The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, No. 58, August, 1862. Various
locked all the winter, and the key never away from me!"
Ah! what is that? A paper, on the floor. I got down from the high window-ledge, where I had climbed to get the piece of cloth, and picked up an envelope, or as much of one as the mysterious visitor had left. The name, once upon it, was so severed that I could not link the fragments.
I heard a voice away down the winding stair. It was Sophie, calling, because I stayed so long. I hid the trophies of my victory, for I considered my coming to be a style of conquering, and relieved her waiting by my presence.
"Perhaps you were afraid to come up?" I asked, as I joined her.
"I was, and I was not," she said; "but please hurry, Anna, and lock the door, for we shall be late at 'Society.'"
"No one knows that I am here as yet," I pleaded, "and I feel a little weary with having been last night on the steamboat. Suppose you let me stay quietly at home. I don't feel like talking, and you know I'm not of much assistance in deeds of finger-charity."
"And will you not get lonely?"
"Not a bit of it,–or if I do, there's Aaron up-stairs; he doesn't mind my pulling his sermons in pieces, for want of better amusement."
Thus good sister Sophie let me escape scrutiny and observation on the first day of March, 1860. How recent it is, scarcely a week old, the time!
Sophie went her way to Deacon Downs's farm-house up the hill, to tire her fingers out with stitches put in, to hear the village grievances told over, and to speak her words of womanly kindness. I walked a little of the way with her; then, in turning back, I remembered that Aaron would think me gone with Sophie; so I had the time, four full hours, to dream my dreams and weave my fancies in.
I took out my envelope, and tried to find a name to fit it among the good people whose names were known to me. The wind was blowing in my face. A person came up and passed me by, as I, with head bent over the paper, walked slowly. I only noticed that he turned to see what I was doing. At the paper bit he cast only the slightest glance.
The church-door was open. This was the day for sweeping out the Sunday dust. "Is there any record here, any old, forgotten list of deeds done by the early church?" I questioning thought. "There's a new sexton, I heard Aaron say,–a man who used, years ago, to fulfil the duties; perhaps he'll know something of the tower. I'll ask him this very afternoon."
In the vestibule lay the brooms and brushes used in renovating the place, the windows were open, but no soul was inside. I walked up the central aisle, and read the mortuary tablets on either pulpit-side. We sometimes like to read that which we best know, and the words on these were written in the air wherever I went, still I chose the marble-reading that day.
A little church-mouse ran along the rail, and stopped a moment at the baptismal basin, but, finding no water left by careless sexton there, it continued its journey up the pulpit-stairs, and I saw the hungry little thing go gnawing at the corner of the Book wherein is the Bread of Life. I threw a pine-tree cone that I had gathered in my walk up at the little Vandal, and went out.
"I'll wait for the sexton in my tower," thought I; "he'll not be long away, and I can see him as he comes."
I looked cautiously up at the study-windows ere I went into the tower. I took out the key, for it fastened only on the outside, and closed myself tightly in. A moment of utter darkness, then the thread of light was let down to me from above. I caught at it, and, groping up the stairs, gained my high window-seat. Without the tower, I saw the deep-sea line, crested with short white waves, the far-away mountain, and all the valley that lay between, while just below me, surging close to the tower's base, were the graves of those who had gone down into the deeper, farther-away Sea of Death, the terrible sea! What must its storms be to evolve such marble foam as that which the shore of our earth receives?
"O Death, Death! what art thou?" my spirit cried out in words, and only the dream of Life answered me. In the midst of it, I saw the person who had passed me as I examined the envelope coming up the street churchward. Not a sound of life or of motion came from the building, and I must have heard the slightest movement, for my window was only of iron bars. Losing sight of this face new to me, I lost the memory of it in my dream. Still, this figure coming up the silent village-street on that afternoon I found had unwoven the heavier part of my vision; and to restore it, I took from my pocket, for the second time, my two treasures.
Oh, how I did glory in those two wisps of material! The fragment of envelope had come from a foreign land. What contained it once? joy or sorrow? Was the recipient worthy, or the gift true? And I went on with the imaginary story woven out of the shreds of fabric before me until it filled all my vision, when suddenly fancy was hushed to repose,–for, as sure as I sat there, living souls had come into the tower below.
How?
All was darkness down there; not one ray of light since I shut the door. Why did I do it?
It was the fear that Aaron in his study would see me.
Voices, confused and indistinct, I heard, sending bubbling words up through the sea of darkness down below. At first I did not try to hear; I listened only to the great throbbings of my own heart, until there came the sound of a woman's voice. It was eager, anxious, and pained. It asked,–
"Did he see you?"
A man's voice, deep and earnest, answered,–
"No, no; hush, child!"
"This is dreadful!"
"But I know I was not seen. And here you are sure no one ever comes?" –and I heard a hand going over the great door down there, to find the latch.
"Yes, no one ever comes but the minister's wife's sister. She takes a fancy to the dreariness, and always carries the key with her. She's away, and no one can get in."
"Shall we go up higher, nearer to the window?"
"No. I must wait but a moment; I have something yet to do."
I heard the deep voice say,–
"Oh, woman's moments, how much there is in one of them! Will you sit on this step? But you won't heed what I have to say, I know."
"I always heed you, Herbert. What have you to say? Speak quickly."
"Sit here, upon this step."
A moment's rustling pause in the darkness down below, and then the far-out-at-sea voice spoke again.
"Do you send me away?"
"Indeed you must go; it is terrible to have you here. Think, what if you had been seen!"
"I know, I know; but you won't go with me?"
"Why are you cruel, uselessly?" said the pleading voice of woman.
"Cruel? Who? I cruel?"
"What is it that keeps me? Answer me that!"
"Your will is all."
Silence one moment,–two,–and an answer came.
"Herbert! Herbert! is it you speaking to me? My will keeping me? Who hath sinned?"
The sound of a soul in torture came eddying up in confused words; all that came to the mortal ear, listening unseen, were, "Forgive–I–I only"–
A few murmurous sounds, and then the voice that had uttered its confession in that deep confessional of a gloomy soul said, and there was almost woman's pleadingness in it,–
"When can I come again?"
"I will write to you."
"When will you write?"
"When one more soul is gone."
"Oh, it's wicked to shorten life by wishes even! but when one has done one terrible wrong, little wickednesses gather fast."
Woman has a pathos, when she pleads for God, deeper than when she pleads for anything on earth. That pleading,–I can't make you hear it,–the words were,–
"Herbert! Herbert! don't you see, won't you see, that, if you leave the one great sin all uncovered, open to the continual attrition of a life of goodness, God will let it wear away?