of silence
hung over the house, I heard steps approaching. You know that it was
summer time, and the windows were all thrown open, after the heat of the
day. I had been wondering where every one was gone. I recognized both of
the comers, as their footsteps fell upon the walk, but I heard no words.
Oh, would there had been none to come! I heard Abraham go on up the
stairs, and knew that he was searching for me. I knew who had come in
with him, and I arose from my concealment in the unlighted library, and
went into the parlor. It was Mr. McKey who sat there.

"'What is it?' I asked,--for a gnome of ill was walking up and down in
my brain, as we had walked on the sands so few hours before.

"'What is it? I don't know,' he said. 'Your brother asked me to come
over for a few minutes.'

"Evidently Abraham had not shown him one coal of the fire that burned
under his cool seeming. That is the way with these mountain pine-trees:
one never knows how deep into volcanic fires their roots are plunged.

"'Something has happened,' I whispered. 'Whatever comes, bear it
bravely.'

"He laughed, a low, rippling laugh, like the breaking up of ever so many
songs all at once; and the notes had not floated down to rest, when
mother and Abraham came in. Mr. McKey arose to greet my mother. She
stood proudly erect, her regal head unbending, her eyes straight on,
into an endless future, in which he must have no part,--that I saw.
Whatever he discerned there, he, too, stood before her and my brother.
Abraham handed me a letter, saying, 'Read that, for your proof.'

"And I read. The letter bore the signature of Bernard McKey. The date
was the night of Alice's death. The words descriptive of the scene
chiselled into my brain were on that fair paper-surface; and there were
others, words which only one man may write to one woman. I read it on to
the end.

"'You are right, Abraham,' I said, 'and I thank you for my proof'; and
without one word for the pale, handsome face that stood beseechingly
between me and the great future, through which I gazed, I went forth
alone into the starry night. Anywhere, to be alone with God, leaving
that trio of souls in there; and as I fled past the windows, I heard my
mother speak terrible words to one that was, yes, even then, myself.
Some angel must have come down the starry way to guide me; for, without
seeking it, without consciousness of whither I fled, I found myself near
the old church, where, from the day of my solemn baptism within its
walls, I had gone up to the weekly worship. I crept up close to the
door. In the shadow there no one would see me; and so, upon the hard
stones, I writhed through the anguish of the fire and iceberg that made
war in my heart.

"Then came unto me the old inheritance, the gift of towering pride; and
I said unto myself, 'No one shall think I sorrow; no one shall know that
an Axtell has sipped from a poisoned cup; no one shall see a leaf of
myrtle in my garden of life'; and from off the friendly granite steps
that had received me in my hour of bitterness, I went back to my home.

"What, could have happened there, that I had not been missed? Father was
absent from Redleaf. Bernard McKey was coming down the walk. I hid in
the shrubbery, and let him pass. Oh, would that I had spoken to him,
then, there! It would have saved so much misery on the round globe!

"But I did not. I stood breathless until he entered Doctor Percival's
house; then I waited a moment to determine my own course; I wanted to
gain my room undiscovered. I saw the same figure come out; I knew it by
the light that the open door threw around it; and a moment later, in the
still air,--I knew the sound, it was the unlocking of the little white
office. Then I stole in, and fled to my refuge. No one had discovered my
absence.

"The night went by. I did not sleep. I did not weep,--oh, no! it was not
a case for tears; there are some sorrows that cannot be counted out in
drops; a flood comes, a great freshet rises in the soul, and whirls
spirit, mind, and body on, on, until the Mighty Hand comes down and
lifts the poor wreck out of the flood, and dries it in the sun of His
absorption.

"It was morning at last. Slowly up the ascent, to heights of glory,
walked the stars, waving toward earth, as they went, their wafting of
golden light, and sending messages of love to the dark, round world,
over which they had kept such solemn watch,--sending them down, borne
by rays of early morning; and still I sat beside the window, where all
through the night I had suffered. My mother and Abraham had sought to
see me, but I had answered, with calm words, that I chose to be alone;
and they had left me there, and gone to their nightly rest."

