Various - The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, No. 58, August, 1862

"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.