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."
"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.
