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
