The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, No. 63, January, 1863

"'There, Miss Lettie, it's all over, now. I's so glad you're come to! I won't bother you with reading anymore letters. It would have to be much good in it that 'ud pay me for seeing you so.'

"I was sitting in the arbor a little later, alone, reading the letter. Through the rending of the cup dew stole in; the mist was stifling. Still't was better than the death that reigned before. The contents of my life were not poured out beyond the earth. The thought gave me comfort. It is so sad to feel the great gate shut down across the flame of your heart! to have the stilled waters set back, never more to join those that have escaped, gone on, to turn the wheel of Eternity! In that hour it was joy enough for me to know that he lived, even if the life was for another. I, too, had my bright portion in it.

"Chloe came back. She had forgotten the letter, when she went in to Mrs. Percival. She said 'faintin' must be good for me; she hadn't seen me look so fine in a many days.'

"I told Chloe that the letter had been written to me, that it was not meant for her. At first she did not comprehend; after that I felt sure that a perception of the truth dawned in her mind, she watched me so closely.

"I carried my letter home. That night I compared the two,—the one Abraham had found (where I knew not, I never questioned him) with this. They bore no resemblance: but I remembered that two years make changes in all things; they might have effected this. The signatures were unlike; the latter contained the initial H. What if they were not written by the same person? The question was too mighty for me. I was compelled to await the answer.

"Bernard would be in Redleaf in November. He named the day,—appointed the place of meeting. It was the old tower in the church-yard. I had a fancy, as you have, for the dreary dimness there. As children, we made it our temple for all the worships childhood knows. The door had long been gone; it was open to every one who chose to enter in. Before the coming of the day, I was in continual fear lest the new joy that had come into my life should trace itself visibly on my outward seeming. I took it in as the hungry do food, and tried to hide the sustenance it gave. I saw that my mother's eyes were often upon me,—that she was trying to follow my joy to its source. One day,—it was the very one before his coming,—she came suddenly upon me when I was wrapt in my mantle of exquisite consciousness. I had gone down to the river: you know it runs at the foot of the place. Tired of stirring up dry, dead leaves, I leaned against a tree,—one arm was around it,—and with my eyes traversing the blue of the sky, on and on, in quick, constant, flashing journeys, like fixed heat-lightning, I suddenly became conscious of a blue upon the earth, orbed in my mother's cool eyes. I don't know how I came out of the sky. She said only, 'Your thoughts harmonize with the season'; but I knew she meant much more. It was long since she had wandered so far from the house; but of late she had had my joy to trace,—my mother, to whom I could not intrust it, in all of whose nature it had no place, whose spirit mine was not formed to call out echoes from. The result of her walk to the river was a subsequent day of prostration and a nervous headache. All the morning of that November day I sat beside her in the darkened room. I bathed her head, until she said there was too much life in my hands, and sent for Abraham. Thus my time of release came."

A quick, involuntary smile crossed Miss Axtell's face at the memory of her first sight of Mr. McKey. I watched her now. She changed the style of her narration, taking it on quickly, in nervous periods, with electric pauses, which she did not fill as formerly.

"We met in the tower, happily without discovery. I told him of my mother's knowledge, showed him the notice of his (as I had thought) death.

"'It is my cousin,' he said carelessly,—adding, with a sigh, 'poor fellow! he was to have married soon.'

"I gave him the letter, the key of all my agony.

"'I remember when he wrote this,' he went on, as carelessly as if his words had all been known to me. 'You did not see him, perhaps; he was with me the first time I came to Redleaf,—was here the night he describes.'

"It was so strange that he did not ask where I obtained the letter! but he did not. He gave me an epitome of his cousin's life and death. The two were named after an uncle; each had received the baptismal sign ere it was known that the other received the name; in after-time the Herbert was added to one.

