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

"Better, I thought."

"I trust so, for I have not been home since morning. I received a letter, as I came through the village, from your father, desiring to see me, and I had time only to send a message to Lettie. I hope Doctor Percival is well?"

"Oh, yes,—else I should not be here."

I had gloved my hand again during these words of recognition. Mr. Axtell noticed it, and asked to see a ring that had attracted his attention.

"Excuse me," I said,—"it is one of my father's gifts to me,—I cannot take it off,—it is a simple ring, Mr. Axtell"; and I held it out for him to see.

"I knew it!" he exclaimed; "there could not be two alike; years have not changed its lustre. Mary wore it first on the day we were engaged."

"Was it your gift to her, Mr. Axtell?"

He answered, "Yes"; and I, drawing it off, handed it to him, saying, "It should have been returned to you long ago."

"No, no," he said, quite solemnly, "it is in better keeping"; and he took the tiny circlet of gold, and looked a moment at it, with its shining cluster of brilliants, then gave it back to me.

"Have you no claim upon this?" I asked.

"On the ring? Oh, no,—none."

I put back with gladness the gift my father gave.

My time had come. The opportunity was most mysteriously given me to redeem the promise made in the morning to Miss Lettie. I began, quite timidly at first, to say that I had a message for Mr. Axtell, one from his sister,—that I was to tell him of events whose occurrence he never knew. He listened quietly, and I went on, commencing at the afternoon of my imprisonment in the tower. I told every word that I had heard from Miss Axtell,—no more. I trembled, it is true, when I came to the death of Alice, and the new life that came to his elder sister. I came at last to Mary. I told it all, the night when he came home, the very words he had spoken to his sister I repeated in his ears, and he was quiet, with a quietness Axtells know, I took out the package and opened it, saying,—

"Your sister bade me give this to you."

The careful folds were unwrapped, and within a box lay only a silver cup. Mr. Axtell took it into his hands, turned it to the light, and read on it the name of my sister. I said to him,—

"Look on the inside."

He did. It was the fatal cup from which Mary Percival drank the death-drops. Poisonous crystals lay in its depth. I told him so. I told him how Bernard McKey, driven to despair, had made the fatal mistake.

I thought to have seen the sunlight of joy go up his face. I looked for the glance whose coming his sister so dreaded; but it came not. My story gave no joy to this strange man. He asked a few questions only, tending to illumine points that my statement had left in uncertainty, and then, when my last words were said, he rose up, and, standing before me, very lowly pronounced these words:—

"Until to-night, Abraham Axtell never knew the weight of his guilt. He must work out his punishment."

"How can you, Mr. Axtell? Heaven hath appointed forgiveness for the repentant."

"And freedom from punishment, Miss Percival, is that, too, promised?"

"Strength to bear is freely offered in forgiveness."

"May it come to me! In all God's earth to-night there dwells not one more needy of Heaven's mercy."

"Mary forgives you," I said.

"Bernard McKey, whom I have made most miserable, Lettie's life-long suffering, is there any atonement that I can offer to them?"

"Yes, Mr. Axtell"; and I, too, arose, for the party had gone whilst I was telling my story.

"Will you name it?"

"Give unto the two a brother's love. Good night, Mr. Axtell."

"I will," said a deep, solemn voice close beside me. I turned, and Mr. Axtell was gone. I heard footsteps all that night upon deck. They sounded like those that came and stood beside me hours before.

Day was scarcely breaking when we came to land in New York. I waited for the carriage to come from home. Mr. Axtell, was it he who came, with whitened hair, to ask for Miss Percival, to know if he could offer her any service? What a night of agony he must have lived through! He saw my look of astonishment, and said,—

"It is but the beginning of my punishment."

Ere I had answered Mr. Axtell's question, my father appeared. He had come for me so early on this March morning,—or was it to meet Mr. Axtell? He said more, in words, to him than to his child. It was several years since my father had met Mr. Axtell, therefore he did not note the change last night had wrought. As I looked at him, during our homeward drive, I repented not having said words of comfort, not telling him that I believed Bernard McKey was at that hour in my father's house; but I had not exceeded my instructions, by one word I had not gone beyond Miss Lettie's story. Until Mr. McKey chose to reveal himself, he must exist as a stranger.

Jeffy reported the "hospital man" as "behaving just like other people." Jeffy evidently regretted, with all the intensity of his Ethiopian nature, the subsiding of the delirium.

Not long after our arrival home, father went, with Mr. Axtell, into his own room, where, with closed doors, the two remained through half the morning. What could my father have to say to the "incomprehensible man," his daughter Anna asked herself; but no answer breathed through mahogany, as several times she passed near. All was silent in there to other ears than those inside.

At last I heard the door open, and footsteps along the hall. "Surely," I thought, "they are going the way to Mr. McKey's room." I was right. They went in. What transpired in there I may never know, but this much was revealed to me: there came thence two faces whereon was written the loveliness of the mercy extended to erring man. My father looked, like all who feel intensely, older than he did in the morning, and yet withal happier. Mr. Axtell went away without seeing me. Father made apology for him by saying that it was important that he should return home immediately, and asked "could I make ready to receive some visitors the following day?"

"Who, papa?" I asked.

"Mr. Axtell and his sister."

Mr. McKey was able that evening to cross the room, and sit beside the fire. I went in to inquire concerning his comfort. Papa was away. Mr. Axtell must have told him something of me, for I had not been long there, when he, turning his large, luminous eyes from the coals, into which he had been peering, said,—

"Do you know the sweetness of reconciliation, young lady? If not, get angry with some one immediately."

"I never had an enemy in my life, Mr. McKey," I replied.

He started a little at the name, and only a little, and he questioned,—

"Where did you learn the name you give to me?"

"From Miss Axtell, yesterday."

Question and answer succeeded, until I had told him half the story that I knew. I might have said more, but father's coming in interrupted me.

"I expect our visitors by the day-boat," papa said to me the day following. The carriage went for them. I watched its coming from afar down the street. I knew the expression of honest Yest's hat out of all the street-throng. The carriage came laden. I saw faces other than the Axtells', even Aaron's and Sophie's.

What glad visitors they were, Aaron and Sophie! and what a surprise to them to see Miss Axtell there! I took off her wrappings, drew an easy-chair, made her sit in it, and she actually looked quite comfortable, outside of the solemn old house. "She had endured the journey well," she said. Abraham was so anxious that she should come that she would not refuse his request. "Abraham has forgiven me," she whispered, as I bent over her to adjust some stray folds,—"forgiven me for all my years of silent deceit."

I shook my head a little at the word; speak I could not, for the minister's wife was not deaf.

Aaron called her away a moment later.

"It was deceit, Miss Percival," Miss Axtell said, so soon as she found our two selves alone. "I could not well avoid it; if I were tried again, I might repeat the sin; but, thank Heaven, two such trials never come into a single life. I sometimes wish Bernard were not at sea, that he were here to know my release and his forgiveness; it will be so sweet to feel that no longer I have the sin to bear of concealing his wrong."

I knew from this that Miss Axtell did not know of Mr. McKey's presence in the house; but she ought to know. What if a sound from his voice should chance to come down the passage-way, as I often had heard it? I watched the doors painfully, to see that not one was left open a hair's-breadth, until the time Miss Axtell went up to her own room. Talking rapidly, giving her no time to speak, I went on with her. Safely ignorant, I had her at last where ears of mortals could not intrude. Then I said,—