The twilight was almost gone on the Saturday night when I went back to
the grave, solemn house. There was no one dead in it now. It was the
first time that I had approached it without the abyss of shadow under
its roof. A little elasticity came back to me. Kino came out to give his
welcome: we had become friendly. Katie let me in.
"Perhaps you'd choose to wait down-stairs a bit," she said; "Mr.
Abraham's getting his tea up in Miss Lettie's room."
She lighted the lamp, and left me. After my two explorations in unknown
realms,--the one voluntary, looking at the painting on the wall, the
other involuntary, looking at a human soul in sorrow,--I resolved to
shut my eyes to all that they ought not to see; and therefore I
stationed myself in the green glade of a chair, and very properly
decided that the only thing I would look at should be the fire. What I
might see there surely could offend no one, unless it were the deity of
Coal,--and Redleaf was not near any carboniferous group.
Peculiar were the forms the fire took an elfish pleasure in assuming.
Little blue flames came up into atmospheric life, through the rending
fissures where so many years of ages they had been pent into the very
blackness of darkness; and as they gained their freedom, they gave tiny,
crackling shouts of liberty. "We're free! we're free!" they smally
cried; and I wondered if a race, buried as deeply in the strata of races
as these bits of burning coal had been in the geologic periods of earth,
could utter such cries.
The fire grew, the liberty paeans ceased. Deep opaline content burned
lambescent amid the coals. Ashy cinders fell from the grate slowly,
slumberously, as the one dead, that very afternoon buried, had gone to
rest, in the night-time, when the household was asleep, without any one
to hold her hand whilst she took the first step in the surging sea of
river. Yes, she died alone,--"in the heart of the night," Dr. Eaton said
it must have been "that the bridegroom came." Had she oil in her lamp?
What was she like? Like her son Abraham, or her daughter Lettie? I tried
to paint her face as it must have been. It is darker still in that grave
where she lies than was the night wherein she died. Miss Lettie was
right: they have a fathom of earth over her,--there's not one glimmer of
light down there. When I am buried, won't _some one_ shut in one little
sun-ray with me, that I may see to feel the gloom?
I looked down upon the gravelly earth lying above her, as I had looked
across at it when I left the parsonage at night fall, and passed by the
church-yard. All the while, my eyes were in the depths of the fire. I
went down through stone and soil to the coffin there. All was
unutterable blackness. I put out my hand to feel. It was a cold,
marbleized face that my warm, living fingers wandered over. I touched
the forehead: it was very stony, granite-like,--not a woman's forehead.
The eyes were large,--I felt them under the half-closed lids. The
mouth--Yes, Miss Lettie was right. Love for Abraham had covered up this
mother-love for her. And confession unto her dead was, it must have
been, better than unto her living. The answer would have been much the
same.
Shudderingly, I picked up my hand, the one that had been lying upon the
arm of the chair, whilst its life and spirit had gone out on their
mission of discovery. It was very cold. I warmed it before the fire, and
began to think that Aaron was right,--this House of Axtell was stealing
away my proper self, or, at least, this hand of mine had been unlawfully
employed, through occasion of them. As the warmth of burning coals
revivified my hand, I saw something in the fire,--a face,--the very one
these live fingers had just been tracing in yonder church-yard. Its eyes
were open now,--large, luminous, earnest, with a wave of solid pride
sweeping on through the irides and almost overwhelming the pupils. The
mouth,--oh, those lips! _ever uttered they a prayer_? They look,
trembling the while, so unutterably unforgiving! When they come to stand
before the I AM, will they _ever_ plead? It is hard to think the Deity
maketh such souls. Doth He? I looked a little farther on in the fiery
group. Other forms of coal took the human face. I saw two. Whose were
they? One was like unto my mother. How little I remember of her! and yet
this was like my memory,--sweetly gentle, loving past expression's
power, no taint of earth therein. Another came up. I did not know it.
Something whispered, "It is of you." I almost heard the words with my
outward ears. I looked around the room. No one was with me. Stillness
reigned in the house.
"It takes Mr. Axtell a very long time to take his tea," I thought; "he
must know more of hunger's power than I.--I will look at the fire no
more," I said, slowly, to myself, and closed my eyelids, somewhat
willing to drop after all that they had endured that day.
A soft, silver, "swimming sound" floated through the room. It was the
clock upon the mantel sending out tones of time-hours. I looked up. It
was eleven of the clock. "I must have fallen asleep," I thought, and
threw off the folds of a shawl which I surely left on the sofa over
there when I seated myself in this chair. My head was upon a pillow,
downy and white, instead of the green vale of chair in which I had laid
it down. I sprang up. There was little of lamp-light in the room. I saw
something that looked marvellously like somebody, near the sofa. It was
Katie, my good little friend Katie. She was sitting on a footstool with
her head upon her hands, and, poor, tired child! fast asleep. I awoke
her.
"Who covered me up, Katie?" I asked.
"Mr. Abraham," said Katie; and her waking senses came back.
