“Debbil de step! I’ll take yer ‘cross fields ter Gentry’s, an’ ride on myself.”
“You could not find him. No one could find him but me.”
Something possessed the girl, other than her common self. She pushed his hand gently from the reins, and left him. Bone wrung his hands.
“‘N’ de guerrillas,–‘n’ de rest o’ de incarnate debbils!”
She knew that. Dode was no heroine,–a miserable coward. There was not a black stump of a tree by the road-side, nor the rustle of a squirrel in the trees, that did not make her heart jump and throb against her bodice. Her horse climbed the rocky path slowly. I told you the girl thought her Helper was alive, and very near. She did to-night. She thought He was beside her in this lonesome road, and knew she would be safe. She felt as if she could take hold of His very hand. It grew darker: the mountains of snow glowered wan like the dead kings in Hades; the sweeps of dark forests whispered some broken mysterious word, as she passed; sometimes, in a sudden opening, she could see on a far hill-side the red fires of a camp. She could not help the sick feeling in her throat, nor make her hand steady; but the more alone she was, the nearer He came,–the pale face of the Nazarene, who loved His mother and Mary, who took the little children in His arms before He blessed them. Nearer than ever before; so she was not afraid to tell Him, as she went, how she had suffered that day, and that she loved this man who lay dying under the snow: to ask that she might find him. A great gulf lay between them. Would _He_ go with her, if she crossed it? She knew He would.
A strange peace came to the girl. She untied her hood and pushed it back, that her whole head might feel the still air. How pure it was! God was in it,–in all. The mountains, the sky, the armies yonder, her own heart, and his under the snow, rested in Him, like motes in the sunshine.
The moon, rising behind a bank of cloud, threw patches of light now and then across the path: the girl’s head, as she rode through them, came into quick relief. No saint’s face,–a very woman’s, its pale, reserved beauty unstrung with pain, her bosom full of earthly love, but in her eyes that look which Mary must have given, when, after she thought her Lord was dead, He called her, “Mary!” and she, looking up, said, “Master!”
She had reached the highway at last. She could see where, some distance yet beyond, the gully struck black across the snow-covered fields. The road ran above it, zigzag along the hill-side. She thought, as her horse galloped up the path, she could see the very spot where Douglas was lying. Not dead,–she knew he was not dead! She came to it now. How deathly still it was! As she tied the horse to the fence, and climbed down the precipice through the snow, she was dimly conscious that the air was warmer, that the pure moonlight was about her, genial, hopeful. A startled snow-bird chirped to her, as she passed. Why, it was a happy promise! Why should it not be happy? He was not dead, and she had leave to come to him.
Yet, before she gained the level field, the pulse in her body was weak and sick, and her eyes were growing blind. She did not see him. Half covered by snow, she found his gray horse, dead, killed by the fall. Palmer was gone. The gully was covered with muddy ice; there was a split in it, and underneath, the black water curdled and frothed. Had he fallen there? Was that thing that rose and fell in the roots of the old willow his dead hand? There was a floating gleam of yellow in the water,–it looked like hair. Dode put her hand to her hot breast, shut her dry lips. He was not dead! God could not lie to her!
Stooping, she went over the ground again, an unbroken waste of white: until, close to the water’s edge, she found the ginseng-weeds torn and trampled down. She never afterwards smelt their unclean, pungent odor, without a sudden pang of the smothered pain of this night coming back to her. She knelt, and found foot-marks,–one booted and spurred. She knew it: what was there he had touched that she did not know? He was alive: she did not cry out at this, or laugh, as her soul went up to God,–only thrust her hand deep into the snow where his foot had been, with a quick, fierce tenderness, blushing as she drew it back, as if she had forgotten herself, and from her heart caressed him. She heard a sound at the other side of a bend in the hill, a low drone, like somebody mumbling a hymn.
She pushed her way through the thicket: the moon did not shine there; there was a dark crevice in the hill, where some farmer’s boy had built a shed. There was a fire in it, now, smouldering, as though whoever made it feared its red light would be seen by the distant pickets. Coming up to it, she stood in the door-way. Douglas Palmer lay on a heap of blankets on the ground: she could not see his face, for a lank, slothful figure was stooping over him, chafing his head. It was Gaunt. Dode went in, and knelt down beside the wounded man,–quietly: it seemed to her natural and right she should be there. Palmer’s eyes were shut, his breathing heavy, uncertain; but his clothes were dried, and his side was bandaged.
“It was only a flesh-wound,” said Gaunt, in his vague way,–“deep, though. I knew how to bind it. He’ll live, Douglas will.”
He did not seem surprised to see the girl. Nothing could be so bizarre in the world, that his cloudy, crotchety brain did not accept it, and make a commonplace matter out of it. It never occurred to him to wonder how she came there. He stood with folded arms, his bony shoulders bolstering up the board wall, watching her as she knelt, her hands on Palmer’s pillow, but not touching him. Gaunt’s lean face had a pitiful look, sometimes,–the look of the child he was in his heart,–hungry, wistful, as though he sought for something, which you might have, perhaps. He looked at Dode,–the child of the man that he had killed. She did not know that. When she came in, he thought of shaking hands with her, as he used to do. That could never be again,–never. _The man that he had killed?_ Whatever that meant to him, his artist eye took keen note of Dode, as she knelt there, in spite of remorse or pain below: how her noble, delicate head rose from the coarse blue drapery, the dark rings of her curling hair, the pale, clear-cut face, the burning lips, the eyes whose earthly soul was for the man who lay there. He knew that, yet he never loved her so fiercely as now,–now, when her father’s blood lay between them.
“Did you find him?” she asked, without looking up. “I ought to have done it. I wish I had done that. I wish I had given him his life. It was my right.”
One would think she was talking in her sleep.
“Why was it your right?” he asked, quietly.
“Because I loved him.”
Gaunt raised his hand to his head suddenly.
“Did you, Dode? I had a better right than that. Because I hated him.”
“He never harmed you, David Gaunt,”–with as proud composure as that with which a Roman wife would defend her lord.
“I saved his life. Dode, I’m trying to do right: God knows I am. But I hated him; he took from me the only thing that would have loved me.”
She looked up timidly, her face growing crimson.
“I never would have loved you, David.”
“No? I’m sorry you told me that, Dode.”
That was all he said. He helped her gently, as she arranged the carpets and old blanket under the wounded man; then he went out into the fresh air, saying he did not feel well. She was glad that he was gone; Palmer moved uneasily; she wanted his first look all to herself. She pushed back his fair hair: what a broad, melancholy forehead lay under it! The man wanted something to believe in,–a God in life: you could see that in his face. She was to bring it to him: she could not keep the tears back to think that this was so. The next minute she laughed in her childish fashion, as she put the brandy to his lips, and the color came to his face. He had been physician before; now it was her turn to master and rule. He looked up at last, into her eyes, bewildered,–his face struggling to gather sense, distinctness. When he spoke, though, it was in his quiet old voice.
“I have been asleep. Where is Gaunt? He dressed my side.”
“He is out, sitting on the hill-side.”
“And you are here, Theodora?”
“Yes, Douglas.”
He was silent. He was weak from loss of blood, but his thoughts were sharp, clear as never before. The years that were gone of his life seemed clogged into one bulk; how hungry they had been, hard, cruel! He never had felt it as now, while he lay helpless, his sultry look reading the woman’s eyes bent on his. They were pure and restful; love and home waited in them; something beyond,–a peace he could not yet comprehend. But this life was not for him,–he remembered that; the girl was nothing to him now: he was not fool enough to taunt himself with false hopes. She came there out of pity: any woman would do as much for a wounded man. He would never fool himself to be so balked again. The loss cut too deep. So he forced his face to be cool and critical, while poor Dode waited, innocently wondering that he did not welcome her, pity her now that her father was dead, forgetting that he knew nothing of that. For him, he looked at the fire, wondering if the Rebel scouts could see it,–thinking it would not be many days before Lander would dislodge Jackson,–trying to think of anything rather than himself, and the beautiful woman kneeling there.
Her eyes filled with tears at last, when he did not speak, and she turned away. The blood rushed to Palmer’s face: surely that was more than pity! But he would not tempt her,–he would never vex her soul as he had done before: if she had come to him, as a sister might, because she thought he was dying, he would not taunt her with the old love she had for him.
“I think I can stand up,” he said, cheerfully; “lend me your arm, Theodora.”
Dode’s arm was strong-nerved as well as fair; she helped him rise, and stood beside him as he went to the door, for he walked unsteadily. He took his hand from her shoulder instantly,–did not look at her: followed with his eye the black line of the fretted hills, the glimmer of the distant watch-fires. The path to the West lay through the Rebel camps.
“It is a long trail out of danger,” he said, smiling.
“You are going? I thought you needed rest.”
Calm, icy enough now: he was indifferent to her. She knew how to keep the pain down until he was gone.
“Rest? Yes. Where did you mean I should find it?”–facing her, sudden and keen. “Where am I to be sheltered? In your home, Theodora?”
“I thought that. I see now that it was a foolish hope, Douglas.”
“How did you hope it? What brought you here?”–his voice thick, tremulous with passion. “Were you going to take me in as a Sister of Charity might some wounded dog? Are pity and gratitude all that is left between you and me?”
She did not answer,–her face pale, unmoving in the moonlight, quietly turned to his. These mad heats did not touch her.