Miss Axtell hid her face a little while; then, lifting it up, she went
to the window so often mentioned, beckoned me thither, pointed to the
house where my life had commenced, to a door opening out on the eastern
side, and said,--

"I wish you to look at that door one moment; out of it came my doom that
midsummer's morning. Light had just gained ascendency over darkness,
when I saw Chloe come out. I knew instantly that something had happened
there. The poor creature crept out of the house,--I saw her go,--and
kneeling down behind that great maple-tree, she lifted up her arms to
heaven, and I heard, or thought I heard her, moaning. Then, whilst I
watched, she got up, looked over at our house, from window to window;
once more she raised her hands, as if invoking some power for help, and
went in.

"I brushed back the hair that my fingers had idly threaded in unrest,
looked one moment, in the dim twilight of morning, to see what changes
my war-fare had wrought, then, cautiously, breathlessly, for fear of
awakening some one, I went out. The night-dew lay heavy on the lawn. I
heeded it not. I knew that trouble had come to Doctor Percival's house.
I went to the door that Chloe had opened. No one seemed awake; deep
stillness brooded over and in the dwelling. Could I have been mistaken?
Whilst I stood in doubt whether to go or stay, there came a long,
sobbing moan, that peopled the dwelling with woe.

"It came from Mary's room. Thither I went. There stood Doctor and Mrs.
Percival beside Mary, and she--was dead.

"I shudder now, as I did then, though eighteen years have rolled their
wheels of misery between,--shudder, as I look in memory into that room
again, and see your father standing in the awful grief that has no
voice, see your mother lifting up her words of moaning, up where I so
late had watched the feet of stars walking into heaven. I don't know how
long it was, I had lost the noting of time, but I remember growing into
rigidness. I remember Bernard McKey's wild, wretched face in the room; I
remember hearing him ask if it was all over. I remember Abraham's coming
in; I _felt_, when through his life the east-wind went, withering it up
within him. I do not know how I went home. I asked no questions. Mary
was dead; she had gone whither Alice went. It seemed little consolation
to me to ask when or how she died.

"Father came home that day. Mother forgot me for Abraham: love of him
was her life. Father did not know, no one had told him, the events of
the night before; he thought me sorrowing for Mary, and so I was; my
grief seemed weak and small before this reality of sorrow.

"It was late in the day, and I was trying to get some sleep, when Chloe
sent a request to see me. I had not seen her since I knew why she had
hid her suffering behind the tree in the morning. I saw that she had
something to say beside telling me of Mary; for she looked cautiously
around the room, as if fearing other ears might be there to hear.

"'Oh! oh! Miss Lettie,' she said, 'I stayed with Miss Mary last night. I
must have gone to sleep when she went away; but I'm afraid, I'm afraid
it wasn't the sickness that killed her.'

"'What then? what was it, Chloe?' I asked, whilst the tears fell fast
from her eyes.

"'Doctor Percival gave her some medicine just afore he went to bed,
and she said she was "very sick"; she said so a good many times, Miss
Lettie, afore I went to sleep.'

"'You don't think it was the medicine that killed her?'--for a horrible
thought had come in to me.

"'I hope not, but I'm afraid'; and with a still lower, whispering tone,
and another frightened look about the room, Chloe took from under her
shawl a small cup. She held it up close to me, and her voice penetrated
with its meaning all the folds of my thought,--'Chloe's afraid Miss Mary
drank her death in here.'

"'Give it to me,' I said; and I snatched at the cup. Catching it from
her, I looked into it. The draught had been taken; the sediment only lay
dried upon it.

"'You think so, Chloe? How could it have been? You say Doctor Percival
gave it to her?'

"She said that 'Mr. Abraham had been in to see her a little while,--only
a few moments. Something was the matter with him. Miss Mary talked,
just a few words; what they were she did not hear,--she was in the next
room,--only, when he went away, she heard her say, "Don't do it; you may
be wrong, and then you'll be sorry as long as you live"; and then
Mr. Abraham shut the door heavy-like and was gone. Afterwards Doctor
Percival came up,--said Miss Mary must sleep, she had more fever; asked
her so many kind questions, and was just going down to go to the office
for something to give her, when he met Master McKey coming in. I heard
my master ask him to go for it. And I doesn't know anything more, Miss
Lettie. I came to tell you.'

"I asked her 'if she had told any one else? if any one had seen the
cup?'

"She said, 'No'; and I made her promise me that she would never mention
it, never speak of it to any living soul.

