The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, No. 58, August, 1862. Various
see me?" he asked. "Is there anything for the sexton to do?"
I arose, and turned my face toward him.
"I am waiting to see if I can do anything for you. I am your minister's wife's sister."
What could have made him shake so? And such a queer, incongruous answer he gave!
"Isn't it enough to have a voice, without a face's coming to torment me too?"
It was not the voice that spoke in the tower yesterday. It was of the kind that has a lining of sentiment that it never was meant by the Good Spirit should be turned out for the world to breathe against, making life with mortals a mental pleurisy.
"I hope I don't torment you."
"You do."
"When did your mother die?"
"There! I knew! Will you take away your sympathy? I haven't anything to do with it."
"You'll tell me, please, if I can do anything for you, or up at your house. Do you live near here?"
"It's a long way. You can't go."
"Oh, yes, I can. I like walking."
He locked the door, and dropped the key when he was done. I picked it up, before he could get it.
A melodious "Thank you," coming as from another being, rewarded me.
"Let me stop and tell my sister, and I'll go with you," I said, believing that he had consented.
The old voice again was used as he said,–
"No, you had better not"; and he quickly walked on his way.
Completely baffled in my expectation of touching this strange being by proffers of kindness, I turned toward the parsonage. Aaron was already gone on his ministerial mission.
"What strange people one does find in this world!" said Sophie, as I gave her the history of my defeat. "Now this Axtell family are past my comprehension."
"Ah! a family. I didn't think him a married man."
"Neither is he."
"Then what is the family?"
"The mother, a sister, and himself."
"Do you know the sister?"
"Just a little. She is the finest person in mind we have here, but wills to live alone, except she can do deeds of charity. I met her once in a poor farmer's house. The man had lost his wife. Such a soft, sweet glamour of comfort as she was winding in and out over his sorrow, until she actually had the poor fellow looking up with an expression that said he was grateful for the good gift Heaven had gained! She stopped as soon as I went in. I wish she would come out in Redleaf."
"And the mother?"
"A proud old lady, sick these many years, and, ever since we've been here, confined to her room. I've only seen her twice."
"And now she's dead?"
Sophie was silent.
"Who'll dig her grave?"
One of my bits of mental foam that strike the shore of sound.
"Anna, how queer you are growing! What made you think of such a thing?"
"I don't think my thoughts, Sophie."
But I did watch the church-yard that day. No one came near it, and my knitting-work grew, and my mystery in the tower was as dark as ever, when at set of sun Aaron came home.
"There is a sorry time up there," he said. "The old lady died in the night, and Miss Lettie is quite beside herself. Doctor Eaton was there when I came away, and says she will have brain-fever."
"Oh, I hope not!" said Sophie.
"Who is there?" I asked.
"No one but Abraham. I offered to let Sophie come, but he said no."
"That will never do, Aaron: one dead, and one sick in the house, and only one other."
"Of course it will not, Sophie,–I will go and stay to-night," said I.
"You, Anna? What do you know of taking care of sick people?"
"I? Why, here, let me take this,"–and I picked up Miss Nightingale's new thoughts thereon. "Thus armed and fortified, do you think they'll ask other reference of their nurse?"
"It's better for her than going up to stay in the tower; and they are in need, though they won't say it. Let it be, Sophie."
And so my second night in March came on. A neighbor's boy walked the way with me, and left me at the door.
"I guess you'll repent your job," he said, as I bade him good-night.
"Mr. Axtell will not send me back alone," I thought; and I waited just a little, that my escort might get beyond call before I knocked.
It was a solemn, great house under whose entrance-porch I stood. Generation after generation might have come, stayed, and gone, like the last soul: here last night,–to-night, oh! where?
I looked up at the sombre roof, dropping a little way earthward from the sides. Mosses hung from the eaves. Not one sound of life came to me as I stood until the neighbor's boy was out of sight. I knocked then, a timid, tremulous knock,–for last night's fear was creeping over me. The noise startled a dog; he came bounding around the corner with a sharp, quick bark.
I am afraid of dogs, as well as of several other things. Before he reached me the door opened.
A little maid stood within it. Fear of the dog, scarce a yard away, impelled me in.
"Away, Kino! Away, I say! Leave the lady alone!"
Kino went back to his own abode, and I was closed into the hall of this large, melancholy house. The little maid waited for some words from me. Before I found any to bestow, the second door along the hall opened, and the voice that had been so uncivil to me in the morning said,–
"What aroused Kino, Kate?"
"This lady, Sir."
The little Kate held a candle in her hand, but Mr. Axtell had not seen me. Strange that I should take a wicked pleasure in making this man ache!–but I know that I did, and that I would have owned it then, as now, if I had been accused of it.
"What does the lady want?"
"It is I, who have come to stay with your sister. Mr. Wilton says she's sick."
"She's sick, that's true; but I can take care of her."
"And you won't let me stay?"
"Won't let you? Pray tell me if young ladies like you like taking care of sick people."
"Young ladies just like me do, if brothers don't send them away."
Did he say, "Brothers ar'n't Gibraltars"? I thought so; but immediately thereafter, in that other voice, out of that other self that revolved only in a long, long period, came,–
"Will you come in?"
He had not moved one inch from the door of the room out of which he had come; but I had walked a little nearer, that my voice might not disturb the sick. The one lying dead, never more to be disturbed, where was she? Kate, the little maid, said,–
"It is in there he wants you to go."
Abraham Axtell stood aside to let me enter. There was no woman there, no one to say to me, in sweet country wise,–"I'm glad you're come,–it's very kind of you; let me take your things."
I did not wait, but threw aside my hood, the very one Sophie had lent me to go into the tower, and, taking off my shawl and furs, I laid them as quietly away in the depths of a huge sofa's corner as though they had hidden there a hundred times before.
"I think I scarcely needed this," I said, putting upon the centre-table, under the light of the lamp, Miss Nightingale's good book,–and I looked around at a library, tempting to me even, as it spread over two sides of the room.
He turned at my speaking; for the ungrateful man had, I do believe, forgotten that I was there.
He took up the book, looked