“You may be cold enough to palter with fire that has burned you, Theodora. I am not.”
She did not speak.
“Sooner than have gone to you for sisterly help and comfort, such as you gave just now, I would have frozen in the snow, and been less cold. Unless you break down the bar you put between us, I never want to see your face again,–never, living or dead! I want no sham farce of friendship between us, benefits given or received: your hand touching mine as it might touch Bone’s or David Gaunt’s; your voice cooing in my ear as it did just now, cool and friendly. It maddened me. Rest can scarcely come from you to me, now.”
“I understand you. I am to go back, then? It was a long road,–and cold, Douglas.”
He stopped abruptly, looked at her steadily.
“Do not taunt me, child! I am a blunt man: what words say, they mean, to me. Do you love me, Theodora?”
She did not speak, drawn back from him in the opposite shadow of the door-way. He leaned forward, his breath coming hurried, low.
“Are you cold? See how shaggy this great cloak is,–is it wide enough for you and me? Will you come to me, Theodora?”
“I did come to you. Look! you put me back: ‘There shall be no benefits given or received between us.'”
“How did you come?”–gravely, as a man should speak to a woman, childish trifling thrust aside. “How did you mean to take me home? As a pure, God-fearing woman should the man she loved? Into your heart, into your holiest thought? to gather strength from my strength, to make my power your power, your God my God? to be one with me? Was it so you came?”
He waited a minute. How cold and lonely the night was! How near rest and home came to him in this woman standing there! Would he lose them? One moment more would tell. When he spoke again, his voice was lower, feeble.
“There is a great gulf between you and me, Theodora. I know that. Will you cross it? Will you come to me?”
She came to him. He gathered her into his arms as he might a little child, never to be cold again; he felt her full heart throb passionately against his own; he took from her burning lips the first pure, womanly kiss: she was all his. But when she turned her head, there was a quick upward glance of her eyes, he knew not whether of appeal or thanks. There was a Something in the world more near and real to her than he; he loved her the better for it: yet until he found that Unknown God, they were not one.
It was an uncertain step broke the silence, cracking the crusted snow.
“Why, Gaunt!” said Palmer, “what are you doing in the cold? Come to the fire, boy!”
He could afford to speak cordially, heartily, out of the great warmth in big own breast. Theodora was heaping shavings on the ashes. Gaunt took them from her.
“Let me do it,” he muttered. “I’d like to make your whole life warm, Dode,–your life, and–any one’s you love.”
Dode’s face flushed with a happy smile. Even David never would think of her as alone again. Poor David! She never before had thought how guileless he was,–how pitiful and solitary his life.
“Come home with us,” she said, eagerly, holding out her hand.
He drew back, wiping the sweat from his face.
“You cannot see what is on my hand. I can’t touch you, Dode. Never again. Let me alone.”
“She is right, Gaunt,” said Palmer. “You stay here at the risk of your life. Come to the house. Theodora can hide us; and if they discover us, we can protect her together.”
Gaunt smiled faintly.
“I must make my way to Springfield to-morrow. My work is there,–my new work, Palmer.”
Palmer looked troubled.
“I wish you had not taken it up. This war may be needed to conquer a way for the day of peace and good-will among men; but you, who profess to be a seer and actor in that day, have only one work: to make it real to us now on earth, as your Master did, in the old time.”
Gaunt did not speak,–fumbled among the chips at the fire. He raised himself at last.
“I’m trying to do what’s right,” he said, in a subdued voice. “I haven’t had a pleasant life,–but it will come right at last, maybe.”
“It will come right, David!” said the girl.
His face lighted: her cheery voice sounded like a welcome ringing through his future years. It was a good omen, coming from her whom he had wronged.
“Are you going now, Gaunt?” asked Palmer, seeing him button his thin coat. “Take my blanket,–nay, you shall. As soon as I am strong enough, I’ll find you at Springfield.”
He wished he could hearten the poor unnerved soul, somehow.
Gaunt stopped outside, looking at them,–some uncertain thought coming and going in his face.
“I’ll speak it out, whatever you may think. Dode, I’ve done you a deadly hurt. Don’t ask me what it is,–God knows. I’d like, before I go, to show you I love you in a pure, honorable way, you and your husband”—-
The words choked in his throat; he stopped abruptly.
“Whatever you do, it will be honorable, David,” said Palmer, gently.
“I think–God might take it as expiation,”–holding his hand to his head.
He did not speak again for a little while, then he said,—-
“I will never see these old Virginian hills again. I am going West; they will let me nurse in one of the hospitals;–that will be better than this that is on my hand.”
Whatever intolerable pain lay in these words, he smothered it down, kept his voice steady.
“Do you understand, Douglas Palmer? I will never see you again. Nor Dode. You love this woman; so did I,–as well as you. Let me make her your wife before I go,–here, under this sky, with God looking down on us. Will you? I shall be happier to know that I have done it.”
He waited while Douglas spoke eagerly to the girl, and then said,—-
“Theodora, for God’s sake don’t refuse! I have hurt you,–the marks of it you and I will carry to the grave. Let me think you forgive me before I go. Grant me this one request.”
Did she guess the hurt he had done her? Through all her fright and blushes, the woman in her spoke out nobly.
“I do not wish to know how you have wronged me. Whatever it be, it was innocently done. God will forgive you, and I do. There shall be peace between us, David.”
But she did not offer to touch his hand again: stood there, white and trembling.
“It shall be as you say,” said Palmer.
So they were married, Douglas and Dode, in the wide winter night. A few short words, that struck the very depths of their being, to make them one: simple words, wrung out of the man’s thin lips with what suffering only he knew.
“Those whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder.” Thus he shut himself out from her forever. But the prayer for a blessing on them came from as pure a heart as any child’s that lives. He bade them good-bye, cheerfully, when he had finished, and turned away, but came back presently, and said good-night again, looking in their faces steadily, then took his solitary way across the hills. They never saw him again.
Bone, who had secured two horses by love or money or–confiscation, had stood mutely in the background, gulping down his opinion of this extraordinary scene. He did not offer it now, only suggested it was “high time to be movin’,” and when he was left alone, trudging through the snow, contented himself with smoothing his felt hat, and a breathless, “Ef dis nigger on’y knew what Mist’ Perrine _would_ say!”
A June day. These old Virginia hills have sucked in the winter’s ice and snow, and throbbed it out again for the blue heaven to see in a whole summer’s wealth of trees quivering with the luxury of being, in wreathed mosses, and bedded fern: the very blood that fell on them speaks in fair, grateful flowers to Him who doeth all things well. Some healthy hearts, like the hills, you know, accept pain, and utter it again in fresher-blooded peace and life and love. The evening sunshine lingers on Dode’s little house to-day; the brown walls have the same cheery whim in life as the soul of their mistress, and catch the last ray of light,–will not let it go. Bone, smoking his pipe at the garden-gate, looks at the house with drowsy complacency. He calls it all “Mist’ Dode’s snuggery,” now: he does not know that the rich, full-toned vigor of her happiness is the germ of all this life and beauty. But he does know that the sun never seemed so warm, the air so pure, as this summer,–that about the quiet farm and homestead there is a genial atmosphere of peace: the wounded soldiers who come there often to be cured grow strong and calm in it; the war seems far-off to them; they have come somehow a step nearer the inner heaven. Bone rejoices in showing off the wonders of the place to them, in matching Coly’s shiny sides against the “Government beastesses,” in talking of the giant red beets, or crumpled green cauliflower, breaking the rich garden-mould. “Yer’ve no sich cherries nor taters nor raspberries as dem in de Norf, I’ll bet!” Even the crimson trumpet-flower on the wall is “a _Virginny_ creeper, Sah!” But Bone learns something from them in exchange. He does not boast so often now of being “ole Mars’ Joe’s man,”–sits and thinks profoundly, till he goes to sleep. “Not of leavin’ yer, Mist’ Dode, I know what free darkies is, up dar; but dar’s somefin’ in a fellah’s ‘longin’ ter hisself, af’er all!” Dode only smiles at his deep cogitations, as he weeds the garden-beds, or fodders the stock. She is a half-Abolitionist herself, and then she knows her State will soon be free.
So Dode, with deeper-lit eyes, and fresher rose in her cheek, stands in the door this summer evening waiting for her husband. She cannot see him often; he has yet the work to do which he calls just and holy. But he is coming now. It is very quiet; she can hear her own heart beat slow and full; the warm air holds moveless the delicate scent of the clover; the bees hum her a drowsy good-night, as they pass; the locusts in the lindens have just begun to sing themselves to sleep; but the glowless crimson in the West holds her thought the longest. She loves, understands color: it speaks to her of the Day waiting just behind this. Her eyes fill with tears, she knows not why: her life seems rounded, complete, wrapt in a great peace; the grave at Manassas, and that planted with moss on the hill yonder, are in it; they only make her joy in living more tender and holy.
He has come now; stops to look at his wife’s face, as though its fairness and meaning were new to him always. There is no look in her eyes he loves so well to see as that which tells her Master is near her. Sometimes she thinks he too—-But she knows that “according to her faith it shall be unto her.” They are alone to-night; even Bone is asleep. But in the midst of a crowd, they who love each other are alone together: as the first man and woman stood face to face in the great silent world, with God looking down, and only their love between them.