"She promised, and she has kept her promise faithfully to this day."

I thought, at this pause in the story, of Chloe's hiding chloroform from
me.

"I had myself seen Bernard McKey go out to the office that night. Had
he given poison to Mary Percival? And with the question the hot answer
came, 'Never!--he did not do it!'

"Chloe went, leaving the cup with me.

"I knew that I must see Bernard. How? The household were absorbed in
Abraham. His condition perilled his reason. Doctor Percival came over
every hour to see him, and I was sure that his hair whitened from time
to time. It was terrible to hear Abraham declaring that he had killed
Mary,--that he might have granted her request. And as often as his eyes
fell upon me, his words changed to, 'It was for you that I did it,--for
my sister!' And whilst all sorrowed and watched him, I sought my
opportunity. 'It would never come to me,' I thought, 'I must go to it';
and under cover of looking upon the face of Mary, I went out to seek
Bernard.

"We met before I reached the house; we should have passed in silence,
had I not spoken. It was the same hour as that in which we had come from
the sands the night before. What a horrible lifetime had intervened! I
said that 'I had some words for him.' He stood still in the air that
throbbed in waves over me. He was speechlessly calm just then.

"'I expected no words after my judgment,' at length he said,--for I knew
not how to open my terrible theme; 'will you tell me on what evidence
you judge?'

"What a trifle then seemed any merely human love in the presence of
Death! I was almost angry that he should once think of it.

"'It is something of more importance than the human affection with which
you play,' I said. 'It is a life, the life of Mary Percival, that last
night went out,--and how? Was it by this cup?'--and I handed the cup to
him.

"He looked simple amazement, as he would have done, had it been a rock
or flower; he did not offer to take it,--still I held it out.

"'Will you examine the contents,' I asked, 'and report to me the
result?'

"'Certainly I will, Miss Axtell,' he said; and with it he walked to the
office.

"I watched him through the window. I saw him coolly apply various tests.
The third one seemed satisfactory.

"He came to the door. I was very near, and went in

"'This is nothing Miss Mary had,--it is poison,' he said.

"He was innocent; I knew it in the very depth of my soul. How could I
tell him the deed his hand had done? But I must, and I did. I told him
how Chloe had brought the cup to me. When I had done, he said,--

"'You believe this of me?'

"I answered,--

"'The cup is now in your hand; judge you of its work'; and I told him
how I had seen him come out the night before,--that I was in the
shrubbery when he went to the office.

"The words of his answer came; they were iron in my heart, though spoken
not to me.

"'O my God, why hast Thou let me do this?' he cried, and went past me
out of the little white office,--out, as I had done, into the open air,
in my sorrow, the night before.

"I would not lose sight of him; I followed on; and, as I went, I thought
I heard a rustling in the leaves. A momentary horror swept past me, lest
some one had been watching,--listening, perhaps,--but I did not pause.
I must know how, where, Bernard would hide his misery. It was not quite
dark; I could not run through the night, as I had done before; I must
follow on at a respectable pace, stop to greet the village-people who
were come out in the cool of the evening, and all the while keep in view
that figure, hastening, for what I knew not, but on to the sands, whilst
those whom I met stayed me to ask how Mary Percival died. I passed the
last of the village-houses. There was nothing before me now but Nature
and this unhappy soul. I lost sight of him; I came to the sands; I saw
only long, low flats stretching far out,--beyond them the line of foam.
The moon was not yet gone; but its crescent momently lessened its light.
I went up and down the shore two or three times, going on a little
farther each time, meeting nothing,--nothing but the fear that stood on
the sands before me, whichever way I turned. It bent down from the sky
to tell me of its presence; it came surging up behind me; and one awful
word was on its face and in its voice. I remember shutting my eyes to
keep it out; I remember putting my fingers into my ears to still its
voice. I was so helpless, so alone to do, so threadless of action,
that--_I prayed_.

"People pray in this world from so many causes,--it matters not what
or how; the hour for prayer comes into every life at some time of its
earthly course, whether softly falling and refreshing as the early rain,
or by the north-wind's icy path. Mine came then, on the sands; my spirit
went out of my mortality unto God for help,--solely because that which I
wanted was not in me, not in all the earth.

