The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862

V >> Various >> The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862

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"And you don't mind confessing to such cowardice?" asked Sophie,
evidently slightly ashamed of me.

"I never did mind telling the truth, when it was needful to speak at
all. I don't cultivate this fear,--I urge reason to conquer it; but
when I have most rejoiced in going on, despite the ache of nerve and
brain, after it I feel as if I had lost a part of my life, my nature
doesn't unfold to sunny joys for a long time."

"'Tis a sorry victory, then!" said Aaron.

"You won't mind my telling you what it is like?"

"Certainly not."

"It's like that ugly point in theology that hurt you so, last autumn;
and when you had said a cruel _Credo_, you found sweet flowers
lost out of your religion. I know you missed them."

"Oh, Anna!"

"Don't interrupt me; let me finish. It's like making maple-sugar: one
eats the sugar, calling it monstrous sweet, and all through the
burning sun of summer sits under thin-leaved trees, to pay for the
condensation. The point is, it doesn't pay,--the truest bit of
sentiment the last winter has brought to me."

"Is this Anna?" asked the minister.

"Yes, Aaron, it is I, Anna."

"You're not what you were when last here."

"Quite a different person, Sir. But what is your new sexton's name?"

"That is more sensible. His name is Abraham Axtell."

"What sort of person is he?"

"The strangest man in all my parish. I cannot make him out. Have you
seen him?"

"No. Is there any harm in my making his acquaintance?"

"What an absurd question!" said Sophie.

"You are quite at liberty to get as many words out of him as he will
give, which I warn you will be very few," said the sexton's friendly
pastor.

"Is he in need of the small salary your church must give its sexton?"
I asked.

"The strangest part of the whole is that he won't take anything for
his services; and the motive that induces him to fight the spiders
away is past my comprehension. He avoids Sophie and me."

So much for my thread of discovery: a very small fibre, it is true,--a
church-sexton performing the office without any reward of gold,--but I
twisted it and twirled it round in all the ideal contortions plausible
in idealic regions, and fell asleep, with the tower-key under my
pillow, and the rising moon shining into my room.

I awoke with my secret safely mine,--quite an achievement for one in
no wise heroic; but I _do delight_ in sole possessions.

There is the sun, a great round bulb of liquid electricity, open to
all the eyes that look into the sky; but do you fancy any one owns
that sun but I? Not a bit of it! There is no record of deed that
matches mine, no words that can describe what conferences sun and I do
hold. The cloudy tent-door was closed, the sun was not "at home" to
me, as I went down to life on the second day of March, 1860.

Sophie seemed stupid and commonplace that morning. Aaron had a
headache, (that theologic thorn, I know,) and Sophie must go and sit
beside him, and hold the thread of his Sunday's discourse to paper,
whilst with wrapped brow and vision-seeing eyes he told her what his
people ought to do.

Good Sophie! I forgave her, when she put sermons away, and came down
to talk a little to me. It is easy to forgive people for goodness to
others, when they are good to one's self _just afterwards_.

"Do you know any Herbert in Redleaf?" I ventured to ask, with as
careless a tone as I knew.

"No, Anna;--let me think;--I thought I knew,--but no, it is not
here. Why?"

"It doesn't matter. I thought there might be a person with that
name.--Don't you get very tired of this hum-drum life?"

"But it isn't hum-drum in the least, except in bee-time, and on
General-Training days."

"Oh, Sophie! you know what I mean."

"Well, I confess to liking a higher development of intellectual nature
than I find in Redleaf, but I feel that I belong to it, I ought to be
here; and feeling atones for much lack of mind,--it gets up higher,
nearer into the soul. You know, Anna, we ought to love Redleaf. Look
across that maple-grove."

"What is there?"

"Chimneys."

"Well, what of them?"

"There was smoke in them once,--smoke rising from our father's fires,
you know, Anna."

"But so long ago, one scarcely feels it."

"Only sixteen years; we remember, you and I, the day the fires were
put out."

"Yes, I remember."

"Don't you think we ought to love the place where our lives began,
because our father lived here too?"

"It's a sorry sort of obligation, to ought to love anything."

"Even the graves, out there, in the church-yard?"