The same June evening lights the windows of a Western hospital. There is not a fresh meadow-scented breath it gives that does not bring to some sick brain a thought of home, in a New-England village, or a Georgia rice-field. The windows are open; the pure light creeping into poisoned rooms carries with it a Sabbath peace, they think. One man stops in his hurried work, and looking out, grows cool in its tranquil calm. So the sun used to set in old Virginia, he thinks. A tall, slab-sided man, in the dress of a hospital-nurse: a worn face, but quick, sensitive; the patients like it better than any other: it looks as if the man had buried great pain in his life, and come now into its Indian-summer days. The eyes are childish, eager, ready to laugh as cry,–the voice warm, chordant,–the touch of the hand unutterably tender.
A busy life, not one moment idle; but the man grows strong in it,–a healthy servant, doing a healthy work. The patients are glad when he comes to their ward in turn. How the windows open, and the fresh air comes in! how the lazy nurses find a masterful will over them! how full of innermost life he is! how real his God seems to him!
He looks from the window now, his thought having time to close upon himself. He holds up his busy, solitary life to God, with a happy smile. He goes back to that bitter past, shrinking; but he knows its meaning now. As the warm evening wanes into coolness and gray, the one unspoken pain of his life comes back, and whitens his cheerful face. There is blood on his hands. He sees the old man’s gray hairs blown again by the wind, sees him stagger and fall. Gaunt covers his bony face with his hands, but he cannot shut it out. Yet he is learning to look back on even that with healthy, hopeful eyes. He reads over again each day the misspelled words in the Bible,–thinking that the old man’s haggard face looks down on him with the old kindly, forgiving smile. What if his blood be on his hands? He looks up now through the gathering night, into the land where spirits wait for us, as one who meets a friend’s face, saying,–
“Let it be true what you have writ,–‘The _Lord_ be between me and thee,’ forever!”
EUPHORION.
“I will not longer
Earth-bound linger:
Loosen your hold on
Hand and on ringlet.
Girdle and garment;
Leave them: they’re mine!”
“Bethink thee, bethink thee
To whom thou belongest!
Say, wouldst thou wound us,
Rudely destroying
Threefold the beauty,–
Mine, his, and thine?”
FAUST,–SECOND PART.
Nay, fold your arms, beloved Friends, Above the hearts that vainly beat!
Or catch the rainbow where it bends, And find your darling at its feet;
Or fix the fountain’s varying shape, The sunset-cloud’s elusive dye,
The speech of winds that round the cape Make music to the sea and sky:
So may you summon from the air
The loveliness that vanished hence, And Twilight give his beauteous hair,
And Morning give his countenance,
And Life about his being clasp
Her rosy girdle once again:–
But no! let go your stubborn grasp On some wild hope, and take your pain!
For, through the crystal of your tears, His love and beauty fairer shine;
The shadows of advancing years
Draw back, and leave him all divine.
And Death, that took him, cannot claim The smallest vesture of his birth,–
The little life, a dancing flame
That hovered o’er the hills of earth,–
The finer soul, that unto ours
A subtle perfume seemed to be,
Like incense blown from April flowers Beside the scarred and stormy tree,–
The wondering eyes, that ever saw
Some fleeting mystery in the air, And felt the stars of evening draw
His heart to silence, childhood’s prayer!
Our suns were all too fierce for him; Our rude winds pierced him through and through; But Heaven has valleys cool and dim,
And boscage sweet with starry dew.
There knowledge breathes in balmy air, Not wrung, as here, with panting breast: The wisdom born of toil you share;
But he, the wisdom born of rest.
For every picture here that slept,
A living canvas is unrolled;
The silent harp he might have swept Leans to his touch its strings of gold.
Believe, dear Friends, they murmur still Some sweet accord to those you play,
That happier winds of Eden thrill
With echoes of the earthly lay;
That he, for every triumph won,
Whereto your poet-souls aspire,
Sees opening, in that perfect sun, Another blossom’s bud of fire!
Each song, of Love and Sorrow born,
Another flower to crown your boy,– Each shadow here his ray of morn,
Till Grief shall clasp the hand of Joy!
HOUSE-BUILDING.
Because our architecture is bad, and because the architecture of our forefathers in the Middle Ages was good, Mr. Ruskin and others seem to think there is no salvation for us until we build in the same spirit as they did. But that we should do so no more follows than that we should envy those geological ages when the club-mosses were of the size of forest-trees, and the frogs as big as oxen. There are many advantages to be had in the forests of the Amazon and the interior of Borneo,–inexhaustible fertility, endless water-power,–but no one thinks of going there to live.
No age is without its attractions. There would be much to envy in the Greek or the Roman life, if we could have them clear of drawbacks. Many persons would be glad always to find Emerson in State Street, or sauntering in the Mall, ready to talk with all comers,–or to hear the latest words of Bancroft or Lowell from their own lips at the cattle-show or the militia-muster. The Roman villas had some excellent features,–the peristyle of statues, the cryptoporticus with its midnight coolness and shade of a July noon, the mosaic floor, and the glimmering frescoes of the ceiling. But we are content to get our poets and historians in their books, and to take the pine-grove for our noonday walk, or to wait till night has transformed the street into a cryptoporticus nobler than Titus’s. It is as history that these things charm us; but the charm vanishes, when, even in fancy, we bring them into contact with our actual lives. So it is with the medieval architecture. It is true, in studying these wonderful fossils, a regret for our present poverty, and a desire to appropriate something from the ancient riches, will at times come over us. But this feeling, if it be more than slight and transient, if it seriously influence our conduct, is somewhat factitious or somewhat morbid. Let us be a little disinterested in our admiration, and not, like children, cry for all we see. We have our share: let us leave the dead theirs.
The fallacy lies in the supposition, that, besides all their advantages, they had all ours too. It is with our mental as with our bodily vision,–we see only what is remote; and the image to the mind depends, not only upon seeing, but upon _not seeing_. In the distant star, all foulness and gloom are lost, and only the pure splendor reaches us. Inspired by Mr. Ruskin’s eloquence, the neophyte sets forth with contrition to put his precepts into practice. But the counterstatement which he had overlooked does not, therefore, cease to exist. At the outset, he finds unexpected sacrifices are demanded. And, as money is the common measure of the forces disposable, the hindrances take the form of increase of cost. Before the first step can be taken towards doing anything as Mr. Ruskin would have it done, he discovers that at least it will cost enormously more to do it in that way. The lamps of truth and sacrifice demand such expensive nourishment, that he is forced to ask himself whether they are of themselves really sufficient to live by.
It is not that we are poorer or more penurious than our ancestors, but that we have more wants than they, and that the new wants overshadow the old. What is spent in one direction must be spared in another. The matter-of-course necessaries of our life were luxuries or were unknown to them. First of all, the luxury of freedom,–political, social, and domestic,–with the habits it creates, is the source of great and ever-increasing expense. We are still much behindhand in this matter, and shall by-and-by spend more largely upon it. But, compared with our ancestors, individual culture, to which freedom is the means, absorbs a large share of our expenditure. The noble architecture of the thirteenth century was the work of corporations, of a society that knew only corporations, and where individual culture was a crime. Dante had made the discovery that it is the man that creates his own position, not the accident of birth. But his life shows how this belief isolated him. Nor was the coincidence between the artistic spirit of the age and its limitations accidental. Just in proportion as the spirit of individualism penetrated society, and began to show itself as the Renaissance, architecture declined. The Egyptian pyramids are marvels to us, because we are accustomed to look upon the laborer as a man. But once allow that he is only so much brute force,–cheap, readily available, and to be had in endless supply, but as a moral entity less to be respected than a cat or a heron, and the marvel ceases. Should not the building be great to which man himself is sacrificed? Later, the builders are no longer slaves; but man is still subordinate to his own work, adores the work of his hands. This stands for him, undertakes to represent him, though, from its partial nature, it can only typify certain aspects or functions of him. A Gothic cathedral is an attempt at a universal expression of humanity, a stone image of society, in which each particle, insignificant by itself, has its meaning in the connection. It was the fresh interest in the attempt that gave birth to that wonderful architecture. This is the interest it still has, but now only historical, since the discovery was made that the particle is greater than the mass,–that it is for the sake of the individual that society and its institutions exist. Ever since, a process of disintegration has been going on, resulting in a progressive reversal of the previous relation. Not the private virtues of the structure, but its uses, are now uppermost, and ever more and more developed. Even in our own short annals something of this process may be traced. Old gentlemen complain of the cost of our houses. The houses of their boyhood, they say, were handsomer and better built, yet cost less. There is some truth in this, for the race of architect-builders hardly reaches into this century. But if the comparison be pushed into details, we soon come to the conviction that the owners of these houses were persons whose habits were, in many respects, uncouth and barbarous. It is easy to provide in the lump; but with decency, privacy, independence,–in short, with a high degree of respect on the part of the members of the household for each other’s individuality,–expense begins. Letarouilly says it is difficult to discover in the Roman palaces of the Renaissance any reference to special uses of the different apartments. It was to the outside, the vestibule, courtyard, and staircase, that care and study were given: the inside was intended only as a measure of the riches and importance of the owner, not as his habitation. The part really inhabited by him was the _mezzanino_,–a low, intermediate story, where he and his family were kennelled out of the way. Has any admiring traveller ever asked himself how he could establish himself, with wife and children, in the Foscari or the Vendramin palace? To live in them, it would be necessary to build a house inside.