"I stooped down to see if the figure I sought was outlined on the rim of
sky that brightened at the sea's edge: it was not there, not seaward.
I tried to call: the air refused the weight of my voice; it went no
farther than the lips, out of which it quivered and fell: I could not
call. I took the dark tide-mark for my guide, and began searching
landward. I went a little way, then stopped to look and listen: no
sight, no sound. The long sedge-grass gave rustling sighs of motion, as
I passed near, and disturbed the air for a moment. A night-bird uttered
its cry out of the tall reeds. The moon went down. The tide began to
come in; with it came up the wind. The memory of Alice, of Mary, walked
with and did not leave me, until I gained the little cove wherein Mary's
boat lay secure. The tide had not reached it. Mary's boat! I remember
thinking--a mere drop of thought it was, as I hurried on, but it held
all the animalcules of emotion that round out a lifetime--that Mary
never more would come to unloose the bound boat, never more in it go
forth to meet the joys that wander in from unknown shores. I saw the
boat lying dark along the water's edge. 'I would run down a moment,' I
thought, 'run down to speak a word of comfort, as if it were a living
thing.'

"Mary's boat was not alone; it had a companion. I thought it was
Bernard. I drew near and spoke his name. Doctor Percival answered me.
I do not think that he recognized my voice. He turned around with a
startled movement, for I was quite close, and asked, 'Who is it?'

"I did not answer. I turned and fled away into the darkness, across the
sands, that answer no footsteps with echoes. It was a comfort to feel
that he was out there, between me and the boundless space of sea.

"When I draw near the confines of Hereafter's shore, I think I shall
feel the same kind of comfort, if some soul that I knew has gone out
just before me; it will cape the boundary-line of 'all-aloneness.'"

Miss Axtell must have forgotten that she was talking to me, as she
retraced her steps and thoughts of that night, for, with this thought,
she seemed to "wander out into silence."

Katie brought her back by coming up to say that "Mr. Abraham was waiting
to know if she would go out a little while, it was so fine."

Miss Axtell said that "she would not go,--she would wait."

Katie went to carry the message. Miss Axtell wandered a little. Between
her words and memories I picked up the thread for her, and she went on
before me.

"I took the direction of the village-pier, when I fled from Doctor
Percival. An unusual number of boats had come in. I heard noises amid
the shipping. At any other time I should have avoided the place. Now I
drew near.

"Two men were slowly walking down the way. I heard one of them ask, 'Do
you know who it is?'

"The other replied, 'No, I never saw him before; we had better watch
him; he went on in a desperate way. I've seen it before, and it ended
in'----

"He did not finish, although I was thirsting for the words; they both
seemed arrested suddenly, then started on, and I watched whither they
went.

"There was now no light, save that of the stars. I could scarcely keep
them in sight. I went nearer,--hid myself behind one of the posts on the
pier. They had gone upon one of the boats,--that which lay farthest down
the stream. It was Bernard that they watched. I found him with my eyes
before they reached where he stood. A boy came singing from his daily
work; he passed close beside me, and, as he went, he beat upon the post
with a boat's oar. I waited until I could come from my hiding-place
without his seeing; then I went after him. I sent him for 'the gentleman
that had gone down there,' telling him to say that 'a lady wished to see
him.'

"Bernard came. I told him that I had been searching for him on the
sands,--that I wanted to talk to him; and he and I walked on again,
village-ward, as we had done on the last night. It was very hard to
begin, to open the cruel theme,--to say to this person, who walked with
folded arms, and eyes that I knew had no external sight, what I thought;
but I must. When I had said all that I would have said to any other
human soul, under like darkness, he lighted up the night of his sin with
strange fires. He poured upon his family's past the light hereditary.
Abraham had been true in his statements. Bernard McKey was not
well-born. He told me this: that his father had been a destroyer of
life; that God had been his Judge, and had now set the seal of the
father's sin into the son's heart. Oh, it was fearful, this tide of
agony with which that soul was overwhelmed! He pictured his deed.
Abraham had found out the crime of his father, had cruelly sent it home
on his own head, had said that a murderer's son could never find rest in
the family of Axtell, had sent him forth, with hatred in his heart, to
work out in shadow the very deed his father had wrought in substance, to
destroy Mary Percival, the child of his best friend, and to strike from
off the earth Abraham's arch of light. It was wonderful: a chance, a
change, had killed Mary.

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