"We sat in the window of the tower all through the short November afternoon. We saw Chloe come into the church-yard; she came to take up some roses that had blossomed in summer beside Mary's grave. We heard her knife moving about in the pebbly soil, and watched her going home. She was the only comer. In November, people never visit such places, save from necessity.

"Mr. McKey and I had discovered the passage leading from church to tower. Mary was with us then. There was a romance in keeping the secret, poetry in the knowledge that we three were sole proprietors; one was gone,—now it became only ours.

"How came you to know of it?" she suddenly asked.

Questioned thus, I twined my story in with hers, she listening in a rapt way, peculiarly her own. I told her of my prisonment on the day of her visit. I confessed entirely, up to the point she had narrated. When I ended, she said,—

"You have kept this secret twenty-five days; mine has been mine eighteen years. Mr. McKey has wandered in the time over the world of civilization, coming here at every return, making only day-visits, wandering up and down familiar places, meeting people whom he knew, but who never saw him through his disguises. He met my mother twice; even her quick eyes had no ray of suspicion in them.

"Four years ago we went to Europe: father's health demanded it. There, by accident, I met Mr. McKey. Fourteen years had so changed him from the medical student in Doctor Percival's office, that, although without disguise, neither mother nor Abraham recognized him. It was in England that father died,—there that we met Mr. McKey. It was he who, coming as a stranger, proved our best friend, whom mother and Abraham called Mr. Herbert. It was his hand lifted up for the last time my father's head just before he died. It was he who went to and fro making all needful arrangements for father's burial. At last we prepared to leave. He came to the steamer to say parting words. Mother and Abraham, with tearful eyes, thanking him for his past kindness, begged, should he ever come to America, a visit from him. When their farewells were ended, he looked around for me. I was standing apart from them; the place where my feet then were is to-day fathoms deep under iceberg-soil: it was upon the Pacific's deck. I wonder if just there where I then stood it is as cold as elsewhere,—if Ocean's self hath power to congeal the vitality of spirit."

Miss Axtell paused one moment, as if answering the question to herself. In that interval I remembered the face that only three weeks agone I had looked upon, over which Dead-Sea waves had beat in vain. After the pause, she went on:—

"I gave Mr. McKey the farewell, silent of all words. A few moments later, and we were on our homeward way, leaving a friend and a grave in England.

"After our coming home, an intense longing came to speak of Herbert,—to tell my proud mother to whom she was indebted for so many acts of kindly friendship; but often as I said, 'I will,' I yet did not. To-day I would wait for the morrow; on the morrow indecision came; and at last, when the intent was stronger than ever, when I had laid me down to sleep after an interview with Mr. McKey, solemnly promising Heaven that with the morning light I would confess all and leave the consequences with my God, in that night-time He sent forth His angel to gather in her spirit."

Miss Axtell covered her face with the hands so long rigidly clasped about her precious package, and the very air that was in the room caught the thrill and quiver of her heart, strong to suffer, strong to love. When she again spoke, it was in low, murmurous tones.

"I wanted my mother to know what God had permitted me to be to this man, his great anchor of clinging in all storms,—how, in loving him, I had been permitted to save him. Do you think it is good," she asked,—"my story? It isn't a story of what the world calls 'happy love'; I don't think I should find it happy even now. I have come to a solemn bridge in the journey of Time. I know it must be crossed,—only how? It is high; my head is dizzied by the very thought. It has none of the ordinary protective railings; I must walk out alone, and—I cannot see the other end; it is too far, too misty. My mother's face fills up all the way; it comes out to meet me, and I do not rightly hear what she says, for my ears are filled with the roar of the life-current that frets over rocks below. I try to stay it while I listen; it only floods the way. There is time given me; there is no immediate cause for action: for this I am thankful. Mr. McKey left me at the tower on the day you heard us there. He is a surgeon in the naval service. His ship sailed last week on a three years' voyage. I shall have time to think, to decide what I ought to do; perhaps the roar will cease, and I shall hear what my mother tries to say.

