The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, No. 58, August, 1862

"Sit here, upon this step."

A moment's rustling pause in the darkness down below, and then the far-out-at-sea voice spoke again.

"Do you send me away?"

"Indeed you must go; it is terrible to have you here. Think, what if you had been seen!"

"I know, I know; but you won't go with me?"

"Why are you cruel, uselessly?" said the pleading voice of woman.

"Cruel? Who? I cruel?"

"What is it that keeps me? Answer me that!"

"Your will is all."

Silence one moment,–two,–and an answer came.

"Herbert! Herbert! is it you speaking to me? My will keeping me? Who hath sinned?"

The sound of a soul in torture came eddying up in confused words; all that came to the mortal ear, listening unseen, were, "Forgive–I–I only"–

A few murmurous sounds, and then the voice that had uttered its confession in that deep confessional of a gloomy soul said, and there was almost woman's pleadingness in it,–

"When can I come again?"

"I will write to you."

"When will you write?"

"When one more soul is gone."

"Oh, it's wicked to shorten life by wishes even! but when one has done one terrible wrong, little wickednesses gather fast."

Woman has a pathos, when she pleads for God, deeper than when she pleads for anything on earth. That pleading,–I can't make you hear it,–the words were,–

"Herbert! Herbert! don't you see, won't you see, that, if you leave the one great sin all uncovered, open to the continual attrition of a life of goodness, God will let it wear away? It will lessen and lessen, until at the last, when the Ocean of Eternity beats against it, it shall go down, down into the deeps of love that no mortal line can fathom. Oh, Herbert, come out with me!–come out into this Infinity of Love!"

"With you? yes, anywhere!"

"Oh, oh! this is it!–this is man! It isn't my love that you want; it isn't the little one-grained thing that the Angel of Life takes from out of Heaven's granary and scatters into the human soul; it is the great Everlasting, a sempiternity of love, that you want, Herbert!"

"And you can't give it to me?"

"No, I will ask it for you; and you will ask it for yourself?"

"Only tell me how."

"You know how to ask for human love."

"Yours, yes; but then I haven't sinned against you."

"Have you not, Herbert?"

"Well,–but not in the same way. I haven't gone beyond the measure of your affection, I feel that it is larger than my sin, or I could not be here."

"Tell me how you know this. What is the feeling like?"

"What is it like? Why, when I come to you, I don't forever feel it rising up with a thousand speary heads that shut you out; it drowns in your presence; the surface is cool and clear, and I can look down, down, into the very heart of my sin, like that strange lake we looked into one day,–do you remember it?–the huge branches and leafless trunks of gigantic pines coming up stirless and distinct almost to the surface; and do you remember the little island there, and the old tradition that it was the feasting-place of a tribe of red men, who displeased the Great Spirit by their crimes, and in direful punishment, one day, when they were assembled on their mountain, it suddenly gave way beneath them, and all were drowned in the flood of waters that rushed up, except one good old squaw who occupied one of the peaks that is now the island?"

"And so I am the good old squaw?" said the lady.

"For all that I can see in the darkness."

"But that makes me better than the many who lie below;–the squaw was good, you remember. But how did she get off of the island? Pity tradition didn't tell us. Loon's Island, in Lake Mashapaug in Killingly, wasn't it?"

A little silence came, broken by the words,–

"It's so long since I have been with you!"

"Yes, and it's time that I was gone."

"Not a few moments more?–not even to go back to the old subject?"

"No,–it's wrong,–it perils you. You put away your sin when you come to the little drop of my love; go and hide it forever in the sea that every hour washes at your feet."

"You'll write?"

"I will."

I heard a sound below, like the drawing of a match across a stone; then a faint bit of glimmer flickered a moment. I couldn't see where they were. I bent forward a little, in vain.

"My last match," said the lady. "What shall we do? We can't go through in the darkness."

"We must. I will go first. Give me your hand. Now, three steps down, then on; come,–fear nothing."

A heavy sound, as of some ponderous weight let fall, and I knew that the only living soul in there was hers who sat with hands fast hold of frosty bars, high up in the window of the tower.

I left fragments of the skin of my fingers upon the cold iron, in pay for the woollen bit I had taken thence.

I ventured down a step or two. Beyond was inky darkness. If only a speck of light were down below! Why did I shut the door? Go on I could not. I turned my face upward, where the friendly light, packing up its robes of every hue for the journey of a night, looked kindly in. And so I went back, and sat in my usual seat, and watched the going day, as, one by one, she took down from forest-pegs and mountain-hooks breadths of silver, skirts of gold, folding silently the sheeny vestments, pressing down each shining fold, gathering from the bureau of the sea, with scarcely time enough for me to note, waves of whitely flowing things, snowy caps, crimpled crests, and crispy laces, made by hands that never tire, in the humid ocean-cellar. A wardrobe fit for fair Pre-Evites to wear lay rolled away, and still I, poor prisoner in my tower, watched in vain the dying day. It sent no kind jailer to let me free. No footstep crossed the church-yard. The sexton had put the windows down before my visitors went away. He must have gone home an unusual way, for I waited in vain to hear him go.

I saw, when just enough of light was left to see, my sister Sophie coming down the hill. Strange fancy,–she went as far from the tower as if it were a ghostly quarantine. She did not hear me call in a very human voice, but went right on; and I heard the parsonage door-latch sharply close her in.

Would they look for me, now I was not there? I waited, and a strange, unearthly tremor shook both blood and nerves, until tears were wrought out, and came dropping down, and in the stillness I heard one fall upon a stone below.

A forsaken, forgotten, uncared-for feeling crept up to me, half from the words of woful meaning that I that afternoon had heard, and half the prisoned state, with fear, weak and absurd, jailing me in.