The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862
V >>
Various >> The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862
Pages:
1 |
2 | 3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 |
17 |
18
"Why do you look at me so?" she asked. "Answer me! Have I the voice of
a man? Listen now! Hear Aaron up-stairs: he's preaching to himself, to
convince himself that some thorn in theology grows naturally: could I
do that?"
"Your voice, I fancy, can do wonders: but about the theology, I don't
believe you like thorns in it; I think you would break one off at
once, and cast it out";--and I looked again at the rough tower, and
ran my fingers over the strong protective key in my hands.
"Don't look that way, Anna,--please don't!--for your footsteps have an
ugly way of following some will-o'-the-wisp that goes out of your
eyes. I know it,--I've seen it all your life," Sophie urged, as I
shook my head in negation.
"Will you lend me this hood?" I asked, as I took up one lying near.
"If you are determined to go; but do wait. Aaron shall go with you
after dinner; he will have settled the thorn by that time."
"What for should I take Aaron up the winding stairs? There is no
parishioner in want or dying up there."
And I tied the hood about my head, and in a wrapping-shawl, closely
drawn,--for cold and cannon-like came the bursts of wind down through
the mountain valleys,--I went out. Through the path, hedged with
leafless lilac-shrubs, just athrob with the mist of life sent up from
the roots below, I went, and crossed the church-yard fence. Winding in
and out among the graves,--for upon a heart, living and joyous, or
still and dead, I cannot step,--I took my way. "Dear old tower, I have
thee at last!" I said; for I talk to unanswering things all over the
world. In crowded streets I speak, and murmur softly to highest
heights.
But I quite forgot to tell what my tower was built like, and of what
it was made. A few miles away, a mountain, neither very large nor very
high, has met with some sad disaster that cleaved its stony shell, and
so, time out of memory, the years have stolen into its being, and
winter frosts have sadly cut it up, and all along its rocky ridges,
and thickly at its base, lie beds of shaly fragments, as various in
form and size as the autumn-leaves that November brings.
I've traced these bits of broken stone all the way from yonder
mountain hither; and that once my tower stood firm and fast in the
hill's heart, I know.
There are sides and curves, concaves and convexities, and angles of
every degree, in the stones that make up my tower. The vexing question
is, What conglomerated the mass?
No known form of cement is here, and so the simple village-people say,
"It was not built by the present race of men."
On the northern side of the tower leaves of ungathered snow still lay.
In the key-hole all winter must have been dead, crispy, last-year
leaves, mingled with needles of the pine-tree that stands in the
church-yard corner; for I drew out fragment after fragment, before I
could find room for my key. At last the opening was free, and my
precious bit of old iron had given intimation of doing duty and
letting me in, when a touch upon my shoulder startled me.
'T was true the wind was as rude as possible, but I knew it never
could grasp me in that way. It was Aaron.
"What is the matter?" I asked; for he had come without his hat.
My brother-in-law, rejoicing in the authoritative name of Aaron,
looked decidedly foolish, as I turned my clear brown eyes upon him,
standing flushed and anxious, with only March wind enveloping his hair
all astir with breezes of Theology and Nature.
"Sophie sent me," he said, with all the meekness belonging to a former
family that had an Aaron in it.
"What does Sophie wish?" I asked.
"She says it's dinner-time."
"And did she send you out in such a hurry to tell me that?"
"No, Anna,"--and the importance of his mission grew upon him, for he
spoke quite firmly,--"Sophie is troubled and anxious about your visit
to this tower; please turn the key and come away."
"I will, if you give me good reason," I said.
"Why do you wish to go up, just now?"
"Simply because I like it."
"To gratify a passing fancy?"
"Nothing more, I do assure you; but why shouldn't I?"--and I grasped
the key with a small attempt at firmness of purpose.
"Because Sophie dislikes it. She called to me to come and keep you
from going in; there was distress in her manner. Won't you come away,
for now?"