"I have one great thought of torment. Abraham, what if he should die, too,—die without knowing? that I could not bear"; and the face, still looking toward Zoar, lifted up itself from the little City of Refuge, and looked into the face of Anna Percival. "Poor Abraham!" she said, "he has suffered, perhaps even more than I. He will hear you. Will you tell him this for me? Tell him all; and when you tell how Mary came to die, give him this,"—and she handed to me the very package I had twice journeyed with,—"it will prove to him the truth of what I say."

I hesitated to take that which she proffered.

"You must not disappoint me," she said. "I have spent happy hours since you went away, in the belief that Providence sent you here to me in the greatness of my need. I cannot tell Abraham; I could not bear the joy that will, that must come, when he lays down the burden of his crime,—for, oh! it will be at the feet of Bernard McKey. You will not refuse me this?" she pleaded.

Anna Percival, in the silence of that upper room where so much of life had come to her, sat at Miss Axtell's side, and thought of the dream that came one Sunday morning to her, sleeping, and out of the memory of it came tolling down to her heart the words then spoken, and, taught by them, she answered Miss Axtell's pleading by an "I will."

"Good little comfort-giver!" Miss Lettie said; and she left the package, containing the precious jewel, in my hands.

Bewildered by the story, filled with sorrow for sufferers passed away from the great, suffering earth, aching for those that still were in the void of misery, I arose to go. "It was near to mid-day; Aaron and Sophie would wait dinner for me," I said to Miss Lottie's pleading for another hour. Ere I went, the conventionalities that signalled our meeting were repeated, and, wrapped in the web and woof Miss Axtell had woven, I went down the staircase and through the wide hall and out of the solemn old house, wondering if ever again Anna Percival would cross its entrance-porch. Kino heard the noise of the closing of the door, and came around the corner to see who it might be. I stayed a moment to say a few comforting words to the dog. Kino saw me safely outside of the gate by way of gratitude. I walked on toward the parsonage.

Redleaf seemed very silent, almost deserted. I met none of the villagers in my homeward walk. "It will be ten minutes yet ere Sophie and Aaron will, waiting, say, 'I wonder why Anna does not come,'" I thought, as I drew near, and my fingers held the tower-key. I had not been there since the Sunday morning memorable to me through all coming time. I lifted the fastening to the church-yard, and went in. My sister Mary lay in this church-yard now. I had until this day known only sister Sophie, and in my heart I thanked Miss Axtell for her story. I went in to look at Mary's grave. A sweet perfume filled the inclosure; it came to me through the branching evergreens; it was from Mary's grave, covered with the pale pink flowers of the trailing-arbutus. I knew that Abraham Axtell had brought them hither. I gathered one, the least of the precious fragments. I knew that Mary, out of heaven seeing me, would call it no sacrilege, and with it went to my tower.

Spring fingers had gathered up the leaves of snow, winter's growth, from in among the crevices of stone. I noticed this as I went in. The great stone was over the passage-opening, just where Mr. Axtell had dropped it, lest Aaron should see. Something said to me that my love for the tower was gone, that never more would I care to come to it; and I think the voice was speaking truly, everything did seem so changed. The time moss was only common moss to me, the old rocks might be a part of any mountain now. I had caught up all the romance, all the poetry, which is mystery, of the tower, and henceforth I might leave it to stand guard over the shore of the Sea of Death, white with marble foam. I went up to the very window whence I had taken the brown plaid bit of woman's wear. I looked out from where I had seen the dying day go down. I heard the sound, from the open door of the parsonage, of Sophie's voice, humming of contentment; I saw the little lady come and look down the village—street for me; I saw her part those bands of softly purplish hair, with fingers idly waiting the while she stood looking for me. I looked up at the window, down at the floor, down through the winding way of stair, where once I had trembling gone, and, with a farewell softly spoken, I left my churchyard tower with open door and key in the lock. Henceforth it was not mine. I left it with the hope that some other loving soul would take up my devotion, and wait and watch as I had done.