"And how did the pillow get under my head?"
"Mr. Abraham said 'he was sorry that you had come.' You looked very
white in your sleep, and he said 'you wouldn't wake up'; so I lifted
your head just a mite, and he fixed the pillow under it. He told me to
stay here until you awoke."
"Which I have most decidedly done, Katie," I said; and I fully
determined to take no more naps in this house.
How could it have happened? I accounted for the fact in the most
reasonable way I knew,--I, who rejoice in being reasonable,--by thinking
it occurred in consequence of my long watchfulness, and sombreness of
thought and soul.
"I am sorry that you didn't wake me," I said to Katie, as she moved the
chairs in the room to their respective places.
With the most childlike implicitness in the world, the little maid stood
still and looked at me.
"I _couldn't_, you know, Miss Percival, when Mr. Abraham told me not
to," were the positive words she used in giving her reason.
I forgave Katie, and wondered what the secret of this man's commanding
power could be, as on this Saturday night.
I left the world, and went up to take my last watch with the
convalescing lady. Her brother was with her. He looked a little
surprised, when I went in; but the cloud of anger had gone away: folded
it up he had, I fancied, all ready to shake out again upon the slightest
provocation; and I did not care to see its folds waving around me, so I
did not speak to him. Miss Axtell seemed pleased to see me; said "she
trusted that this would be the last occasion on which she should require
night-care."
Her beauty was lovely now. A roseate hue was over her complexion: a
little of the old fever rising, I suppose it must have been.
"I've been talking with Abraham," she said, when I spoke of it.
Why should a conversation with her brother occasion return of fever?
Perhaps it was not that, but the mention of the fact, which increased
the glow wonderfully.
Mr. Axtell bade his sister good-night.
"You will do it to-morrow, Abraham?" she asked, as he was going from the
room.
"I will think about it to-night, and give you my decision in the
morning, Lettie."
Mr. Axtell must have been very absent-minded, for he turned back, hoped
I had not taken cold in the library, and ended the wish with a civil
"Good night, Miss Percival."
"Good night, Mr. Axtell," I said; and he was gone.
There was no need of persuasion to quietude to-night, it seemed, for
Miss Axtell gave me no field for the practice of oratory: she was quite
ready and willing to sleep.
"Can you not sleep, too?" she asked, as she closed her eyes; "if I need
you, I can speak."
No, I could not sleep. The night grew cold: a little edge of winter had
come back. I felt chilled,--either because of my sleep down-stairs, or
because the mercury was cold before me. My shawl I had not brought up
with me. Might I not find one? The closet-door was just ajar: it was a
place for shawls. I crossed the room, and, opening it a little more,
went in. I saw something very like one hanging there, but it was close
beside that grave brown plaid dress, and I had resolved to intrude no
farther into the affair of the tower. Results had not pleased me.
I grew colder than ever, standing hesitatingly in the closet, whence a
draught blew from the dressing-room beyond. I must have the shawl. I
reached forth my hand to take it down. The dress, I found, was hung over
it. It must needs come off, before the shawl. I lifted it, catching, as
I did so, my fingers in a rent,--was it? Yes, a piece was gone. I looked
at the size and form of it, which agreed perfectly with the fragment I
had found. This dress, then, had been in the tower, beyond all question.
I thought myself very fairy-like in my movements, but the fire was not.
Some one--it must have been Mr. Axtell or Katie--had put upon the hearth
a stick of chestnut-wood, which, suddenly igniting, snapped vigorously.
This began ere I was safely outside of the closet. Miss Lettie was
awakened. She arose a little wildly, sitting up in the bed. I do not
know that it was the fire that aroused her.
"I've had a terrific dream, Miss Percival; don't let me fall asleep
again"; and her heart beat fast and heavily. She pressed her hands upon
it, and asked for some quieting medicine, which I gave. She was getting
worse again, I knew; her hands wandered up to her head, in the same way
that they had done when she was first ill.
"I want some one to help me," she said, as if talking to herself; "the
waters are very rough. I thought they would be all smooth after the
great storm."
"Perhaps it is only the healthful rising of the tide," I ventured to
say.
She looked at me, took her hands down from her head, her beautiful,
classic head, with its wide, heavenly arch of forehead, and sat still
thus, looking at me in that fixed way, that wellnigh sent me to call
Katie again, for full ten minutes. I moved about the room, arranged the
fire on a more quiet basis, and then, finding nothing else to do, stood
before it, hoping that Miss Axtell would lie down again. In taking
something from my pocket I must have drawn out the trophy of my
tower-victory, for Miss Axtell suddenly said,--
"You've dropped something, Miss Percival."
Turning, I picked it up hastily, lest she should recognize it.
She must have seen it quite well, for it had been lying in the full
light of the blazing wood.
"Have you a dress like that?" she asked, when I had restored the
fragment.
"I have not," I replied. "I am sorry I awakened you."
"It was a dream that awakened me," she said. "Will you have the kindness
to give me that bit of cloth you picked up? I have a fancy for it."