He had given me a reason. I rejoice in being reasonable. I lent him a
bit of knitting-work that I happened to have brought with me, with
which he kept down his locks, else astray, and walked back with him.
"You are not offended?" he asked, as we drew near to the door.
"Oh, no!"
Sophie hid something that had been very close to her eyes, as we went
in.
My brother-in-law gave me back my strip of knitting-work, and went
upstairs.
"You think I'm selfish, Anna," spoke Sophie, when he was gone.
"I don't."
"You can't help it, I think."
"But I can. I recognize a law of equilibrium that forbids me to think
so."
"How? What is the law like?"
"Did you ever go upon the top of a great height, whether of building
or earth?"
"Oh, yes,--and I'm not afraid at all. I can go out to the farthest
edge, where other heads would feel the motion of the earth, perhaps,
and I stand firm as though the north-pole were my support."
"That is just it," replied I. "Now it puts all my fear in action, and
imagination works indescribable horrors in my mind, to stand even upon
a moderate elevation, or to see a little child take the first steps at
the head of a staircase; and I think it would be the height of cruelty
for you to go and stand where it gave me such pain."
"I wouldn't do it knowingly,"--and the blue in Sophie's eyes was misty
as she spoke.
"How did you feel about my going into the tower a few moments ago?"
"As you would, if you saw me on a jutting rock over the age-chiselled
chasm at Niagara."
"Thus I felt that it would be wrong to go in, though I had no
fear. But you will go with me, perhaps, this afternoon; I can't quite
give up my devotion."
"If Aaron can't, I will," she said; but a bit of pallor whitened her
face as she promised.
I thoroughly hate ghosts. There is an antagonism between mystery and
me. My organs of hearing have been defended by the willingest of
fingers, from my childhood, against the slightest approach of the
appearance or the actions of one, as pictured in description. I think
I'm afraid. But in the mid-day flood of sunlight, and the great sweep
of air that enveloped my tower, standing very near to the church,
where good words only were spoken, and where prayers were prayed by
true-hearted people, _why_ should my cool-browed sister Sophie
deter me from a pleasure simple and true, one that I had grown to
like, weaving fancies where I best pleased? I asked myself this
question, with a current of impatience flowing beneath it, as I waited
for Sophie to finish the "sewing-society work," which must go to
Deacon Downs's before two of the clock.
I know she did not hasten. I know she wished for an interruption; but
none came. The work-basket was duly sent off, whither Sophie soon must
follow; for her hands, and her good, true heart, were both in the work
she had taken up to do. Sophie won't lay it down discouraged; she
sees plains of verdure away on,--a sort of _mirage_ of the
mind. I cannot. It is not given unto me.
I had prepared the way to open the door of the tower when Aaron
interrupted me in the morning. I didn't keep Sophie standing long in
the wind, but she was trembling when I said,--
"Help me a little; my door has grown heavy this winter."
It creaked on its hinges, rusted with the not-far-away sea-air; and a
good strong pull, from four not very strong hands, was necessary to
admittance. Darkness was inside, except the light that we let in. We
stood a little, to accustom our eyes to the glimmer of rays that came
down from the high-up window, and those that went up from the open
door. At length they met, and mingled in a half-way gloom. There were
broad winding stairs, with every inch of standing-room well used; for
wherever within a mortal might be, there was fixed a foundation.
"What's the use of going up, Anna? It's only a few minutes that we
can stay."
Sophie looked pale and weary.
"You shall not," I said; "stay here; let me reconnoitre: I'll come
down directly."
I left her standing outside,--or rather, I felt her going out, as I
ran lightly on, up the rude stairway. Past a few of the landings, (how
short the way seemed this day!) and I was beside the window. I looked
across into the belfry of the church, lying scarce a hundred feet
away. I thought it was bird-time; but no,--deserted were the beamy
rafters and the spaces between.