Nor is there any ground for saying that the fault is in the builders,–that the old builders met the demands of their time, and would equally satisfy the demands of our time, without sacrifice of their art. The first demand in the days of good architecture was, that the building should have an independent artistic value beyond its use. This is what architecture requires; for architecture is building, _pure_,–building for its own sake, not as means. What Mr. Garbett says is, no doubt, quite true,–that nothing was ever made, for taste’s sake, less efficient than it might have been. But many things were made _more_ efficient than they might have been; or, rather, this is always the character of good architecture. It is in this surplus of perfection, above bare necessity, that its claim to rank among the fine arts consists. This character the builders of the good times, accordingly, never left out of sight; so that, if their means were limited, they lavished all upon one point,–made that overflow with riches, and left the rest plain and bare; never did they spread their pittance thin to cover the whole, as we do. It is for this reason that so few of the great cathedrals were finished, and that in buildings of all kinds we so often find the decoration in patches, sharply marked off from the rest of the structure. This noble profuseness is not, indeed, necessarily decoration; the essence of it is an independent value and interest in the building, aside from the temporary and accidental employment. The spires and the flying-buttresses of the Northern cathedrals cannot be defended on the ground of thrifty construction. The Italian churches accomplished that as well without either. How remote the reference to use in the mighty portals of Rheims, or the soaring vaultings of Amiens and Beauvais! Does anybody suppose that Michel Angelo, when he undertook to raise the dome of the Pantheon into the air, was thinking of the most economical way of roofing a given space? These fine works have their whole value as expression; it is with their visible contempt of thrift that our admiration begins. They pared away the stone to the minimum that safety demanded, and beyond it,–yet not from thrift, but to make the design more preeminent and necessary, and to owe as little as possible to the inert strength of the material.
But though we admire the result, we have grown out of sympathy with the cause, the state of mind that produced it, and so the root wherefrom the like should be produced is cut off. There is no reason to suppose that the old builders were men of a different kind from ours, more earnest, more poetical. The stories about the science of the medieval masons are rubbish. All men are in earnest about something; our men are as good as they, and would have built as well, had they been born at the right time for it. But now they are thinking of other things. The Dilettanti Society sent Mr. Penrose to Athens to study in the ancient remains there the optical corrections which it was alleged the Greeks made in the horizontal lines of their buildings. Mr. Penrose made careful measurements, establishing the fact, and a folio volume of plates was published to illustrate the discovery, and evince the unequalled nicety of the Greek eye. But the main point, namely, that a horizontal line above the level of the eye, in order to appear horizontal, must bend slightly upwards, was pointed out to me years ago by a common plasterer.
It is not that our builders are degenerate, but that their art is a trade, occupies only their hands, not their minds, and this by no fault in them or in anybody, but by the natural progress of the world. In each age by turn some one mental organ is in a state of hypertrophy; immediately that becomes the medium of expression,–not that it is the only possible or even the best, but that its time has come,–then it gives place to another. Architecture is dead and gone to dust long ago. We are not called upon to sing threnodies over it, still less to attempt to galvanize a semblance of life into it. If we must blame somebody, let it not be the builder, but his employers, who, caring less even than he for the reality of good architecture, (for the material itself teaches him something,) force him into these puerilities in order to gratify their dissolute fancies.
If these views seem to any one low and prosaic, let me remind him that poetry does not differ from prose in being false. We must respect the facts. If there were in this country any considerable number of persons to whom the buildings they daily enter had any positive permanent value besides convenience,–who looked upon the church, the bank, or the house, as upon a poem or a statue,–the birth of a national architecture would be assured. But as the fact stands, while utility, and that of a temporary and makeshift sort, is really the first consideration, we are not yet ready to acknowledge this to others or to ourselves, and so fail to get from it what negative advantage we might, but blunder on under some fancied necessity, spending what we can ill spare, to the defrauding of legitimate demands, as a sort of sin-offering for our aesthetic deficiency, or as a blind to conceal it. The falsehood, like all falsehood, defeats itself; the pains we take only serve to make the failure more complete.
This is displayed most fully in the doings of “Building Committees.” Here we see what each member (perhaps it would be more just to say the least judicious among them) would do in his own case, were he free from the rude admonitions of necessity. He has at least to live in his own house, and so cannot escape some attention to the substantial requirements of it; though some houses, too, seem emancipated from such considerations, and to have been built for any end rather than to live in. But in catering for the public, it is the _outsiders_ alone that seem to be consulted, the careless passer-by, who for once will pause a moment to commend or to sneer at the facade,–not the persons whose lives for years, perhaps, are to be affected by the internal arrangement. It is doubtless from a suspicion, more or less obscure, of the incoherency of their purpose, that such committees usually fall into the hands of a “practical man,”–that is, a man impassive to principles, of hardihood or bluntness of perception enough to carry into effect their vague fancies, and spare them from coming face to face with their inconsistencies. Thus fairly adrift and kept adrift from the main purpose, there is no vagary impossible to them,–churches in which there is no hearing, hospitals contrived to develop disease, museums of tinder, libraries impossible to light or warm. And what gain comes to beauty from these sacrifices, let our streets answer. Good architecture requires before all things a definite aim, long persisted in. It never was an invention, anywhere, but always a gradual growth. What chance of that here?
The only chance clearly is to cut away till we come to the solid ground of real, not fancied, requirement. As long as it is our whims, and not our necessities, that build, it matters little how much pains we take, how learned and assiduous we are. I have no hope of any considerable advantage from the abundant exhortation to frankness and genuineness in the use of materials, unless it lead first of all to a more frank and genuine consideration of the occasion for using the materials at all. If it lead only to open timber roofs and stone walls in place of the Renaissance stucco, I think the gain very questionable. The stucco is more comfortable, and at least we had got used to it. These are matters of detail: suppose your details _are_ more genuine, if the whole design is a sham, if the aim be only to excite the admiration of bystanders, the thing is not altered, whether the bystanders are learned in such matters or ignorant. The more excellent the work is in its kind, the more insidious and virulent the falsity, if the whole occasion of it be a pretence. If it must be false, let it by all means be gross and glaring,–we shall be the sooner rid of it.
It may be asked whether, then, I surrender the whole matter of appearance,–whether the building may as well be ugly as beautiful. By no means; what I have said is in the interest of beauty, as far as it is possible to us. Positive beauty it may be often necessary to forego, but bad taste is never necessary. Ugliness is not mere absence of beauty, but absence of it where it ought to be present. It comes always from a disappointed expectation,–as where the lineaments that do not disgust in the potato meet us in the human face, or even in the hippopotamus, whom accordingly Nature kindly puts out of sight. It is bad taste that we suffer from,–not plainness, not indifference to appearance, but features misplaced, shallow mimicry of “effects” where their causes do not exist, transparent pretences of all kinds, forcing attention to the absence of the reality, otherwise perhaps unnoticed. The first step toward seemly building is to rectify the relation between the appearance and the uses of the building,–to give to each the weight that it really has with us, not what we fancy or are told it ought to have. Mr. Ruskin too often seems to imply that fine architecture is like virtue or the kingdom of Heaven: that, if it be sought first, all other things will be added. A sounder basis for design, beyond what is necessary to use, seems to me that proposed by Mr. Garbett, (to whom we are indebted for the most useful hints upon architecture,) namely, politeness, a decent regard for the eyes of other people (and for one’s own, for politeness regards one’s self as well). Politeness, however, as Mr. Garbett admits, is chiefly a negative art, and consists in abstaining and not meddling. The main character of the building being settled by the most unhesitating consideration of its uses, we are to see that it disfigures the world as little as possible.
Let me, at the risk of tediousness, proceed to bring these generalities to a point by a few instances,–not intending to exhaust the topic, but only to exemplify the method of approaching it.
The commonest case for counsel, and more common here than anywhere else, is where a man is to build for himself a house, especially in the country,–for town-houses are more governed by extraneous considerations. The first point is the _aspect_,–that the living-rooms be well open to the sun. Let no fancied advantages of view or of symmetrical position interfere with this. For they operate seldom and strike most at first, but the aspect tells on body and mind every day. It is astonishing how reckless people are of this vital point, suffering it to be determined for them by the direction of a road, or even of a division-fence,–as if they had never looked at their houses with their own eyes, but only with the casual view of a stranger. It does not follow, however, that the entrance must be on the sunny side, though this is generally best, as the loss of space in the rooms is more than made up by the cheeriness of the approach. For the same reason, unless you are sailing very close to the wind, let your entrance-hall be roomy. It is in no sense an unproductive outlay, for it avails above in chambers, and below in the refuge it affords to the children from the severer rules of the parlor.
As to number and distribution of rooms, the field is somewhat wide. Here the differences of income, of pursuits, and the idiosyncrasies of taste come in; and more than all, not only are the circumstances originally different, but constantly varying. I speak not of the fluctuations of fortune, but of normal and expected changes. The young couple, or the old, are easily lodged. But in middle life,–since we are not content, like our forefathers, with bestowing our children out of sight,–it takes a great deal of room to provide for them on both floors, without either neglect or oppression, and to keep up the due oversight without sacrificing ourselves or them. For children are rather exclusive, and spoil for other use more room than they occupy. Here I counsel every man who must have a corner to himself to fix his study in the attic, for the only way to avoid noise without wasteful complication is to be above it.