"Yes, even them. I would rather love them through knowing something
that some one tenant of them loved and suffered and achieved than to
love them merely because they hold the mortal temples that once were
columns in 'our family.' The world says we ought to love so much, and
our hearts tell us we ought to love foolishly sometimes, and I say one
oughtn't to love at all."

"Anna! Anna!"

"I haven't got any Aaron, Sophie, to teach me the 'ought-tos.'"

There was a morsel of pity outgleaming from Sophie's eyes, as she went
to obey a somewhat peremptory call. She needn't have bestowed it on
me; I learned not to need it, yesterday.

Satisfied that the tower wouldn't give me any more information, and
that the visit of "the two" was the last for some time to come, I
closed down my horizon of curiosity over the church-steeple, a little
round, shingly spire with a vane,--too vain to tell which way the wind
might chance to go.

Ere Sophie came back to me, there was a bell-stroke from the
belfry. She hurried down at the sound of it.

"Will you come with me, Anna? Aaron wants to know who is dead."

"Who rings the bell?"

"The sexton, of course."

We were within the vestibule before he had begun to toll the years.

A little timidly, Sophie spoke,--

"Mr. Wilton wishes to know who has died."

The uncivil fellow never turned an inch; he only started, when Sophie
began to speak. I couldn't see his face.

"Tell Mr. Wilton that my mother is dead, if he wishes to know."

Sophie pulled my sleeve, and whispered, "Come away!"--and the man,
standing there, began to toll the years of his mother's life.

"Don't go," I said, outside; "_don't_ leave him without saying,
'I am sorry': you didn't even ask a question."

"You wouldn't, if you knew the man."

"Which I mean to do. You go on. I'll wait upon the step till he is
done, and then I'll talk to him."

"I wouldn't, Anna. But I must hurry. Aaron will go up at once."

Dutiful little wife! She went to send her headaching husband half a
mile away, to offer consolation, unto whom?

I sat upon the step until he had done. The years were not many,--half
a score less than the appointed lot.

Would he come out? He did. I heard him coming; but I would not move.
I knew that I was in his way, and wanted him to have to speak to me. I
sat just where he must stand to lock the door.

"Are you waiting to 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 at its title, smiled a little--scornfully,
was it?--at me, and said of her who wrote the book,--

"She is sensible; she bears the result of her own theories before
imposing their practice upon others; but," and he went back to the
thorn-apple voice, "do you expect to take care of my sister by the aid
of this to-night?"

"It may give me assistance."

"It will not. What does Miss Nightingale know of Lettie?"

Well, what does she? I don't know, and so I had to answer,--

"Nothing."

"That doctor is here," said Kate, at the door.

"Are you coming up, too?" he asked, as he turned suddenly upon me,
half-way out of the room.

"Certainly!"--and I went out with him.

Up the wide staircase walked the little maid, lighting the way,
followed by the doctor, Mr. Axtell, and Anna Percival.

Kate opened the door of a room just over the library, where we had
been.

The doctor went in, quietly moving on toward the fireplace, in which
burned a cheery wood-fire. In front of it, in one of those large
comfort-giving, chintz-covered, cushioned chairs, sat Miss Axtell; but
the comfort of the chair was nothing to her, for she sat leaning
forward, with her chin resting upon the palm of her right hand, and
her eyes were gone away, were burning into the heart of the amber
flame that fled into darkness up the chimney. Hers was the style of
face which one might expect to find under Dead-Sea waves, if diver
_could_ go down,--a face anxious to escape from Sodom, and held
fast there, under heavy, heavy waters, yet still with its eyes turned
toward Zoar.

Now a feverous heat flushed her face, white a moment before, when we
came in; but she did not turn away her eyes,--they seemed fixed, out
of her control. The doctor laid his hand upon her forehead. It broke
the spell that bound her gaze. She spoke quite calmly. I almost smiled
to think any one could imagine danger of brain-fever from that calm
creature who said,--

"Please don't give me anything, Doctor Eaton; believe me, I shall do
better without."

"And then we shall have you sick on our hands, Abraham and I. What
should we do with you?"

"I'll try not to trouble you," she said,--"but I would rather you left
me to myself to-night"; but even as she spoke, a quick convulsion of
muscles about her face told of pain.

Doctor Eaton had not seen me, for I stood in the shadow of the bed
behind him.

"Who will stay with your sister tonight?" he asked Mr. Axtell.