What is this upon the window-bar? A scrap, a shred of colored
fabric. "It has been of woman's wear," thought I, as I took the little
bit from off its fastening-hook; "but how came it here? It isn't
anything that I have worn, nor Sophie. A grave, brown, plaid morsel of
a woman's dress, up here in my tower, 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? It will
lessen and lessen, until at the last, when the Ocean of Eternity beats
against it, it shall go down, down into the deeps of love that no
mortal line can fathom. Oh, Herbert, come out with me!--come out into
this Infinity of Love!"
"With you? yes, anywhere!"
"Oh, oh! this is it!--_this is man!_ It isn't _my_ love that
you want; it isn't the little one-grained thing that the Angel of Life
takes from out of Heaven's granary and scatters into the human soul;
it is the great Everlasting, a sempiternity of love, that _you_
want, Herbert!"
"And you can't give it to me?"
"No, I will ask it for you; and you will ask it for yourself?"
"Only tell me how."
"You know how to ask for human love."
"Yours, yes; but then I haven't sinned against you."
"Have you not, Herbert?"
"Well,--but not in the same way. I haven't gone beyond the measure of
your affection, I feel that it is larger than my sin, or I could not
be here."
"Tell me how you know this. What is the feeling like?"
"What is it like? Why, when I come to you, I don't forever feel it
rising up with a thousand speary heads that shut you out; it drowns in
your presence; the surface is cool and clear, and I can look down,
down, into the very heart of my sin, like that strange lake we looked
into one day,--do you remember it?--the huge branches and leafless
trunks of gigantic pines coming up stirless and distinct almost to the
surface; and do you remember the little island there, and the old
tradition that it was the feasting-place of a tribe of red men, who
displeased the Great Spirit by their crimes, and in direful
punishment, one day, when they were assembled on their mountain, it
suddenly gave way beneath them, and all were drowned in the flood of
waters that rushed up, except one good old squaw who occupied one of
the peaks that is now the island?"
"And so I am the good old squaw?" said the lady.
"For all that I can see in the darkness."
"But that makes me better than the many who lie below;--the squaw was
good, you remember. But how did she get off of the island? Pity
tradition didn't tell us. Loon's Island, in Lake Mashapaug in
Killingly, wasn't it?"
A little silence came, broken by the words,--
"It's so long since I have been with you!"
"Yes, and it's time that I was gone."
"Not a few moments more?--not even to go back to the old subject?"
"No,--it's wrong,--it perils you. You put away your sin when you come
to the little drop of my love; go and hide it forever in the sea that
every hour washes at your feet."
"You'll write?"
"I will."
I heard a sound below, like the drawing of a match across a stone;
then a faint bit of glimmer flickered a moment. I couldn't see where
they were. I bent forward a little, in vain.
"My last match," said the lady. "What shall we do? We can't go
through in the darkness."
"We must. I will go first. Give me your hand. Now, three steps down,
then on; come,--fear nothing."
A heavy sound, as of some ponderous weight let fall, and I knew that
the only living soul in there was hers who sat with hands fast hold of
frosty bars, high up in the window of the tower.
I left fragments of the skin of my fingers upon the cold iron, in pay
for the woollen bit I had taken thence.
I ventured down a step or two. Beyond was inky darkness. If only a
speck of light were down below! Why did I shut the door? Go on I could
not. I turned my face upward, where the friendly light, packing up
its robes of every hue for the journey of a night, looked kindly
in. And so I went back, and sat in my usual seat, and watched the
going day, as, one by one, she took down from forest-pegs and
mountain-hooks breadths of silver, skirts of gold, folding silently
the sheeny vestments, pressing down each shining fold, gathering from
the bureau of the sea, with scarcely time enough for me to note, waves
of whitely flowing things, snowy caps, crimpled crests, and crispy
laces, made by hands that never tire, in the humid ocean-cellar. A
wardrobe fit for fair Pre-Evites to wear lay rolled away, and still I,
poor prisoner in my tower, watched in vain the dying day. It sent no
kind jailer to let me free. No footstep crossed the church-yard. The
sexton had put the windows down before my visitors went away. He must
have gone home an unusual way, for I waited in vain to hear him go.
