"The leaves of the second autumn were half-shrivelled in drawing near to
the winter of their age.
"I had been to see your mother. She was ill. Mary's death was slowly,
surely bringing her own near. We had had a long talk that afternoon. Her
visions of life were rare and beautiful. She was like Mrs. Wilton, the
embodiment of all that is purely woman. She had wrought a solemn spell
over me,--made Eternity seem near. I had been changed since that prayer
on the sea-shore, fourteen months before, but now I felt a longing to
go away. Earth seemed so drear,--mother was sick,--Abraham unhappy,--my
father deep in the perplexing cares of his profession, mostly from
home,--Mrs. Percival was dying,--the year was passing away,--and I, too,
would be going; and as I went out of the house to go home, I remembered
the day wherein I had waited in the viny arbor for Mary to awaken from
sleep, how I had gone down to the sea to waken myself to a light that
burned before it blessed. Since then I had avoided the place, barred
with so many prison-wires. Now I felt a longing to go into it. The
leaves were frost-bitten. I sympathized with them. Autumn winds went
sighing over their misfortunes; spirit-winds blew past me, on their way
to and from the land that is and the land that is not to us. The arbor
was dear with a newborn love. I went out to greet it, as one might greet
a ship sailing the same great ocean, though bound to a different port.
There was a something in that old vine-clad arbor that was in me. I felt
its shadows coming out to meet me. They chilled a little, but I went in.
I looked at the little white office, across the yard, in the corner. I
thought of the face that came out that day to see me,--the face that
drank up my heart in one long draught, begun across Alice dead, finished
when I read that letter. The cup of my heart was empty,--_so empty_ now!
I looked down into it; it was fringed with stalactites, crystallized
from the poison of the glass. Oh! what did I see there? A dead, dead
crater, aching for the very fire that made it what it was, crying out of
its fierce void for fiery fusion. Why did our God make us so,--us, who
love, knowing we should not? I knew from the beginning that Bernard
McKey ought not to be cared for by me; but could I help it? Now the veil
of death, I believed, hung between, and the cup of my heart might be
embalmed: the last change, I thought, had come to it, and left it as I
that day found.
"Chloe came around the corner, throwing her apron over her head. She
looked up and down the way, as if in search of some one, went down the
walk to the gate, looked as I had once seen her do at our house, taking
it window by window, and finding no one, (the day seemed deserted,) she
was walking back. I called to her from the arbor.
"'I was just looking for you, Miss Lettie. I've got a letter here.
Mistress is too sick to read it for me, and Master's away. Would you?'
"It was addressed to Chloe. I broke the seal and opened it. It seemed a
long letter. I gave a sigh at the task before me, and looked over to
the end. I saw the signature: it was Bernard H. McKey. After that I saw
Chloe's troubled black face written on my vision, and felt dripping
drops about my head.
"'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."