Aaron chanced at dinner-time to let fall his eyes on the door, swinging in the wind. Turning, he looked at me. I, divining the questioning intent of his eyes, answered,—

"It is I, Aaron. I've left the key in the door. I resign ownership of the tower."

The grave minister looked pleased. Sophie said,—

"Oh, I am so glad, you are growing rational, Anna!"—and Anna Percival did not tell these two that she had emptied the tower of all its mystery, and thrown the cup afloat on the future.

Aaron and Sophie were doomed to wonder why I came to Redleaf. Sophie begged my longer stay; Aaron thought, with his direct, practical way of looking at all things, save Sophie, that I "had better not have come at all, if only to stay during the day-journey of the sun."

The stars were there to see, when I bade good—bye to Chloe at the parsonage, and went forth burdened with many messages for Jeffy. Aaron and Sophie went with me to the place of landing. It was past Miss Axtell's house. Only one light was visible; that shone from Miss Lettie's room. Aaron said,—

"I saw Mr. Axtell this morning. He was going across the country, he said."

No one asked him "Where?" and he said no more.

We were late at the steamboat. I had just time to bid a hasty farewell, and hear a plank-man say, "Better hurry, Miss, if you're going on," and in another minute I was at sea.

I had so much to think of, I knew it would be impossible for sleep to come to me; and so I went on deck to watch the twinkling lights of Redleaf and the stars up above, whilst my busy brain should plan a way to keep my promise to Miss Axtell. I could not break up her fancied security; I could not deprive her of the "time to think" before crossing the great bridge, by telling her of the stranger sick in Doctor Percival's house, and so I let her dream on. It might be many weeks, nay, months, ere Mr. McKey would recover, hence there was no need that she should know; by that time she would be quite strong again.

Once on deck, and well wrapped from the March sea-breeze, blowing its latest breath over the sea, I took a seat near a large party who seemed lovers of the ocean, they sat so quietly and so long.

My face was turned away from all on deck. I heard footsteps going, coming, to and fro, until these steps came into my reverie. I wished to turn and see the owner, but, fearing that the charm would vanish, I kept my eyes steadily seaward. I scarcely know the time, it may have been an hour, that thus I had sat, when once again the footsteps drew near. The owner paused an instant in passing me. I fancied some zephyr of emotion made his footsteps falter a little. Nothing more came. He walked, as before, and once, when I was certain that all the deck lay between my eyes and him who so often had drawn near, I turned to look. I saw only a gentleman far down the boat, wrapped in an ordinary travelling-shawl. Neither form nor walk was, I thought, familiar, and I lost my interest.

I began to dream of other things,—of the going home, and should I find Mr. McKey improved during my absence? The party near me began to talk; it was pleasant to hear soft home words spoken by them,—it gave me, alone as I was, a sense of protection.

When the owner of the footsteps again came near, I scarcely noticed it. I had reason to do so a moment later. Instead of going straight on, as before, the gentleman stopped an instant,—then, with a strong gesture of excitement, stepped quite near to me, and saying hurriedly, as one does in sudden emergencies, "I beg your pardon, Madam," he bent to look at the railing of the guard, just beside me. It so happened that a boat-light illumined a little space just there, and that within it lay a hand whose glove I had a few moments before removed, to put back some stray hairs the sea-breeze had brought from their proper place. No sooner did I divine his intent than I took my hand from off the railing. The gentleman looked up suddenly; he was quite near then, and no more light than that the stars gave was needful for me. I saw Mr. Axtell, and Mr. Axtell must have seen Miss Percival, for he said,—

"This is a great surprise. I did not hear of your being in Redleaf, Miss Anna."

"Why should you, when I have only been there one day?"

"Did you see my sister?" he asked.

"I was with her during the morning," I said.

"And she was as usual?"