I saw, when just enough of light was left to see, my sister Sophie
coming down the hill. Strange fancy,--she went as far from the tower
as if it were a ghostly quarantine. She did not hear me call in a very
human voice, but went right on; and I heard the parsonage door-latch
sharply close her in.
Would they look for me, now I was not there? I waited, and a strange,
unearthly tremor shook both blood and nerves, until tears were wrought
out, and came dropping down, and in the stillness I heard one fall
upon a stone below.
A forsaken, forgotten, uncared-for feeling crept up to me, half from
the words of woful meaning that I that afternoon had heard, and half
the prisoned state, with fear, weak and absurd, jailing me in.
The reverberations from my fallen tear scarce were dead in my ears
when I heard footsteps coming. I called,--
"Aaron!"
Aaron's own true voice answered me,--
"Where are you, Anna?"
"In the tower. Open the door, please."
"Give me the lantern," Sophie said, "whilst you open the door."
I, thoughtlessly taking the key, had left nothing by which to draw it
out. Aaron worked away at it, right vigorously, but it would not
yield.
"Can't you come down and push?" timidly asked Sophie, creeping round
the corner, in view of tombstones.
"It's very dark inside; I can't," I said; and so Aaron went on,
pulling and prying, but not one inch did the determined door yield.
Out of the darkness came an idea. I came in with the key,--why not
they? and, calling loudly, I bade them watch whilst I threw it from
the window. In the lantern's circle of light it went rushing down; and
I'm sorry to tell that in its fall it grazed an angel's wing of
marble, striking off one feather from its protecting mission above a
sleeping child.
The door was opened at last; at last a circle of light came into this
inverted well, and arose to me. Can you imagine, any one, I ask, who
is of mortal hue and mould,--can you imagine yourself deep down in a
well, such a one as those living on high lands draw their water from,
holding on with weary fingers to the slimy mosses, fearing each new
energy of grasping muscle is the last that Nature holds in its store
for you; and then, weary almost unto death, you look up and see two
human faces peering above the curbstone, see the rope curling down to
you, swinging right before your grasp, and a doubt comes,--have you
life enough to touch it?
So, could I get down to them, to the two friendly, anxious faces that
peered up at me? You who have no imaginary fears, who never press the
weight of all your will to weigh down eyelids that something tells
you, if uplifted, would let in on the sight a something nameless, come
from where you know not, made visible in midnight darkness, can never
know with what a throbbing of heart I went weakly down. If I did not
know that the great public opinion becomes adamant after a slight
stratum of weakness, I would say what befell me when Sophie's fingers,
tired with stitching, clasped mine.
Aaron and Sophie were not of the questioning order of humanity, and I
was left a few moments to my own way of expressing relief, and then
Aaron locked the tower as usual, and we went away. He, I noticed, put
the key in his pocket, instead of delivering it to me, self-constituted
its rightful owner.
"Will you give me my key?" I said, with a timid tenacity in the
direction of my right.
"Not enough of the dreary, ghoul-like place yet, Anna? And to give us
such an alarm upon your arrival-day!"
The key came to me, for Aaron would not keep it without good reason.
It was around the bright, cheerful tea-table that Sophie asked,--
"Why did you not come down, Anna? Did you choose staying up so late?"
"No, Sophie,"--and I looked with my clear brown eyes as fearlessly at
them both as when I had listened to reason in the morning,--"I shut
the door when I went up, and afterwards, when I would have come down,
I felt afraid invisible hands were weaving in the blackness to seize
me. I believe it would have killed me to come out, after I had been an
hour up there."
Pages:
1 |
2 | 3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 |
17 |
18