Mr. Axtell looked around at me, as if expecting that I would answer;
and I presented myself for the office.

"You look scarcely fit," was the village-physician's somewhat
ungracious comment; and his eyes said, what his lips dared not,--"Who
are you?"

"I think you'll find me so, if you try me."

Miss Axtell had gone away again, and neither saw nor heeded me.

"Will you come below?"--and the doctor looked at me as he went out.

I followed him. In the library he shut the door, sat down near the
table, took from his pocket a small phial containing a light brown
powder, and, dividing a piece of paper into the minute scraps needful,
made a deposit in each from the phial, and then, folding over the bits
of paper, handed them to me.

"Are you accustomed to take care of sick persons?" he asked.

"Not much; but I am a physician's daughter. I have a little
experience."

"Are you a visitor here?"

"No,--at the parsonage."

A pair of quick gray eyes danced out at me from under browy cliffs
clothed with a ledge of lashes, in an actually startling manner. I
didn't think the man had so much of life in him.

"You're Mrs. Wilton's sister, perhaps."

"I am."

"Give her one of these every half-hour, till she falls asleep."

"Yes, Sir."

"Don't let her talk; but she won't, though. If she gets
incoherent,--says wild things,--talks of what you can't
understand,--send for me; I live next door."

"Is this all for her?"

"Enough. Do you know her?"

"I never saw her until to-night."

"The brother? Monstrous fellow."

"Until to-day."

"Look up there."

"Where?"

"On the wall."

"At what?"

There were several paintings hanging there.

"The face, of course."

"I can't see it very well."

Shadows were upon it, and the lampshade was on.

"Then I'll take this off"; and Doctor Eaton removed the shade, letting
the light up to the wall.

"A young girl's face," I said.

The doctor was looking at me, and not at the painting there. A little
bit of confusion came,--I don't know why.

"Do you like it?" I ventured.

"I like it? I'm not the one to like it."

"Somebody does, then?"

"Of course. What did he paint it for, if he didn't like it?"

"I do not know of whom you are talking, at all," I said, a little
vexed at this information-no-information style.

"You don't?" in a voice of the utmost astonishment.

"No. Is this all, for the sick lady? I think I ought to go to her."

"Of course you ought. It's a sad thing, this death in the house"; and
Doctor Eaton picked up his hat, and opened the door.

Kate was waiting in the hall.

"Mr. Abraham thinks you'd better look in and see if it's well to have
any watchers in there, before you go," she said.

"Well, light me in, then, Katie. You wait in there, if you please,
Miss," to me; and I saw the two go to the front-room on the right.

A waft of something, it may have been the air that came out of that
room, sent me back from the hall, and I shut the door behind me. It
was several minutes before they came back. In the interim I had taken
a long look at the face on the wall. It seemed too young to be very
beautiful, and I couldn't help wishing that the artist had waited a
year or two, until a little more of the outline of life had come to
it; yet it was a sweet, loving face, with a brow as low and cool as
Sophie's own, only it hadn't any shadow of an Aaron on it. I didn't
hear the door open, I hadn't heard the sound of living thing, when
some one said, close to me, as I was standing looking up at the face
I've spoken of,--

"What are you doing?"

It was Mr. Axtell, and the voice was a prickly one.

"Is there any harm?" I said. "I'm only looking here,"--pointing to
where my eyes had been before. "Who painted it?"

"An unknown, poor painter."

"Was he poor in spirit?"

"He is now, I trust."

A man that has variant voices is a cruel thing in this world, because
one cannot help their coming in at some one of the gates of the heart,
which cannot all be guarded at the same moment. "Poor in spirit?" "He
is now, I trust." I felt decidedly vexed at this man before me for
having such tones in his voice.

"Can I go up to Miss Axtell now?" I asked.

"In a moment, when Kate has shown Doctor Eaton out."

I picked up my powders and my illustrious book, and waited.

Kate came.

"The doctor says there's no need," she said, in her laconic way.

Kate, I afterwards learned, was the daughter of the farmer that Sophie
heard Miss Axtell consoling for the loss of his wife, one day.

MY DAPHNE.

My budding Daphne wanted scope
To bourgeon all her flowers of hope.

She felt a cramp around her root
That crippled every outmost shoot.