The smallest house must provide some escape from the dining-room. If dining-room and sitting-room are on the sunny side, and the entrance be also on that side, they will be separated, as indeed they always may be, without loss. The notion that the rooms must immediately connect is one of those whims to which houses are sacrificed. The only advantage is the facility for receiving company. But if the occasions when the guests will be too many for one room are likely to be frequent, rather than permanently spoil the living-room, it is better to set apart rooms for reception. Our position in this matter is in truth rather embarrassing. Formerly (and the view is not yet wholly obsolete) the whole house was a reception-hall, the domestic life of the inmates being a secondary matter, swept into some corner, such as the cells of the mediaeval castles or the _mezzanino_ of the Italian palaces. But the austere aspect of the shut-up “best parlor” of our grandfathers, with its closed blinds and chilly chintz covers, showed that the tables were beginning to turn, and the household to assert its rights and civilly to pay off the guest for his usurpations. Henceforth he is welcome, but he is secondary; it was not for him that the house was built; and if it comes to choosing, he can be dispensed with. It would be very agreeable to unite with all the new advantages all the old,–the easy hospitality, the disengaged suavity of the ancient manners. Now the brow of the host is clouded, he has too much on his mind to play his part perfectly. It is not that good-will is wanting, but that life is more complicated. The burdens are more evenly distributed, and no class is free and at leisure. But to fret over our disadvantages, and to extol the past, is only to ignore the price that was paid for those advantages we covet. There was always somebody to sweat for that leisure. Would a society divided into castes be better? Or again, who would like to have his children sleep three in a bed, and live in the kitchen, in order that the best rooms should always be swept and garnished for company?
In every case, unless a man is rich enough to have two houses in one, it comes to choice between domestic comfort and these occasional facilities. Direct connection of rooms usually involves the sacrifice of the chimney-corner, on one or both sides; for it is not pleasant to sit in a passage-way, even if it be rarely used. For use in cold weather the available portion of a room may be reckoned as limited by the door nearest the fireplace.
It will be noticed that this supposes the use of open fireplaces. The open fireplace is not a necessary of life, but it is one of the first luxuries, and one that no man who can afford to eat meat every day can afford to dispense with. No furnace can supply the place of it; for, though the furnace is an indispensable auxiliary in severe cold, and though, well managed, it need not vitiate the air, yet, like all contrivances for supplying heated air instead of heat, it has the insurmountable defect of not warming the body directly, nor until all the surrounding air be warmed first, and thus stops the natural reaction and the brace and stimulus derived from it. Used exclusively, it amounts to voluntarily incurring the disadvantage of a tropical climate.
Let the walls of the second story be upright. The recent fashion of a mansard or “French roof” is only making part of the wall of the house look like roof, at equal expense, at the sacrifice of space inside, and above all, of tightness. For, though shingles and even slates will generally keep out the rain, the innumerable cracks between the sides of them can never be made air-tight, and therefore admit heat and cold much more freely than any proper wall-covering. A covering of metal would be too good a conductor of external temperature,–while clapboarding would endanger the resemblance to a roof, which is the only gain proposed.
As to the size of the house, it is important to observe that its cost does not depend so much upon the size of the rooms (within reasonable limits) as upon the number of them, the complication of plan, and the number of doors and windows. For every door or window you can omit you may add three or four feet to your house. The height of the stories will be governed by the area of the largest rooms;–what will please each person depends very much upon what he is used to. In the old New-England houses the stories were very low, often less than eight feet in the best rooms. In favor of low rooms it is to be remembered that they are more easily lighted and warmed, and involve less climbing of stairs. Rooms are often made lofty under the impression that better ventilation is thereby secured; but there is a confusion here. A high room is less intolerable without ventilation, the vitiated air being more diluted; but a low room is usually more easily ventilated, because the windows are nearer the ceiling.
Mr. Garbett advises that the windows be many and small. This costs more; and if it be understood to involve placing the windows on different sides, the effect, I think, will be generally less agreeable than where the room is lighted wholly from one side. A capital exception, however, is the dining-room, which should always, if possible, abound in cross-lights; else one half the table will be oppressed by a glare of light, and the other visible only in _silhouette_.
As to material, stone is the handsomest, and the only one that constantly grows handsomer, and does not require that your creepers should be periodically disturbed for painting or repairs. But this is perhaps all that can be said in its favor. To make a stone house as good as a wooden one we must build a wooden one inside of it. Wood is our common material, and there is none better, if we take the pains to make it tight. There is a prevalent notion that it is the thinness of our cheap wooden houses that makes them pervious to heat and cold. But no wooden house, unless built of solid and well-fitted logs, could resist the external temperature by virtue of thickness. It is tightness that tells here. Wherever air passes, heat and cold pass with it. What is important, therefore, is, by good contrivance and careful execution, to stop all cracks as far as possible. For this, an outside covering of sheathing-felt, or some equivalent material, may be recommended, and especially a double plastering inside,–not the common “back-plastering,” but two separate compact surfaces of lime and sand, inside the frame.
The position, the internal arrangement, and the material being determined upon, the next point is that the structure shall be as little of an eyesore as we can make it. Do what we will, every house, as long as it is new, is a standing defiance to the landscape. In color, texture, and form, it disconnects itself and resists assimilation to its surroundings. The “gentle incorporation into the scenery of Nature,” that Wordsworth demands, is the most difficult point to effect, as well as the most needful. This makes the importance of a background of trees, of shrubs, and creepers, and the uniting lines of sheds, piazzas, etc., mediating and easing off the shock which the upstart mass inflicts upon the eye. Hence Sir Joshua Reynolds’s rule for the color of a house, to imitate the tint of the soil where it is to stand. Hence the advantage of a well-assured base and generally of a pyramidal outline, because this is the figure of braced and balanced equilibrium, assured to all natural objects by the slow operation of natural laws, which we must take care not to violate in our haste, unless for due cause shown.
We hear much of the importance of proportions, but the main point generally is that the house be not too high. This is the most universal difficulty, particularly in small houses, the area being diminished, but not the height of stories. In this respect the old farm-houses had a great advantage, and this is a main element in their good effect,–aided as it is by the height of the roof; for a high roof will often make a building seem lower than it would with a low roof or none at all. The dreary effect of the flat-roofed houses in the neighborhood of New York is due partly to the unrelieved height, and partly to the unfinished or truncated appearance of a thing without a top. The New York fashion gives, no doubt, the most for the money; but the effect is so offensive that I think it justifies us for once in violating Mr. Garbett’s canon and sacrificing efficiency to taste.
The most pleasing shape of roof, other things being equal, is the pyramidal or hipped, inclining from all sides towards the centre. The drawback is, that, if it must be pierced by windows, their lines will stick off from the roof, so that, as seen from below, they will be violently detached from the general mass. The good taste of the old builders made them avoid putting dormer-windows (at least in front) in roofs of one pitch; the windows were in the gables, carried out for this purpose; or if dormers were necessary, they made a mansard or double-pitched roof, in which the windows are less detached. Another excellent feature in the old New-England farm-houses is the long slope of the roof behind, and, in general, the habit of roofing porches, dormers, sheds, and other projections by continuing the main roof over them, with great gain to breadth and solidity of effect.
In fact, were it possible, we could not do better for the outside than to take these old houses for our model. But here, as everywhere, we find the outside depends on the inside, and that what we most admire in them will conflict with the new requirements. For instance, the massive central chimney and the expanse on the ground point to the kitchen as the common living-room of the family; they are irreconcilable with our need of more chambers and of the possibility of more separation above and below. The later and more ambitious houses, such as were built in the neighborhood of Boston at the beginning of the century, come nearer to our wants; but they sacrifice too much to a cut-and-dried symmetry to be of much use to us. After that the way is downward through one set of absurdities after another, until of late some signs of more common-sense treatment begin to be visible.
The way out of this quagmire is first of all to avoid confusion of aim. What is this that we are building? If it is a monument, let us seek only to make it beautiful. But if it is a house, let us always keep in mind that the appearance of it, being really secondary, must be seen to have been held so throughout. Else we shall not, in the long run, escape bad taste. Bad taste is not mere failure, but failure to do something which ought not to have been attempted. For instance, among the most frequent occasions for deformity in modern houses are the dormers, the windows that rise above the roof. In the Gothic buildings these are among the most attractive features. The reason is that the tendency of the outline to detach itself from the mass of the building furnishes to the Gothic a culminating point for the distinct legitimate aim at beauty of expression that pervades the whole; but to the modern builder, whose aim, as regards expression, should be wholly negative, it is at best an embarrassment, and often a snare.
