"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,--
"We all of us are become wonderful story-tellers. Now it comes to pass
that I have a little story to tell; my time is come at last"; and,
watching every muscle of her face, and all the little veins of feeling
that I had learned so well, I began.
Carefully I let in the light, until, without a shock, Miss Axtell
learned that the room below contained Bernard McKey.
"They did not understand me," she said, "or they would not have brought
me here thus."
After a long, long lull, Miss Axtell thanked me for telling her alone,
where no one else could see how the knowledge played around her heart.
Dear Miss Axtell, sitting there, in my father's house, only last March,
with a holy joy stealing up, in spite of her endeavor to hide it from my
eyes even, and suffusing her white face with warm, rosy tints, dear Miss
Axtell, I hoped your day-dawn drawing near.
Miss Axtell said "she hated to have other people see her feel"; she
asked "would I manage it for her, that no one should be nigh when she
met Mr. McKey?"
It was that very evening that papa, calling Sophie and me into his room,
told us a little of the former history of the people in his house.
"I want you to help me, children," he said; "ladies manage such things
better than we men know how to."
I said, close to papa's astonished hearing, "I know all about it; just
let me take care of this mission"; and he appointed me diplomate on the
occasion.
Sophie was strangely disconcerted; she had such fearsome awe of the
Axtells, "she couldn't think of interfering," she said, "unless to make
gruel or some condiment."
I coaxed Miss Lettie to have her tea in her own room: she certainly did
not look like going down. Under pretext of having the care of her, I
seated sister Sophie at my station, and thus I had the house, outside of
the tea-room, under my control.
"Come down now; don't lose time," I said to Miss Axtell, running up to
her, half breathless from my haste.
"What for? What is it?" she said.
"Papa is anticipating some grand effort in the managerial line from me,
regarding two people in his house, and I don't choose to manage at all.
Mr. McKey is waiting to see you. I knocked to see, as I came up, and all
the family are at tea."
I went down with her. There was no trembling, only a stately calm in her
manner, as she drew near.
I knocked. Mr. McKey answered, "Come in," in his low, musical, variant
tones. I turned the knob; the door opened. A moment later, I stood alone
within the hall. I walked up and down, a true sentinel on true duty,
that no enemy might draw near to hear the treaty of true peace which I
knew was being written out by the Recording Angel for these two souls.
They must have had a pleasant family-talk in the tea-room, they stayed
so long.
At last I heard footsteps coming. I told Miss Lettie, thinking that she
would leave; but no, she said "she would stay awhile"; and so, later on,
the two were sitting there in quietness of joy, when my father came up
to see his patient. Mr. Axtell was with him. They went in; indifferent
words were spoken,--until, was it Abraham Axtell that I saw as I kept up
my walking in the hall? What mysterious change had come to transfigure
his face so that I scarcely believed the evidence of my own eyes? He
came to the door and said, "Will you come in, Miss Percival?" I obeyed
his request. He closed the door, and turned the key.
"In the presence of those against whom he had sinned he would confess
his fault," were his first words; and he went on, he of whom _they_ had
asked a pardon, and drew a fiery picture of all that he had done, of the
murder that he had doubly committed, for he had made another soul to
bear his sin.
It was terrible to hear him accuse himself. It was touching to see
this proud Axtell begging forgiveness. He offered the fatal cup to my
father,--
"Therein lies the evidence of my murder. It was I who killed your
daughter, Doctor Percival. Although no court on earth condemns me, the
Judge of all the Earth holds me responsible for her death."
Doctor Percival tried to reason with him, said words of comfort, but he
heeded them not: they might as well have fallen on the vacant air.
"Blessings be upon you two! if, out of suffering, God will send joy, it
will be yours," Mr. Axtell said; and he offered his hand to Mr. McKey
and his sister, as one does when taking farewell.
He went from them to my father, and offered his hand doubtingly, as if
afraid it might be refused.
Papa took it in both his own. An instant later Mr. Axtell came to me.
Surely he had no forgiveness to ask of Anna Percival. No; he only said,
and I am certain that no one heard, save me, "I thank God that He has
not let me shadow _your_ life. Farewell!"
He left the room. We all looked, one at another, in that dim
astonishment which is never expressed in words. Papa broke the spell by
putting on fresh coals.
Miss Lettie said, "Poor Abraham!" and yet she looked so happy, so as I
had never seen her yet!
A few moments later Jeffy came rushing in, his eyes dilate with
amazement.
"The gentleman is gone," he said, "gone entirely."
It was even so. Mr. Axtell had gone, no one knew whither. It was late at
night, when a letter came for Doctor Percival by a special messenger.
I never saw it. I only know that in it Mr. Axtell explained his
intention of absence, and wrote, for his sister's sake, to make
arrangements for her future. She was to return to Redleaf, at such time
as she chose to go hence, with Mr. McKey; and to Aaron's and Sophie's
care Mr. Axtell committed her.
Papa gave the letter to Miss Lettie. She read it in silence, and her
face was immovable. I could divine nothing from it.
Last March! how long the time seems! Scarce six months have gone since I
gave the record, and now the summer is dying.
I thought Miss Axtell would have ventured out on the bridge, far and
high, ere now; but no, she says "the time is not yet,--that she will
wait until Abraham comes home"; and Bernard McKey is content.
The solemn old house is closed. No longer Katie opens the door and Kino
looks around the corner. Kino died, perhaps of grief: such deaths have
been.
Miss Axtell has put off the old Dead-Sea-wave face. She has just put a
calm, beautiful, happy one in at my door, to ask Anna Percival "why she
sits and writes, when the last days of summer are drawing nigh?" Miss
Axtell stays with me, and a great contentment sings to those who have
ears to hear through all her life. If only Mr. Axtell would come home!
Why does he stay away so long, and take such a dreary line of travel,
where old earth is seamed _in memoriam_ of man's rebellion? I'll send to
him the althea-bud, when next his sister writes.
The leaves are fallen now. Winter is almost come. There is no need that
I should send out the althea-fragment. Mr. Axtell wrote to me. Last
night I received these words only,--and yet what need I more?
"God hath given me peace. I am coming home."