I set me to the kindly task;
I found a trim and tidy cask,

Shapely and painted; straightway seized
The timely waif; and, quick released

From earthen bound and sordid thrall,
My Daphne sat there, proud and tall.

Stately and tall, like any queen,
She spread her farthingale of green;

Nor stinted aught with larger fate,
For that she was innately great.

I learned, in accidental way,
A secret, on an after-day,--

A chance that marked the simple change
As something ominous and strange.

And so, therefrom, with anxious care,
Almost with underthought of prayer,

As, day by day, my listening soul
Waited to catch the coming roll

Of pealing victory, that should bear
My country's triumph on the air,--

I tended gently all the more
The plant whose life a portent bore.

The weary winter wore away,
And still we waited, day by day;

And still, in full and leafy pride,
My Daphne strengthened at my side,

Till her fair buds outburst their bars,
And whitened gloriously to stars!

Above each stalwart, loyal stem
Rested their heavenly diadem,

And flooded forth their incense rare,
A breathing Joy, upon the air!

Well might my backward thought recall
The cramp, the hindrance, and the thrall,

The strange release to larger space,
The issue into growth and grace,

And joyous hail the homely sign
That so had spelled a hope divine!

For all this life, and light, and bloom,
This breath of Peace that blessed the room,

Was born from out the banded rim,
Once crowded close, and black, and grim,

With grains that feed the Cannon's breath,
And boom his sentences of death!

CONCERNING DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE.

"On the whole, it was very disagreeable," wrote a certain great
traveller and hunter, summing up an account of his position, as he
composed himself to rest upon a certain evening after a hard day's
work. And no doubt it must have been very disagreeable. The night was
cold and dark; and the intrepid traveller had to lie down to sleep in
the open air, without even a tree to shelter him. A heavy shower of
hail was falling,--each hailstone about the size of an egg. The dark
air was occasionally illuminated by forked lightning, of the most
appalling aspect; and the thunder was deafening. By various sounds,
heard in the intervals of the peals, it seemed evident that the
vicinity was pervaded by wolves, tigers, elephants, wild-boars, and
serpents. A peculiar motion, perceptible under horse-cloth which was
wrapped up to serve as a pillow, appeared to indicate that a snake was
wriggling about underneath it. The hunter had some ground for thinking
that it was a very venomous one, as indeed in the morning it proved to
be; but he was too tired to look. And speaking of the general
condition of matters upon that evening, the hunter stated, with great
mildness of language, that "it was very disagreeable."

Most readers would be disposed to say that _disagreeable_ was
hardly the right word. No doubt, all things that are perilous,
horrible, awful, ghastly, deadly, and the like, are disagreeable
too. But when we use the word disagreeable by itself, our meaning is
understood to be, that in calling the thing disagreeable we have said
the worst of it. A long and tiresome sermon is disagreeable; but a
venomous snake under your pillow passes beyond being disagreeable. To
have a tooth stopped is disagreeable; to be broken on the wheel
(though nobody could like it) transcends _that_. If a thing be
horrible and awful, you would not say it was disagreeable. The
greater includes the less: as when a human being becomes entitled to
write D.D. after his name, he drops all mention of the M.A. borne in
preceding years.

Let this truth be remembered, by such as shall read the following
pages. We are to think about disagreeable people. Let it be
understood that (speaking generally) we are to think of people who are
no worse than disagreeable. It cannot be denied, even by the most
prejudiced, that murderers, pirates, slave-drivers, and burglars, are
disagreeable. The cut-throat, the poisoner, the sneaking black-guard
who shoots his landlord from behind a hedge, are no doubt disagreeable
people,--so very disagreeable that in this country the common consent
of mankind removes them from human society by the instrumentality of a
halter. But disagreeable is too mild a word. Such people are all that,
and a great deal more. And accordingly they stand beyond the range of
this dissertation. We are to treat of folk who are disagreeable, and
not worse than disagreeable. We may sometimes, indeed, overstep the
boundary-line. But it is to be remembered that there are people who
in the main are good people, who yet are extremely disagreeable. And
a further complication is introduced into the subject by the fact,
that some people who are far from good are yet unquestionably
agreeable. You disapprove them; but you cannot help liking
them. Others, again, are substantially good; yet you are angry with
yourself to find that you cannot like them.

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