The chief obstacle to a rational view of the present position of architecture comes from the number of clever men who devote their lives to putting a good face on our absurdities, and by all sorts of tricks and sophistries in wood and stone prevent us from seeing our conduct in its proper deformity. They dazzle and bewilder us with beauties plucked at haphazard from all times and ages,–as much forgeries as any that men are hanged for,–and then, when the cheat begins to peep through, they fool us again with pretences of thoroughness, consistency of style, genuineness in the use of materials, etc., as if the danger were in the execution, and not in the main intention. So they fool us for a while longer, and we praise their fine doings, and even persuade ourselves there is something liberal and ennobling in their influence. But we tire at last of these exotics. A million of them is not worth one of those sober flowers of homely growth where use has by chance, as it were, blossomed into beauty. This is the only success in that kind that can be hoped for in our day. But it must come of itself; it cannot be had for the seeking, nor if sought for its own sake. The active competition that goes on in our streets is not the way to it, unless negatively, by way of disgust and exhaustion. For some help, meantime, I commend the opinion of an architect of my acquaintance, who said the highest compliment he ever received was from a drover, who could not account for it that “he had passed that way so often and never seen that _old house_.” Nobody expects his house will be beautiful, do what he will; why pay for the certainty of failure? Not to be conspicuous, and, to that end, to respect the plain fundamental rules of statics, of good construction, of harmonious color, and to resist sacrificing any solid advantage to show, these are our safest rules at present.
MR. AXTELL.
PART III.
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.”
I gave it to her.
She hastily put away the gift I had given, and said,–
“You like the old tower in the church-yard, Miss Percival, I believe?”
“Oh, yes: it is a great attraction for me. Redleaf would be Redleaf no longer, if it were away.”
“Have you visited it since you’ve been here this time?”
“Once only.”
“Were there any changes?” she asked.
“A few,” I said. “There is another entrance to the tower than by the door, Miss Axtell.”
Slowly the lady dropped back to the pillows whence she had arisen from the disturbing dream. She did not move again for many minutes; then it was a few low-spoken words that summoned me to her side.
“I know there is another entrance to the tower,” she said; “but I did not think that any one else knew of it. Who told you?”
“Excuse me from answering, if you please,” I said, unwilling to excite her more, for I knew that the fever was rising rapidly.
“Who knows of this besides you? You don’t mind telling me that much?”
“No one knows it, I think; no person told me, and I have told no one. You seem to have more fever; can you not sleep?”
“Not with all this equinoctial storm raging, and the tide you told me of coming up with the wind.”
She looked decidedly worse. Mr. Axtell let her have her own way. I thought it wise to follow his leading, and I asked,–
“What tide do you mean? You cannot hear the sea, and it isn’t time for the equinoctial gale.”
This question seemed to have quieted Miss Axtell beyond thought of reply. She did not speak again until the Sabbath-day had begun. Then, at the very point where she had ceased, she recommenced.
“It is a pity to let the sea in on the fertile fields of your young life,” she said; “but this tide,–it is not that that is now flowing in on the far-away beach of Redcliff. It is the tide of emotion, that _some one day_ in life begins to rise in the human heart,–and, oh, what a strange, wondrous thing it is! There are Bay-of-Fundy tides, and the uniform tides, and the tideless waters that rest around Pacific Isles; and no mortal knoweth the cause of their rise or fall. So in human hearts: some must endure the great throbbing surges that are so hard coming against one poor heart with nothing but the earth to rest upon, and yet _must stand fast_; then there are the many, the blessed congregation of hearts, that are only stirred by moderate, even-flowing emotions, that never rise over a tide-line, behind which the congregation are quite secure, and stand and censure the souls striving and toiling in waves that they only look upon, but never–no, never–feel. Is this right, Miss Percival?”
“It seems not,” I said; “but the tideless hearts, what of them?”
“Oh, they are the hardest of all. Think! Imagine one of those serene, iridescent rings of land, moored close beside the cliff, at which the waves never rest from beating. Could the one forever at peace, with leave from wind and wave to grow its verdure and twine its tendrils just where it would,–_could_ it feel for the life-points against which the Gulf-Stream only now and then sent up a cheering bit of warmth, whilst the soul of the cliff saw its own land of greenness, only far, far away over the waters, but could not attain unto it, not whilst north-land winds blow or the earth-time endures?”
Miss Axtell ceased, and the same fixed, absorbed expression came to her. She looked as she had done on the night, four days since, when I came in at that door for the first time. I thought of the question her brother had asked me concerning the turning of the key; and crossing the room, I turned it.
“Why did you lock the door?” she asked.
“I am constitutionally timid,” was my apology.
“You have never evinced it before; why now?”
“Because I have not thought of it sooner.”
“Will you unlock it, please?” she asked; and her eyes were very bright with the fever-fire that I knew was burning up, until I feared the flame would touch her mind. “I don’t like being locked in; I wish to be free,” she added.
This lady has something of Mr. Axtell’s command of manner. I could not think it right to refuse to comply, and I unlocked the door.
She seemed restless. “Bring me the key, will you?” she asked, after a few moments of silence, in which her wandering eyes sought the door frequently.
I gave it to her. I might have locked the door before giving her the key, but I could not do it even in her approach to wildness. I hate deception as devoutly as she disguises. She thanked me for my compliance, and said, with a scintillation of coaxingness in her manner,–
“You need not be afraid; there’s nothing to harm one in Redleaf.”
“Why did you come, to be kind to me, sick and in sorrow?” she suddenly asked, whilst I, unseen by her, was preparing one of the soothing powders that still were left from the night wherein I forgot my duty.
I knew not how to reply. The very bit of material which she had hidden underneath a pillow was the cause; and so I answered,–
“Town-life is so different; one becomes so accustomed to a ring of changes in the all-around of life, that, when in the country, one looks for something to remind one of the life that has been left.”
“Then you did not come from genuine kindness?”
“No, I am afraid not.”
“Do not be afraid to be truthful, ever,” she said, and added,–“Once more, will you tell me where you found the fragment you have given me?”
“I cannot, Miss Axtell.”
She did not speak again, but lay looking at the ceiling until long after the moon had risen,–the waning moon, that comes up so weirdly, late in the night, like a spectre of light appointed to haunt the solemn old earth, and punish it with the remembrance of a brighter, better light gone, and a renewed consciousness of its own once unformed, chaotic existence. I saw rays from it coming in through the parted curtains, and distinctly traced tree-branches wavering to and fro out in the night-wind, set astir as the moon came up. At last she said,–
“I wish you would go to sleep. Won’t you wake Katie up, and then lie down? She has had a rest.”
“Poor, tired child,” I said; “she had work to do yesterday; I had not.”
“Abraham, then, if not Katie.”
“He has been up three nights, Miss Axtell,–I only one.”
“I did not know it,” she said. “I forgot that I had been so long ill.”
“Will you try and sleep?” once more I asked; “it is near morning.”
She wished to know the hour, made me give her watch into her own keeping, and then said “she would not talk, no, she would be very quiet, if I would only gratify her by making myself comfortable on the lounge.” It did not seem very unreasonable, and I consented.
“But you are looking at me,” she said. “I hate to be watched; do shut your eyes.”
I looked away from her. Time went on. I heard the clock strike four times, in the March night. Miss Axtell was very quiet,–better, I was convinced. I arose once to rebuild the fire. Wood-fires burn down so soon. Then I took up my watch, thinking over the strange events, all unconsummated, that had been and still were in being under this roof.
Five hours came booming up from the village-clock. The wind must have changed, or I could not have heard the strokes, so roundly full.
“How short the hour has been!” was my first thought. Kino began a furious, untimely barking. “What for?” I wondered; and I lifted up my head and listened. No sound; the room was very still. Miss Axtell had dropped the curtains of the bed. It annoyed her, I supposed, to feel herself watched. “Her breathing is very soft,” I thought; “I do not even hear it. Her sleep must be pleasant, after the fever.”
I laid my head down to its resting-place, listening still. Kino kept up a low, ominous growl, quite different from his first barking. Nothing more came. “I’m glad he doesn’t waken Miss Axtell,” I thought; and gradually Kino dropped his growls into low, plaintive moans, which in time died away. As they did so, another sound, not outside, but in the house, set my poor, weak heart into violent throbbings. Footsteps were in the upper hall, I felt sure. Miss Axtell might not hear them, if she had not heard Kino’s louder noise. Slowly they came,–not heavy, with a stout, manly tread, but muffled. They came close to the door. If the key were only in it! But I could not move. I heard a hand going over it, just as I had heard that hand three days before in the dark tower. A moment’s awful pour of feeling, and then came the gentlest, softest of knocks. Why did I not get up and see who it was? Simply because Nature made me cowardly, and meant me, therefore, to bear cowardice bravely. I never moved. A second time came the knock, but no more nerve of sound in it than at the first. A hand touched the knob after that, and turning it gently, the door was carefully pushed open, and a figure, looking very much like Mr. Axtell, only the long, dark hair fell over his face, came noiselessly in. I could not tell at the moment who it was. I watched him cautiously. He stood still, looking first at the bed, whose curtains were down, then around the room. For one moment I thought him looking at me, and involuntarily my eyelids closed, lest he might know himself watched. He put up his hand, and pushed back the heavy hair from his forehead. It was only Mr. Axtell. The relief was so great that I spoke,–softly, it is true.
“What is it?” I asked. “Is anything wrong, Mr. Axtell?”
“It seems not,” he said. “Kino’s barking aroused me,–it is so unusual. How has she slept?”
“Very well. For the last hour she has not spoken.”
Kino began again his low, dismal howling.
“Did not the dog disturb her when he barked?”
Mr. Axtell had walked to the lounge from which I had risen, still speaking in the voice that has much of tone without much sound.
“No,–she did not seem to hear it.”
“She must be sleeping very deeply,” the brother said; and as he spoke, he cautiously uplifted a fold of the hangings.
What was it that came over his face, made visible even in the gloom of the room? Something terrible.
“What is it?” I asked, springing up; “what has happened?” and I put out my hand to take the look at the sleeper in there that he had done.
He stayed my hand, waved it back, folded his arms, as if nothing unusual had occurred, and questioned me.
“What has she talked about to-night?”
“She has said very little.”
“Tell me something that she has said, immediately”; and he looked fearfully agitated.
“What has happened?” I asked; and again I caught at the hangings which concealed the fearful thing that he had seen.
“Answer me!” Two words only, but tremendously uttered.
“She asked me if I liked the tower in the church-yard,” I said.
“You told her what?”
“That I did like it.”
“Has she seemed worried about anything?” and Mr. Axtell threw up a window-sash, letting the cold March wind into this room of sickness. As he did so, I lifted the folds that the wind rudely swayed. _Miss Axtell was not there_.
He turned around. I stood speechless.
“How long have you been asleep?” he asked, coolly, as if nothing had occurred.
“Not at all,” I answered. Then I thought, “I must have slept, else she could not have gone out without my knowing it.”–“I heard the stroke of four and of five,” I said.
He looked up and down the street, only a little lighted by the feeble, old, fading moon.
“Have you any idea where she would go?” he asked.
“She may be in the house,” I said; “why not look?”
“No; I found the front-door unfastened. I thought Katie might have forgotten it, when I went to see. She has gone out, I know.”
He looked for the wrappings she might have put on, searching, as he did so, for the small lamp that always was placed beside the larger one upon the table. It was gone. It had been there at four o’clock, when I put wood on the fire.
“Where would she carry a lamp?” Mr. Axtell asked, as he went on, searching, in known places, for articles of apparel that were not in their wonted homes. Having found them, he went out hurriedly, went to his own room, came out thence a moment after, with boots on his feet in place of the slippers he had frightened me with, and an overcoat across his arm. He did not seem to see me, as I stood waiting in the hall.
“Where are you going?” I asked of him, but he did not answer. He went straight on by me, and down, out of the house, closing the great hall-door after him with a force that shook the walls.
I went into the deserted room, put down the window-sash that he had left open, laid more wood upon the dying embers, caught up Miss Axtell’s shawl, and, throwing it over my head, started down the stairs. It was pitch-dark, not even moonlight, there. I went back for a lamp: the only one was the heavy bronze, in the lone room. Mr. Axtell’s door was open. He had left a light. I went in and took it up, with a box of matches lying near, and once more started down the stairs. How full of trembling I was! yet not afraid: there was a life, perhaps, to save. I opened the heavy oaken door. The wind put out my light. I did not need it longer. The shred of moon, hanging prophetic of doom, let out its ghastly whiteness to ghost the village.
Kino did not bark. The wind came down the street from churchward, whence I had heard the stroke of the village-clock. Ten minutes past five: it would be morning soon. I listened. The wind brought me footsteps, going farther and farther on: or was it the fluttering of my own garments that I heard? “I will know,” I thought; and I ran a little way, then listened again. They seemed less far than before, but still going on. I ran again, farther than at first. I saw a figure before me, but, oh, _so_ far! It seemed that I should never catch it. I tried, and called. I might as well have shouted to my father, miles away; for the wind carried my voice nearer to him than to Mr. Axtell, hurrying on. Where would he go? I tried to keep him in sight. He turned a corner, and the wind tormented me; it was almost a gale that blew, and I had the shawl to hold over my head. I came to the corner that he had turned: it was near the parsonage,–only two or three houses away. There was less of wind. I went on, half-breathless with the intensity of the effort I made to breathe. The stars looked cold. I was near the church-yard. First the church,–then the place of graves,–after that, the long, sloping garden, and the parsonage higher up. I passed by the last house. I drew near to the church. How fearful! I stopped. It was only a momentary weakness: a life was concerned; it was no place for idle fears. I crept on, shivering with the cold, and the night, and the loneliness, and the awful thought that the Deity was punishing me for having gone, in imagination, down to the cradle of His dead, by sending me out this night among graves. I heard the church-windows rattling coarse, woody tunes; but I tried not to hear, and went past. A low paling ran along the interval between the church and the parsonage-garden. I had crossed the street when I came up to the church; now I moved along opposite this fearful spot. The paling was white. I listened. No sound. A shadow from a tall pine-tree fell across a part of the paling. Therein I thought I saw what might be Mr. Axtell, leaning on the fence. I went a little of the distance across the street. Whatever it was, it stirred. I ran back, and started on, thinking to gain the parsonage. The figure–it was Mr. Axtell–came after me. As soon as I knew, for he called, “Lettie,” I stopped and turned toward him.
“It isn’t your sister,” I said.
“You, Miss Percival? Why are you out?” and he seemed anxious. He said, “You are suffering too much from the ‘strange people.'”
How could he mention my hasty words at such a time? and I remembered the unforgiving face that I had touched a fathom deep under the hard ground.
“I’m glad I’ve found you,” I said. “Have you the church-key?”
He told me that he had. I said,–
“Come and open it.”
“What for?” and he still peered over among the tombstones, as if expecting to find Miss Lettie there.
“It is not there that she would go, I think; come quickly with me,” I said.
We walked to the church-entrance, hastily. He searched for the key. He hadn’t it. I put my hand out, and touched it in the door.
“See here! I’m right!” and as I spoke, I drew a match across the stone step. The wind put out the flame. I guarded the second one with my shawl, and lighted the lamp.
“Open quickly, before I lose it,” I said.
He did, and we went in,–in through the vestibule, where I first had seen this man, tolling the bell for his mother’s death,–up the aisle, where I had gone the day I saw the thirsty, hungry, little mouse. I felt afraid, even with this strong man, for I did not know where I was going. We drew near the pulpit,–the pulpit in which Aaron preached.
“She is not here,” Mr. Axtell said; and he looked about the empty pews, feebly lighted from my small flame.
He started forward as he spoke.
“Don’t leave me,” I said; and I put my hand within his arm.
What we saw was a change in the pulpit, an opening, as if some one had destroyed the panelled front of it.
“Come,” I said; and I drew near, and put the lamp through the opening, showing a few stone steps; perhaps there were a dozen of them; at least, they went down into undefined darkness.
“What is this, Miss Percival?”
“I don’t know,–I have never seen it before; but I think it leads to the tower. You will find her there. Come!” and I went down the first step, with a feeling far stronger than the prisoner’s doomed to step off into interminable depths, in that Old-World castle famous for wrongs to mankind,–for I knew my danger: he does not, as he comes to the last step, from off which he goes down to a deep, watery death.
Mr. Axtell was aroused. He took the lamp from my unsteady hand, and, bidding me come back, went down before me. At the foot we found ourselves in a stone passage-way. It seemed below the reach of rains, and not very damp. Once I hit my foot against a stone, and fell. As Mr. Axtell turned back to see if I was hurt, he let the light fall distinctly on the ground. I saw a letter. He went on. I groped for it, one moment, then found it, and put it, with the torn piece of envelope to which it might belong, within my pocket. We came, at last,–a long distance it seemed for only a hundred feet,–to steps again. There were only three of them. Mr. Axtell held the lamp up; there was an opening. I shaded the light immediately, and whispered,–
“She’s up there, I’m sure. Don’t alarm her.”
“How can I help it?” he asked.
I had as little of wisdom on the point as he; but I heard a noise. I saw a glimmer of light, as I looked up; then it was gone. I put my head through the opening, then reached down for the lamp. I held it up, and called,–
“Miss Axtell!”
No answer.
“We shall have to go up,” her brother said.
I entered the tower, the place I had so loved before,–and now seemed destined to atone for my love by suffering.
“Don’t let the light go out, Mr. Axtell,” were all the words spoken; and we went up the long, winding stairway.
At the top stood Miss Axtell, fixed and statue-like, with fever-excited eyes. She looked not at us, but far away, through the rough wood inside, through the stone of the tower: her gaze seemed limitless.
“Come, Lettie! come, sister! come home with me,” her brother said.
She heeded not; the only seeming effect was a convulsion of the muscles used in holding the lamp. I ventured to take it from her.
“Where did you find it?” she asked, in determined tones; “will you tell me now?”
“Whom is she speaking to?” asked Mr. Axtell.
I answered,–
“Yes, Miss Axtell, it was in here.”
“Where is the rest?” and her beautiful eyes were coruscant.
I handed to her the last of the trophies of my first visit. She seized it eagerly.
“Don’t do that,” said Mr. Axtell, as she lighted it from the lamp he held. But she was not to be stayed; she held it aloft until the fire came down and touched her fingers; then she dropped it, burning still, down to the stone floor, far below.
She seemed helpless then; she looked as she did when a few hours before she had said, “I want some one to help me.”
“Oh!–I’ve–lost–something!” and she tolled the words out, as slowly as the notes of the passing bell.
“What is it, Lettie? Come home; the day is breaking”; and Mr. Axtell put his arm about her.
I thought of the letter that I had picked up in the passage-way.
“What have you lost, Miss Axtell? Is it anything that I could find for you?” and I laid my hand upon hers, as the only method of drawing away her eyes from their terrible immutation of expression.
“You? No, I should think not; how could you? you only found a piece of it.”
“What is this?” I asked; and I held up the letter: the superscription was visible only to herself.
What a change came over her! Soft, dewy tears melted in those burning eyes, and sent a mist of sweet effluence over her face. Mr. Axtell was still supporting her; she did not touch the letter I held; she reached out both of her hands, bent a little toward me,–for she was much taller than I am,–took my cold, shivering face in those two burning hands, and touched my forehead with her lips.
“God has made you well,” she said; “thank Him.”
She did not ask for the letter. I put it whence I had taken it. She evidently trusted me with it.
“Abraham, I’m sick,” she said; and she laid her head upon his shoulder, passively as an infant might have done.
Her strength was gone; she could no longer support herself, and the day was breaking. Mr. Axtell, strong, vigorous, full-souled man as I knew him to be, looked at me, and his look said, “What am I to do with her?”
I answered it by throwing off the shawl and putting it upon the floor where we were standing, and saying,–
“Let her rest here, until I come.”
I took the still burning lamp and went down,–down through the entrance into the deep, walled passage-way, on, step after step, through this black tunnel, built, when, I knew not, or by whom; but I was brave now. _I had won the trust of a soul_: it was light unto my feet. I reached the twelve stone steps leading into the church. I ran lightly up them, and, stooping, crept into this still house of God. Silence held the place. The next reign would be that of worship. Is it thus in the church-yard, after the silence of Death,–the long waiting, listening for the slowly gathering voice of praise, that, one fair day in time, time, shall transfuse the reverent souls, until the voice of the dew God sends down shall be heard dropping on the grassy sod, and welcomed as the prelude to the archangel’s grand semibreve that will usher in the sublime Psalm of Everlasting Life?
Wait on, souls! it is good to wait the voice of the Lord God Almighty, who holdeth the earth in the hollow of His hand,–His hand, that we may feel for, when the way is dark, whose living fibres thrill both heart and soul. Yes, God’s hand is never away from earth. I reached out anew for it in that dismal pathway through which I had come, and it guided me into this quiet, peaceful place, full of morning rays.
I did not stop to think all this; I felt it; for feeling is swifter than thought. Thought is the tree; feeling, the blossom thereof. I closed the panelling behind me, leaving the church as it had been on the day when, I saw the little hungry mouse treading sacred places. I went down the aisle; and as I passed by the hempen rope in the vestibule that so often had set the bell a-ringing, a longing came to do it now, to tell the village-people, by voice of sacred bell, that there was a new-born worship come down from Heaven. But I did not. I hurried on, and went out, locking the door after me. The March morning was cold. I missed the shawl I had left. My hair was as much astir as Aaron’s had been one morning, not long before, and I truly believe there was as much of theology in it. No one was abroad. People sleep late on Sunday mornings. The east was blossoming into a magnificent sunflower.
Looking at myself, as I began my walk, I laughed aloud. I was still carrying a lighted lamp,–for the wind, like the village-people, slept at sunrise. I comforted myself by thinking of a predecessor somewhat famous for a like deed, and bent upon a like errand. The man that I searched for I should surely find, and honest, too; for it was Aaron.
The parsonage was cruelly inhospitable. No door was left unfastened. I knocked at a window opening on the veranda. I gave the signal-knock that Sophie and I had listened and opened to, unhesitatingly, for many years. It needed nothing more. Instantly I heard Sophie say,–“That’s Anna’s knock”; and immediately thereafter the curtain was put aside, and Sophie’s precious face and azure eyes peeped out. She looked in amazement to see me thus, and in one moment more had let me in.
“Wake Aaron,” I said, without giving her time to question me.
“He is awake. What has happened? Is Miss Axtell dying?” she questioned.
“No,” I said; “but I want to speak to Aaron, directly. I’m going to my room one moment.”
I went up. The tower-key was hanging where I had left it. I took it down, and made myself respectable by covering up my breezy hair with a hood, with the further precaution of a cloak. I had not long to wait for Aaron’s coming; but it was long enough to remind me to carry some restorative with me. Aaron came.
“Miss Axtell is very ill,” I said; “she is quite wild, and left the house in the night. She’s up in the church-yard tower. Will you help her brother take her home, as soon as you possibly can?”
“How strange!” were his only words; and as I went the garden way, Aaron started to arouse his horse from morning sleep.
“No one need to know the church entrance,” I thought; and as I went in, I tried to close down the heavy stone, which fitted in so well, that it seemed, like all the others, built to stay.
I could not stir it. Perhaps Aaron would not look, when he came in; but doubting his special blindness, I asked Mr. Axtell to put it back. He seemed to comprehend my meaning. I took his place beside Miss Axtell. She was no longer wilful or determined. Her strength was gone. Her head drooped upon my shoulder, and when I held a spoon, filled with the restorative that I had brought, to her lips, they opened, and she took that which I gave, mechanically. Her eyelids were down. I looked at the fair, beautiful face that lay so near to my eyes. It was full of the softest pencillings; little golden sinuosities of light were woven all over it; and the blue lines along which emotion flies were wonderfully arrowy and sky-like in their wanderings, for they left no trace to tell whence they came or whither led. I heard the heavy, ponderous weight let fall. It was the same sound as that which I heard on that memorable night. Miss Axtell shivered a little; or was it but the effect of the concussion?
The brother came up; he looked down, kindly at me, lovingly at his sister.
“Shall I relieve you?” he asked.
I folded my arm only a little more tightly for answer, and said,–
“Mr. Wilton will be here soon; he is getting the carriage, to take your sister home.”
“I will go and help him, if you don’t mind being left”; and he looked inquiringly.
“There’s no danger. I shall not fall asleep,” I said.
“She’s harmless now, poor child! If we can only get her back safely!” And with these words he left me again.
Sophie came up soon, quite fearless now. She brought a variety of comforting things, among them a pillow. Miss Axtell was too much exhausted to open her eyes, or speak. I thought two or three times that she had ceased to breathe. What if she should die here? They came. She was lifted up, and borne down to the carriage, that waited outside the graveyard. Helpless ones are carried in often: never before (it might be) had one been taken thence. And still the village-people seemed to be buried in rest.
Sophie and I walked on, whilst slowly the carriage proceeded to the gable-roofed, high-chimneyed house, that arose, well defined and clear, in the early sunlight. Smoke was rising from the kitchen-fire. Sophie and I went in, just as the carriage stopped. She waited to receive the invalid, whilst I went up to see if the absence had been discovered. It was but little more than an hour since Mr. Axtell and I had gone out. Evidently there had been no visitors. The wood that had been put on the fire before I left had gone down into glowing coals that looked warm and inviting. I kneeled and stirred them to a brighter glow, and put on more wood, my fingers very stiff the while. I drew back the curtains from the bed, smoothed the pillows, and the disorder occasioned by our hasty exodus, and went down. Aaron and Mr. Axtell had carried the poor invalid to the library, and laid her upon the sofa there, but it was very cold. The fire was not yet built.
There was a sound of some one coming from the kitchen-way. Mr. Axtell looked at me. “You know how to keep a secret,” he said, and motioned me in the direction whence came the sound, I hurried out, closing the door, and met Katie running up to know “what had happened?”
I sent her back on some slight pretext, and followed whither she went. I heard the cook mumblingly scolding about “noises in the night, dogs barking and doors shutting, she knew; such a house as it was, with people dying, getting sick, and putting every sort of a bothersome dream into a quiet body’s head, that wanted to rest, just as she worked, like a Christian.” And all the while she went on making preparations for a future breakfast.
“What was ‘t now that ye heard? Kate, you’re easy enough at hearing o’ noises in the broad daylight: I wish ‘t ye would be as harksome at night.”
“Hush, Cooky!” said Katie; “Miss Percival is here.”
I went up to Cooky and soothed her, told her that I had heard the dog barking too, and that I thought that I _did_ hear something like the shutting of a door in the night. Cooky rewarded my efforts at sympathy by expressing gladness “that there was one sensible person in the house that had ears fit for Christian purposes.”
“Don’t mind her, Miss Percival,” Katie said; “she’s cross because I wakened her too early; she’ll get over it when she has had her breakfast”
I gave Katie something to do, telling her to make coffee for Miss Axtell as soon as possible; and with a few more words, meant to be conciliating to Cooky, I took up the glass Katie brought me, and went back.
They had carried Miss Axtell up-stairs. Sophie was taking her wrappings off. How carefully she had guarded herself, even in her illness, for the walk! and now, all the nerve of fever gone, she lay as white and strengthless as she had done in the tower. I went for Doctor Eaton, on my own responsibility.
“He would come in a few minutes,” was the message to me.
Sophie said “that she would stay, for I must go home.”
As she said so, a little wavering cloud of doubt went across her forehead, eclipsing, for a moment, its light; then all was bright again.
“What is it?” I asked. “Something for Aaron, I know.”
Sophie looked the least bit like a rather old child asking for sugar-candy; but she said,–
“Just you tie his cravat for him, there’s a good sister; don’t forget; that’s all. After that you may go to sleep, and sleep all day. You look as if you needed it.”
She came to say one more forgotten thing,–
“Just see that Aaron gets a white handkerchief: he’s fond of gay colors, you know. Two Sundays ago, when I wasn’t looking, he carried off to church one of Chloe’s turbans, and deliberately shook out the three-cornered article, and never knew the difference till his face told